Mr. Speaker, even though the Conservatives might want to make a joke of this evening and not necessarily fully participate on the issue of crime, let me assure those who are actually following the debate at home that we have a Prime Minister and a Liberal caucus that just last year went through an election, and we made a commitment to Canadians that we would take the crime file seriously. In fact, that was part of our platform.
We have brought forward a suite of legislative initiatives to actually address making our communities safer for all Canadians. The biggest roadblock for making that happen, for seeing the legislation pass, is the Conservative Party of Canada. Conservatives come up with excuses as to why they do not want to see legislation passed, and then they put in whatever mechanism they can, even if it is silly, in order to prevent legislation from passing.
Let me give a good example of that. Here is a good example on Bill C-16. If we listened to the debate and the complaints coming from Conservative Party members, we would draw the conclusion that the primary reason why they do not support this legislation is that they had a bit of a flip-flop on the issue of having a safety valve for mandatory minimum sentences. Mandatory minimums are something the Prime Minister and this government are taking very seriously. That is the reason why we have reinstated a number of mandatory minimums. There are a number of them, and I will go through a few of those, but the Conservatives say they cannot support it because there is a safety valve.
Let me give a quote. The member for Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations is actually the new Conservative justice critic. He replaced the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. Let me tell colleagues something about the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola when he was the justice critic for the Conservative Party of Canada. Now, in fairness, the Conservatives have gone even further to the right since the replacement of this particular member, but here is what he had to say: “the Liberal government could make this constitutional by adding a safety valve; that is, by having a mandatory minimum with an exception to address the very issues that the Minister of Justice has addressed.” Seriously, we have the former Conservative justice critic actually recommending to the government that we need to invoke a safety valve, yet today, they have had a change in policy. Why? It is not because it makes sense, but because they want to use that as an excuse in order to filibuster the legislative agenda that this Prime Minister and this government have for making our communities safer. I say shame on the Conservative Party.
At the end of the day, we had to bring in time allocation because the Conservative Party has absolutely no intentions whatsoever to allow Bill C-16 to pass. It is because it does not fit their political agenda. Their political agenda has more to do with self-interest and promotion.
Take a look at the reality of what the Conservative Party members like to do. They like to talk tough on crime. They love to talk tough on crime. What did we talk about today during private members' hour? We listened to Conservative after Conservative be critical of the government on the issue of transferring from maximum-security to medium-security prisons. They try to give the impression that the Liberals are soft.
If we look over the last 15 years, the record high in terms of transfers from maximum to minimum security was actually when the leader of the Conservative Party sat around the cabinet table. The Conservatives actually had the highest number of transfers from maximum- to medium-security prisons. Colleagues might not have thought that. What did the Conservatives do at the time? They did absolutely nothing. On that issue, they did exactly what they did in regard to restoring mandatory minimums: absolutely nothing.