Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be a part of the process to move this new legislation forward. It is new only in the sense that it has been partitioned off from a bill that was before Parliament.
It is ironic that the hon. member asks why now. He would know, as well as anyone within the Liberal Party, of all the difficulties we have had getting anything moved through the public safety committee. This bill's antecedent has been there forever. We have been trying to get the bill through committee and Parliament. Who are we targeting? We are targeting white collar criminals, the people who fleece victims and prey on people, their bank accounts and resources. The tragedy of this is that many white collar victims have told me it is as bad as getting beaten up in an alley. They say they experience as much pain as if somebody attacked them.
Why now is an ironic question from the Liberal Party, when it has been the one standing in the way all of these measures coming forward. My colleagues on the public safety committee tell me the same thing. That man is exhibit A on the challenges in moving the legislation forward. This is an important initiative by the government to crack down on white collar crimes and get rid of accelerated parole.
The hon. member also asked why don't you just target white collar criminals and not others. This stems from the Liberal position on a lot of these issues, particularly with respect to drug crimes. That is what we are talking about. We are saying that accelerated parole will not be available to people who are in the business of trading drugs and proceeding to involve some type of violence. I suppose one could argue that there is a certain level of violence any time people are given drugs that could destroy their lives.
In any case, he asks why we are including those people. We hear it all the time. His leader several weeks ago said that Liberals wanted to decriminalize marijuana, that this was some sort of message they wanted to send out to young people. They have been consistent with their soft on crime approach to challenge the drug bills before Parliament.
There are a large number of people to whom we want to get. I would have liked to have discussed the other one, but perhaps in an additional question I may be able to answer that.