Mr. Speaker, I always like questions from my Conservative colleagues. I do want to point out the general absence of Liberals from this conversation. I invite them to ask me questions to offer some explanation for why they introduced this provision to remove the religious defence. They have been keen to tell us what it would not do, but they have not offered any explanation of why they chose to propose the removal of this point.
To my colleague's point, I am reluctant to be too definitive in ascribing motives to other people. I suspect there are many people with good intentions, some with less good intentions, but looking at the reality over the last 10 years, we can see a big increase in hate crimes. I think the government should look in the mirror a little and ask what it could do differently to bring Canadians together.