Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what my colleague from the Liberals has said. It is obvious that everyone recognizes that there was and is a need to improve the witness protection program. Since the Witness Protection Program Act passed in 1996, both the Liberal and the Conservative governments have done very little to respond to the criticism of the system. Here we have a program that is supposed to help protect people, but there need to be improvements and there is still a lack of funding.
Bills have been presented in the House of Commons to address small components of the protection program. For example, Bill C-223, from a Reform MP in 1999, dealt with witness protection in cases of domestic violence. It was supported by the NDP but was defeated by the Liberal government.
The overarching issues of eligibility, coordination and funding have not been addressed. The Liberals criticized the program when they were in government, and now they criticize the Conservative government as well for not doing enough in Bill C-51. I want to know why the criticism of eligibility and underfunding was not an issue they addressed when they were in government. They had 13 years to do it.