Mr. Speaker, Canadians are entitled to be assessed based on their criminal record. I do not think anybody has the ability to look behind that and determine how that record came to be. The official judicial record of a person is what the court system, the prosecutors, the defence attorneys and the accused, ended up agreeing was the appropriate offence. We have no problem dealing with a person's record on the face of it.
However, I will say one thing about records. After 150 years of Conservative and Liberal governments, it is quite shocking that witnesses have told the justice committee and this Parliament just how disorganized our criminal record system is and that we do not have one centralized reliable, consistent place where a person can go look for records. Instead, we are looking in the bottom of courthouse basements, in police departments, in municipal places of businesses and federally.
It is very concerning to me that both those parties, over such a long period of time, have neglected to ensure that basic public safety. Because the integrity of our justice system has been so sloppily administered, our police and volunteer organizations cannot even reliably go to one place to see what a person's criminal record is. That it is a clear breach of public safety and it shows the incompetence of successive administrations.
It has shown itself in this debate. One of the excuses the Liberals give for not expunging records is that they do not know where they all are and how can they expunge them if the records are all over the place. They again are putting the onus on people, the most vulnerable and needy people, to apply to get their records expunged instead of just expunging it, which is the only rational response to treat an offence that society no longer views as a criminal act.