Mr. Speaker, I was proud to second Bill C-565 introduced by my hon. colleague from Trinity—Spadina, a bill that would repair the situation when Mr. Chen was arrested for simply detaining someone who had stolen from his store mere hours earlier.
I walked up Victoria Drive in Vancouver Kingsway with my colleague and we visited store owners. We visited flower shops, restaurants and retail outlets of all types and asked store owners in Vancouver Kingsway how they felt about the situation. Every one of them felt that it was completely inappropriate to have a law that would see a store owner charged for simply detaining someone who had stolen from the store owner mere hours earlier.
My hon. colleague's bill, Bill C-565, repaired that situation by expanding the Criminal Code in a very prudent manner, allowing people to arrest make a citizen's arrest, as it is called, within a reasonable time of the commission of an offence.
Does my hon. colleague agree that is an amendment to our law that we really need to make in the House and leave the issues of defence of property and defence of person to further prudent, careful and cautious study as we hear from witnesses before we make amendments to those areas of the law that may actually have far-reaching consequences beyond that which is necessary to solve the Chen situation?