Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. friend's comments on a multitude of different justice bills.
In terms of the comments he made with respect to obstructing a clergyman on the way to a religious service and the notion that the Liberal members of the committee were instructed somehow to propose an amendment, I am sure the hon. member would want to restate what he said so as not to imply that Liberal members of the committee have no minds of their own and could not have decided themselves to put forward this amendment. I can assure him that Liberal members of the committee, listening to the witnesses, determined for ourselves that we agreed with our colleagues across the way that this should not be repealed.
Also, my hon. colleague put forward the argument that the sentence for the indictable offence of obstructing a clergyman being two years and that for the summary offence being two years less a day essentially means there is no difference in the maximum penalty that one could receive by making it a hybrid offence. Can my hon. colleague really justify the argument that the one-day difference in the maximum sentence creates a different tenor for this offence?