Madam Speaker, it seems as if there were 10,000 questions wrapped up in that one, but I will try to answer as well as I can.
I can believe that the NDP wants to study this backwards and forwards, but there is something I really do not understand and maybe I can ask the hon. member. Why were they not very interested in studying this back in September 2009 and March 2010? They seemed convinced. Suddenly now, they want to study it. I think this is just a pretext and all they really want is to delay the passage of the bill. That is all. If they really wanted to study it, that is what they would have said in September 2009 and last March.
We should also be very careful here. What this bill does is simply abolish accelerated parole review, which is virtually automatic after one-sixth of the sentence has been served. Only a tiny portion of all inmates are affected. The NDP talks about 900 people, but I would like to see their figures. We will not talk about numbers because they do not have any. Not only are just a tiny number of people affected, but if society can take these people on, they will be released six months before one-third of their sentence. So nothing changes there.
The bill does not eliminate day parole. It is only accelerated parole review that is abolished. There is a small effect on the amount of time, but apart from that, if a person can be rehabilitated and society can take the risk, that person can go to a halfway house beginning six months from one-third of the sentence. At least parole officers cannot be forced any more to release someone because the law says so. Personally, I have seen that several times. We had people before us whom we thought it did not make sense to release. But the law is clear. They are released if it is a first federal sentence for a non-violent crime.
But we need to be careful again. What does the word violence mean here? It is physical violence. What do we do with moral or psychological violence? The law is silent on that score.
What we are doing, therefore, is restoring the decision-making ability of parole officers on the one hand and the credibility of the justice system on the other. And someone who has—