Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear. My party and I are very much opposed to torture. We go further than that. We take a very strong line against other countries in challenging them on human rights abuses, to a degree that I do not think we see from the current government.
For example, let me take this opportunity to shamelessly plug my own private member's bill, Bill C-350. It would, for the first time, make it a criminal offence for a Canadian to receive an organ that has been harvested from a person without his or her consent. A similar bill, Bill S-240, is working its way through the Senate and will likely come to this chamber before my private member's bill.
I suspect that my friends in the NDP will have no problem supporting either of those bills, but we have yet to hear from the government as to where it stands on this. Therefore, there are many issues around torture and fundamental human rights where we need to see some progress. I hope we will see support on those pieces of legislation dealing with organ harvesting, which is a form of torture.
The government has not yet signalled one way or the other how it is going to vote, which is interesting. It should be an easy, clear-cut issue. However, sometimes the things we think are easy and clear-cut do not seem as clear-cut from that side. Nonetheless, I am hopeful there is a consensus here that torture is totally unacceptable, and that we need to take the steps we can to address it.