Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the citizens of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
I was struck by the hon. parliamentary secretary's comments when he said that sentences are getting stiffer. I would first ask him what empirical evidence he has to back up that proposition.
In my experience as somebody who worked in the correctional system in penitentiaries, and in the community in the federal correctional system, I would agree with him that rehabilitation can be challenging. One of the comments he made was that these types of penalties should be restricted for the most serious of offences and those people, as I understood his comments through translation, who are a danger to the public. Would he agree that people who target other people with shootings are a danger to the public as well?