Mr. Speaker, maybe the member could get a pen because I have several questions. I hope he will be non-partisan and not attack the government in too much detail but give some good ideas.
First, this week almost everyone has spoken about the failure of the government's crime agenda and what could be done. Many members gave a lot of good ideas. I know the member is a thoughtful member of the justice committee and will have a lot of good ideas. I wonder if he could add some.
Second, the parliamentary secretary did not even answer the first question that I asked on behalf of two organizations. He tried to blame political parties when it was organizations that asked the question.
The first was Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy. It suggested that we should invest in harm reduction and not reduce our investment in harm reduction like the government was proposing. Hopefully the member could provide the Liberal Party's position on that and give the students from McGill who came to see me an answer.
The second question was from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. If the Conservatives will not answer its concern, maybe the member could provide an answer. I will not read the whole quote again but it said, “--jurists and scholars have said there is no evidence that any form of mandatory sentencing is effective for drug offences--”.
Third, I would also like the member to talk about the creation of these bills in the justice committee because they certainly were not done by the Department of Justice and did not follow the input from the experts that came to committee.
Finally, I wonder if the member thought it was humourous today in question period when the Minister of Foreign Affairs stood and said, “It is not our job. We do not create prisons”. As the member just said, many of these bills have been formed to put more Canadians in jail.
The government has provided more money to fund it and studied how many more jails are needed. The justice minister of course was six inches from the Minister of Foreign Affairs kind of squirming. I wonder if the member could also comment on the fact that the experts said that this is not the only answer to solving or reducing crime.