Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to those documents that I persuaded the member opposite, the member for Labrador, to table in the House just the other day. He had a chance to respond and I want to respond to him.
I am glad that I was able to lure him out, so to speak, to get those documents in the House and to get the context for it. I think that anybody fair-minded, on the record then would see, as those documents were tabled, that rather than making any disparaging and prejudicial comments one would see in fact the twistedness of those allegations that he made and how he perverted my fairly reasonable comment.
Also, indirectly, the member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River had alleged those same things outside the House.
The document that was tabled, as you know, Mr. Speaker, my press release, which is on my website, makes it very plain that I was advocating for aboriginal people because it talked in terms of how the Liberals' sentencing provisions violate aboriginal victims and how what they proposed in their sentencing regime was stigmatizing aboriginal Canadians by creating the false impression that they are more likely to commit crimes because of their race.
I went on to point out the fact that aboriginal victims should have the same right to justice as non-aboriginal victims and that in respect to that particular bill, Bill C-416 by my colleague, the member for Portage—Lisgar, we were appealing for equality under the law, under the Criminal Code and also the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
In that press release, I made the point that a responsible government would find ways to deal with the disproportionate number of aboriginal offenders in the public system without seriously and negatively impacting upon their aboriginal victims. I referred to the fact that on December 21, 2001 RCMP Constable Dennis Strongquill, an aboriginal, was murdered in cold blood in the line of duty by Robert Sand, who claimed he was aboriginal. The accused's lawyer requested that Robert Sand should receive a more lenient sentence because of that and justice was thereby denied to the six fatherless aboriginal children of an aboriginal man.
Those children, and his partner as well, were victimized twice by way of that, first in losing their father, and second, by way of the Liberal system, or regime, that discounts the sentence and counts the aboriginal RCMP officer's life as not worth as much. That really to me has shades of South Africa, shades of the deep south in the U.S., shades of slavery around the world where people, because of the colour of their skin, are not counted as much, their lives are not as valuable. The life of that aboriginal man who was killed in cold blood was not deemed to be as valuable by way of the sentencing regime of the Liberal Party.
In that particular press release as well, I referred to Police Chief Blacksmith of the Cree Mistissini reserve who condemned that policy of the previous government, the Liberal regime, and I urged the Liberals to support the bill by my colleague, the member for Portage—Lisgar, Bill C-416, in 2003, to bring an end to that assault on aboriginal victims through the race based sentencing policy for offenders.
The record will now show that the member for Labrador was wrong when he alleged that I made disparaging and prejudicial remarks about aboriginals in respect to race based sentencing.
In fact, the record will show that I was advocating for aboriginal individuals who were abused, who were violated, who were assaulted and then victimized twice over by their lives not counting as much because of the Liberal government's sentencing regime that was in place and which still exists to this day.
That was my point, Mr. Speaker. I think the record clearly states that that member is more inclined to a racial based kind of scenario that in fact infers racism, because the life of an aboriginal man in that circumstance did somehow not count as valuable because of the Liberal government's sentencing regime.