Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech and for his affirmation that his party will support this bill at second reading and get it to committee for further study. We are definitely open to that idea.
I want to thank him as well for highlighting the key elements that the bill talks about: that an arrest needs to be made within a reasonable amount of time and that there must be reasonable grounds to believe it was not feasible, in the circumstances, for a police officer to make the arrest.
There is one comment that I may have misunderstood in the first part of his speech. I would like clarification, not just for my own purpose but also for people who are listening to this debate, that this bill differs substantially from the private member's bill tabled in the last Parliament, which required only reasonable grounds as the criterion. This bill clearly makes the point that the person must have seen an incident occurring, seen someone committing an offence, and that an arrest must occur within a reasonable period of time. I think it is an important improvement on the previous private member's bill that was tabled. Would my colleague agree?