Mr. Speaker, it really speaks to what is happening in terms of these issues. The statement the member made is silly. If that member wants to come up to Timmins—James Bay and run around with a little Conservative ten percenter saying that I am soft on crime, by all means do it.
The people back home sent me here because they want to get rid of that bunch. They do not believe what those members say for an instant. If the Conservatives want to spend money using the public's ink to attack me personally in my riding, they can go ahead. They can send as many ten percenters as they want. They can do their little fife and drum show and say I am soft on crime. People back home know it is not true. They know we are here to reflect on crime bills and try to get them through.
With regard to Bill C-2, it is the misinformation that party has used again and again to try to show that members are delaying. In fact, it was the Conservative government that prorogued Parliament and let those bills die, particularly the age of consent bill, which would have been law if the Conservatives had simply signed, with a stroke of the pen, to revive it.
There is speculation that there might be an election by the time the bill goes through the Senate. The Conservatives know full well that the bill might not become law. I asked yesterday whether they might enjoy that situation and then they could run an entire campaign on how everyone else in the House was soft on crime. That is not doing Canadians any good.
My dear friend from Nepean—Carleton offered $1,000 to young people to write an essay on how to protect themselves from Internet luring. However, there was a catch. They had to take his petition around to people, a petition that blamed the Senate for stalling a bill that his own government had killed. He did not tell those young people about that.
This is another example of how the Conservatives continually put their grubby, partisan fingerprints on the imagination of our young people. What happened with that petition was a real debasement of Parliament. It brought discredit on all of us in the House, because we take these issues seriously. We take the issue of the age of consent seriously. We take the issue of gun crime seriously. We now have to play this little soap opera out day after day in the House.
The government has no national vision. It has no plan. It has been trying to rag the puck on crime bills because it has nothing else in its war chest. We are now involved again in a debate that has already been done. Everything had been settled, yet the government turned the clock back and rolled out the legislation again.
No wonder people do not have any faith in politicians when we look at the government's crime agenda. If a government is willing to be that partisan about issues involving the protection of the public, then how can we have faith in it on anything else? There are so many crime bills coming forward: mandatory minimums for bicycle theft, mandatory minimums for furniture theft, getting tough on whatever. All the government has on the docket are more crime bills. As I pointed out yesterday, this is like a wound that will never heal. All we need is one more horrific crime, one more drunk driver and the government will that say our laws are not serious enough.
This debases the larger issue of what Canada's policy should be in terms of crime. Do we need to get serious on gun crimes? Certainly we do. Do we need to have policies in place to take on gangs? Yes indeed. We need to effectively target the ability of police to serve the regions of our country where we see spikes in crime. However, we also need to have a clear, coherent plan for dealing with criminals and recidivism.
I keep going back to the member for Nepean—Carleton because it was such an amusing piece. In fact, I might send it out as my ten percenter so people can see what they would have if they had a Conservative member instead of myself.
He said that I was opposed to the “three strikes and you're out” policy. Yes I am. I am certainly opposed to what the Conservatives are trying to do with their simplistic “three strikes and you're out” policy. People in California have been sentenced to life for stealing a pizza. That is the direction the government would like to take us.
The Conservatives are detracting from the larger issue. As long as we sit in the House having to defend ourselves about being soft on crime or about supporting child pornographers, or whatever else the government wants to throw at us in terms of its mud, we are not discussing the substantive need for having a forward thinking policy for the nation in the 21st century.
For example, there is a need for a committed infrastructure program for municipalities, whether rural or urban. We have no plan from the government. We are not talking about that because we are running around talking about bicycle theft today and whatever crimes tomorrow.
The other issue detracting our attention from the House by continually having bills brought back, argued again and dragged out is the example this past week of the Prime Minister, who shamed us on the international stage. At the Commonwealth talks he showed that Canada was no longer an international leader, that the government did not represent a national interest. It was a front for the ecological free booters, who are pillaging the tar sands. We need to have a serious discussion in the House about the failure of the government to come forward with an environmental policy that is anything but acting as a shield for big oil.
The issue of crime is a serious issue. We went through this in the House. We dealt with the issue of the age of consent. We dealt with the issue of gun violence. We came forward with coherent elements on which every party worked. At the end of the day, that is our role as legislators. We have to bring forward the experience of our communities so we bring in laws that will actually work, laws that can be applicable on the street, that the chiefs of police will agree with and for people who work with cases of recidivism, laws that are part of a coherent policy.
At this point we are now going through an entire debate process that should have already been done. These laws should be on the books. Why are we debating it again? I am not sure. However, I will not at this point turn around when the Conservatives say to take it or leave it, stand up or sit down. It is my role as a legislator to speak out on bills and I will continue to do that, regardless of the partisan mailings that go into my riding, regardless of whether they get backbenchers to stand to attack me or any other member of the House. Let them do it. It does not detract us from our job in this caucus of reflecting on the bills that are brought before the country. We need to ensure that when we introduce laws, they are workable laws and they are laws that will, at the end of the day, bring us forward as a nation rather than backwards.
I will finish on the “three strikes, you're out” policy. We have seen the complete failure of the crime policy in the United States, a vision for dealing with crime. The rates of violence continue in the United States. Gun crimes continue. People who should not have been thrown into the justice system are eaten up with its mandatory minimums and its “three strikes, you're out”. It is a failed policy.
The only thing worse than a failed policy are people who look at that failed policy years later, when they have all the empirical evidence, in the cold light of day, and make a calculated decision to approve a failed policy. That is even worse. It is much worse than the mistake our American neighbours made. If there were gun and gang violence, there would have been reasons for thinking that maybe the approach taken in the United States would work, but we have seen the failure of that approach. We know it has to be balanced and it has to be balanced between the need to ensure there is a way to get people out of the criminal system and into rehabilitation. We also need to have laws in place to take out the gangs, to have the police on the streets and to get serious on offences where need be.
We tried to strike that balance in the House. Having struck that balance, the Conservatives are driving in a much larger wedge. In the end, it comes to protecting our communities, and I have to always take it back to Timmins—James Bay, which I represent.
If the government is serious about getting tough on crime and protecting citizens, why have our communities on the James Bay coast been left almost without policing. The police officers, the service and the Nishnawbe Aski Nation police across the NAN territory are continually put in dangerous situations because there is no funding for them.
When we have one or two police officers in an isolated fly-in community of 2,000 people, that is not a place we should put anybody. We should have proper backup for police. Any other part of this country would take that for granted, but for some reason, in our isolated first nations communities, not only are the police underrepresented but the citizens are underrepresented. We have much higher rates of violence in these communities because of the lack of services, the lack of supports for communities and the lack of policing support. We know the stress that our police officers are under and the stress these communities are under.
If we are to get tough on crime, where is the money? Show me the money that would ensure that in the places where there is violence, which is on the isolated first nations reserves, that we have police, that the police have the necessary social supports and that we have the regional centres for victims of violence they could be taken to. They have none of that on the James Bay coast. I have always said that it is like a virtual third or fourth world.
However, one would think that a government that talks about getting tough on crime and dealing with the needs of citizens would recognize that we cannot simply put one police officer on his or her own in an isolated community with no backup. First, we are hurting the citizens and leaving them without police services, and second, there is not a non-native police service in this country that would put up with that.
Do we have to get serious about crime? Yes, we do. That is our job. Our job is to bring in laws and to ensure these laws work. We will reflect on these laws as they come forward. We will bring forward amendments that will make good laws and we will oppose laws that will not work. However, what we will never do is abrogate our responsibility as legislators to take the time to reflect on those bills.
If the government wants to take the time to prorogue the House for five weeks, that is its business. If it wants to allow bills that should have been law to sit and die, bills like the age of consent and the bills dealing with gun violence, and then begin again from scratch, that is its business. If it wants to take as long as it has to take, that is its business, but it cannot tell us in the House what our business is, which is representing our people and ensuring that any legislation the government brings forward, whether it is wrapped up in an omnibus bill or whether it is called a confidence motion, that it is legislation that will work and, at the end of the day, it has an efficacious nature that we can actually bring back and say to the people of Canada that 308 members of the House brought forward legislation that will work.
