Madam Speaker, I appreciate the good work that the member for Mount Royal does as chair of the committee.
That being said, I take issue and respectfully disagree with his comments respecting the hybridization of offences. It is true in reference to certain offences such as stealing cattle or branding cattle, or whatever he referred to, but yes we oppose the reclassification simply on the basis that we said the government has taken a whole series of offences without any real consideration as to why Parliament treated them in the first place as indictable. Other than a handful of offences, there was really no evidence before the committee and we took the position that if the government wanted to reclassify certain offences, then it should introduce legislation focused on the reclassification with a basis or justification for doing so.
Unfortunately, that is not what the government did. It just took a bunch of offences, which is why genocide and terrorism-related offences were put into the mix. They should never have been there. I think the member would concede that, but the member mentioned there were witnesses who called on the committee not to reclassify those offences. It is true and they gave very impactful evidence, but also victims of impaired driving appeared before the committee. They pleaded with the committee not to reclassify the offence of impaired driving causing bodily harm.
We heard from witnesses that reclassifying does send a message. I wonder if the member for Mount Royal could speak to that issue.