Mr. Speaker, I think I am the next speaker on the bill in any event, so we will get to some other issues.
I would like to query the member about how this bill fits in with the Conservative election strategy. We have a number of boutique bills that cover issues that are already covered under the Criminal Code. As a matter of fact, the whole issue should be for us to revamp the entire Criminal Code, but that is not something in which the Conservatives want to be engaged.
We had a situation recently where the Conservatives discovered that Clifford Olson was receiving an old age pension in prison. They acted immediately to bring in legislation. When we looked into who started sending pension cheques to federal prisoners in the first place, we found that it was none other than Joe Clark's Conservative government in 1979, I believe it was. I have had the date wrong a couple of times already so I want to make sure that I am correct on that.
There is silence from the Conservatives, because they would never want to admit to their base that they were the ones who brought in that legislation. Don Mazankowski and other Conservatives were licking stamps, putting them on envelopes and mailing pension cheques to prisoners. They are the people who started it, but the Conservatives have to pretend that it was some sort of Liberal conspiracy. That is one they could not pin on the Liberals.
I have not yet heard a Liberal try to make the point that it was the Conservatives who started this process. We should give them credit in that they are helping correct it, but they should take responsibility for starting something they should not have started in the first place.