Mr. Speaker, there are a number of interesting questions that come out of this.
The first proposition is that it is the criminal who committed the crime, not the rest of the family. Often what we are faced with are these terrible conditions where there could be, typically I suppose without making anything too stereotypical, a man somewhere in prison and the young wife and two or three children having to take the bus, for 25 or 30 hours, to see the incarcerated member of the family in a penitentiary someplace.
There are cases even far worse than that. I had a case in my constituency, which was quite well publicized in the media. An individual had a commercial difficulty with a partner in an African country. They got into a tiff over the value of, as it were, diamonds. Under the laws of that country, this constituted a crime. How the law was structured to achieve that, I was unable to understand. It seemed to me that they were debating the cost of the product and they got into this commercial rift. The individual was incarcerated for two years in a prison in West Africa.
I tried to negotiate with our embassy in the neighbouring country, because it was one of those countries where we did not have permanent staff. We have a consul there, but only on a part time basis because the individual does international cooperation projects. Therefore, the individual will go and visit in that situation.
First, this is a rather different case than the second part of the hon. member's question. This person did not seem to be much of a danger to anybody. Actually, he came back to Canada eventually and was freed right away. Had this individual committed another kind of offence by any measure where rehabilitation would have been, for instance, of the order before the individual was freed, he certainly would not have had it there. He was lucky if he could get a blanket where he was incarcerated. Had the individual been dangerous, he could have been dangerous when he got back because there was no treatment.
Second, on a humanitarian level, the kind of treatment the individual got over a dispute about a commercial transaction was something we would not do to the absolute worst criminals in our own country. It was so bad. I talked about it to the ambassador of that country. I do not want to name the person. My purpose here is not to offend anyone. The ambassador said to me that they did not have what he called five star accommodations for prisoners, and certainly they did not. However, to me, having a blanket does not constitute that, especially when it is a cold winter night or having certain basic things of decency, such as not having to sleep on the floor where there are infestations of rats and other kinds of roaches and whatever, especially in a climate in West Africa. I think one can see how terrible these things can be.
There are a couple of other cases I would love to describe and how these things should operate, but I want to leave an opportunity for other members to continue making remarks on the bill.