Mr. Speaker, the member made reference to minimum penalties. I was interested in an article that made reference to minimum penalties and will quote from it. It said:
A pedophile who gets a child to watch pornography with him, or a pervert exposing himself to kids at a playground, would receive a minimum 90-day sentence, half the term of a man convicted of growing six pot plants in his own home.
I would ask the member to provide comment on that.
Also, would the member acknowledge that while many states in the Deep South felt at one point that the best way was to build more prisons and keep people in jail longer, most of the advocates of that system and that style of fighting crime are now on the other side, saying that they made a mistake?
It seems to me that the Conservative government in Canada is the only one in North America that has put all of its marbles in the area of getting tough on crime into putting people in jail and keeping them there.