Mr. Speaker, the member gets up on a white horse and tells us we are opposed to women’s rights and opposed to this or opposed to that. The government’s argument is a bit simplistic.
The fact that we have often heard the minister talk about honour crimes and murders and all the rest is a fine example of this. What does the member think about the fact that this is already illegal? In addition, the courts have very recently held that the fact that an offence is an honour crime is not a valid defence under the Criminal Code, and that it is a cultural practice. The government wants to scare us with these headline cases, for example. Does it not realize that in some of these cases, the people involved have been convicted and are in prison? Is it not being simplistic, given that most of these things are already illegal?
Also, in the case of acts that are not already illegal, such as polygamy, does he not agree with my colleague from Pierrefonds—Dollard that we sometimes have to consider the issues more thoroughly to avoid penalizing these women even more?