Mr. Speaker, getting policy right in Parliament is not always easy and when we pick an arbitrary number to determine whether individuals are serious criminals is always a question of subjectivity.
In Canadian law, the general historical rule for determining whether something is a serious offence is a sentence of two years or more. If it is a sentence of two years or more, they do federal time; if it is two years or less, they do provincial time. We recognize that there are different levels of services offered, based on which side the sentence is on.
I am curious about the use of the term “serious foreign criminals” for people who get a sentence of six or seven months. Nobody in this House would ever say that a criminal sentence is not serious. Anytime a person is going to prison, obviously that is something that is worthy of sanction. However, in terms of taking permanent residents and deporting them from a country they may have lived in for 20 or 30 years, based on getting a sentence of seven or eight months, is something that is worthy of debate.
Does my hon. colleague have any comment on whether he thinks that moving serious criminality from two years to six months, or keeping six months, is an appropriate demarcation that would result in such consequences like deportation from the country in which someone may have grown up?