Mr. Speaker, only a socialist would say that bringing a dangerous prisoner back to Canada and putting that individual back on the street would be great for public safety.
We are concerned about that relationship with the United States. I had a long conversation with the homeland security secretary and she was not aware of the kind of prisoners the Americans were holding there. Prisoners spend 85% of their time doing federal time and, when they get federal time, as some prisoners might know, it is a long period of time, and they spend most of it down there. The reason they want to come back to Canada is that they can get out on parole after one-sixth or one-third of time spent and then they are back out on the street where they commit more offences and victimize more Canadians.
Appropriate criteria is set out in the bill. I would point out that the Federal Court recently came out with a whole series of decisions saying that the minister has a broad degree of discretion in making these decisions. However, we want to put some more guidelines in place. This legislation would give the exact guidelines that the member is looking for.