Mr. Speaker, I will try to make it very brief although there are many points I want to make.
I think I am one of the few members of Parliament who actually objects to Bill C-58, not criminally responsible bill. I did attend the hearings. There certainly were a lot of witnesses who were very concerned that it would further stigmatize the mentally ill and that it was not justified based on any of the empirical evidence of how the current system was working.
I note the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health noted that “the seriousness of the offence does not equate to the likelihood of reoffending”.
I hate to see capitalizing on quite horrific sensationalized individual acts of violence and convert that into an attack on an entire regime that has not been shown to be at fault, in fact, has no connection to any of these quite sensationalized individual acts.
I would urge my friend, the parliamentary secretary to reconsider and allow Bill C-58 to go for further study and amendment.