Mr. Speaker, this type of legislation moves forward. We have been able to, first, address a situation and then our minister always works closely with his attorneys general in the many different provinces. There have been many different cross-country consultations.
A lot of the legislation comes from concerns that are brought to the government. It is not that the minister is sitting back thinking what we can bring forward on legislation. This is reactive to many different issues and to many different stories in the news. We see these are the issues about which provinces and people all across Canada are concerned.
Some provinces and territories expressed concern in the lead-up to this legislation that public safety was not the guiding principle and that more needed to be done around the area of mental health issues.
In our committee, we realize that our prisons are full of individuals who really need to have some type of help for mental disorders. Years ago, our provinces stepped back in some respect to institutionalization of some of these individuals. We find them in many of our prisons. We need to find ways that we can find the proper therapy for those who suffer from these kinds of illnesses, but we also need to make certain, as the provinces have expressed to us, that public safety remains the guiding principle.