Madam Speaker, that poorly trained police officer was not exercising discretion. He did not know what to do, which is why when Nancy Irving wrote the bail report for the Province of Alberta, she did not recommend this change to the law.
My heart breaks for Shelly Wynn. My heart breaks for the Wynn family. My heart breaks for anyone killed by a career criminal like Shawn Rehn. However, all of the evidence that we heard at committee, the great preponderance of evidence came down on the side of not proceeding further with this law.
I am going to put into the record the things we heard from witnesses at the committee, but before I do, I want to counter some of the myths that I have heard.
First is that somehow the government told the committee members what to do here. I was one of the 27 Liberals in the House who voted to send the bill to committee. I thought, based on common sense principles, it made sense to send the bill to committee and to listen to what witnesses had to say. Not only did I and my fellow Liberals, all of whom voted at committee on this bill, originally vote for it, but also the NDP member voted to not further proceed with the bill. Certainly you cannot argue the NDP member was swayed—