Mr. Speaker, this Liberal member obviously took to heart what a former Trudeau-era Liberal solicitor general said, that the protection of society was secondary to the rights of criminals.
That is what the member's speech was clearly all about. I wonder if the member actually read what the member for Oxford put forward. First, I want to commend the member for Oxford, a police officer and a former police chief.
The Liberal member who just spoke clearly did not actually read the bill, because had he read the bill he would have known what this was actually about. He would have known that it was about protecting victims. The member said that he doubts that a warden would let a dangerous offender out.
Let me tell the House who this bill was for. This bill was for somebody named Kim Hancox. Who is Kim Hancox? Kim Hancox is the wife of an officer in Toronto who was brutally murdered one night when he was investigating or trying to keep our community safe. That is who Bill Hancox was. He was a hero who was slain trying to keep our community safe.
I had the honour of knowing Constable Hancox and his family. I was actually a political assistant working in the same community where this officer was brutally murdered. I knew the family. We often saw Constable Hancox with his two very young children at the Legion for Canada Day and other celebrations in the community. People who worked with me in the office of the member of the provincial Parliament were very close friends with him.
We were all shocked when we learned one night that the officer had been murdered. Even more shocking to the family members was when they then learned, as time went on, that the person who brutally slew this officer was then going to be released temporarily into the community, despite the fact that the Parole Board did not agree with those releases. This person was going to be released into the community, and Kim Hancox and the family were not going to be given notice of these releases.
When the hon. member from the Liberal Party gets up in his place to defend the rights of criminals, he might want to think of people like Kim Hancox, like the Hancox family, like the children of this slain police officer who never heard their father's voice, who do not know what their father sounded like, because they were never given the opportunity.
Before the member gets up in this House and talks about prison farms, the rights of criminals over the rights of victims, and the fact that he doubts the warden would let people out if they are not responsible, he might want to consider for one second the families of the victims and what they have gone through, time and time again, because of a justice system that we are still trying to repair, a justice system that put the rights of criminals ahead of victims under the Liberal government, for decades.
That is what the hon. member might want to reflect upon.