Roman Baber

Mr. Speaker, this is for the viewers at home. The Liberal government introduced a 250-page bill. It said that Bill C-39 is just what we need now so Canada can finally start building energy and transportation projects. I thank them for not scrolling for a few minutes. This speech will feature Justin Trudeau, Katy Perry and a special appearance by Doug Ford. Time flies when we are having fun. It is hard to believe, but it has been 18 months since the election. I remember my first couple of days in Ottawa. We had the election of the Speaker, I took a shuttle with my commoner friends for the ceremonial tradition of being rejected by the Senate and saw His Majesty's carriage arriving at the Senate. I also clearly remember the Prime Minister telling Canadians that all we needed to do was pass Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act, in order to start building at unimaginable speeds. He said that Bill C-5 was just what we needed to get Canada building. Conservatives worked with what was then a Liberal minority, and we passed Bill C-5 in five days. I was told Bill C-5 was going to fix all of our problems and eliminate the complex regulatory regime that got in the way of building projects. Here is a pop quiz. Since the passage of Bill C-5 at the commencement of this 45th Parliament, how many new projects have been built? It is zero. How many new projects, and I emphasize the word “new”, were approved? It is zero. It is because the Liberal government is all talk, no results, and all talk, no action. The Prime Minister talks a fancy game, but when it comes to building projects, he is just like Justin. What is Justin Trudeau's new company called? It is called Hope & Hard Work. In this case, in Justin's case, it is all hope. My Liberal friends accuse me all the time of having Justin live rent-free in my head. He is living rent-free on Katy's yacht. Now, 18 months later, the Prime Minister is back from overseas and has tabled a 250-page bill and said that if we pass Bill C-39, we are going to start building. What changed? It was one word. Bill C-5 was the Building Canada Act; Bill C-39 is the building Canada strong act. To the fancy Liberal marketing consultants, how about some fresh material? Slogans do not build projects. Slogans do not build pipelines, energy corridors or transportation corridors. We should be the wealthiest country in the world because we are blessed with the greatest natural resources in the world. We have $30 trillion of proven reserves in natural resources. We have some of the world's highest proven oil reserves. We have natural gas that could satisfy the crazy demand for electricity. We have rare earth minerals that everyone is chasing. We should all be living like a Saudi prince. Instead, Canada imports oil from Saudi Arabia. We import oil from Nigeria. Why are we shooting ourselves in the foot? Why do we not get out of our own way and start building? Other petroleum producers will not stop, and they pollute the environment. Canada has some of the best environmental practices in the world. Those who are passionate about the environment should support Canadian oil because it is much cleaner and better than Middle Eastern oil. We need to free our natural resources. We do not need this bill. We need the will to build. We need to free Canada's oil and gas; that would mean more money in our pockets. This bill would not do it because the Liberals will not do it. They do not want to do it. They build nothing but bureaucracy. Since taking office, they built the Build Canada Homes agency and the Major Projects Office, the financial crimes agency is in the works, and there is the defence procurement agency. All they have built is offices inside office towers and then hired their friends. The Prime Minister is all talk, no results. What else do the Liberals claim they will build in this bill but will not build? It is transportation. For the life of me, I do not understand why we cannot build transportation in this country. Actually, I do understand. We need three levels of government and three levels of approvals, and there is always someone on vacation. I ran for provincial parliament almost a decade ago because one of my lifetime goals is to connect the Sheppard-Yonge subway station with the Sheppard West subway station. That is four kilometres of rail that would leverage line 1 and line 3, connect the north part of the city from east to west, open up York University to Scarborough students and aid in the construction of housing at Downsview Park. Instead, we have a Rogers Stadium concert venue that disturbs the neighbours. What happened? I thought we were going to build housing at Downsview Park. Now here come the Liberals saying they want to build a high-speed rail line from Toronto to Quebec City, the Alto, and it is going to cost $90 billion. Doug Ford's Ontario line is 15 stops and 15 kilometres, granted it is underground. Alto is promised to be 1,000 kilometres. A month ago we found out not only that the 15-kilometre Ontario line is half a decade behind but that the cost of construction is up to $34 billion. In the best case scenario for Doug, by the time he is done with the Ontario line, it will come in at $40 billion. It is not even like a traditional subway; it is a hybrid of hard rail and light rail. I do not think anyone told Doug. If the Ontario line from Don Mills and Eglinton to Lakeshore and Bathurst is $40 billion, is the Alto high-speed rail really going to be $90 billion? Alto will never be built, never. By the time construction stops, it is going to have cost $1 trillion. I am being reminded by my friends that I will be splitting my time with the Bloc member for Repentigny. It is so upsetting that we do not have the stomach to build serious transportation projects in this country anymore. The regulatory process, the approvals, the funding arrangements, the environmental issues and the agendas, all of those, are getting in the way of actual building. By the time we have some sort of consensus, there is a new government at one of the levels of government, and it will go in a different direction. I have watched that happen in my beloved city of Toronto time and time again. The Eglinton LRT was a debacle. Metrolinx was stuck at Yonge and Eglinton forever. Now the government has the audacity to tell us that the Alto will cost $90 billion and all we have to do is pass this 250-page bill. If there is someone who believes that, then please let me sell them the Gordie Howe bridge, or its total income after expenses. The government should scrap this Alto monstrosity and build energy projects like Canadians depend on it. For goodness' sake, can we stop buying oil from Nigeria? Why can we not supply natural gas all around the world? All day long, I hear about AI. None of this AI data centre revolution happens without electricity, not in the U.S., not in Europe and not in China. This is Canada's opportunity to supply the globe with Canadian natural gas, to supply the electricity to all of these data centres. This is how we can be part of this industrial revolution. That is how we protect our jobs. We have an option to become a commodity-based economy to power the future. The Liberals passed Bill C-5, and they will pass this bill too. What are we going to build? Nothing. It is all talk and no results, no action. We are not going to build until Conservatives come back to the federal government. What we are asking, and what all Canadians are asking, is for a little less conversation and a little more action, please.

Mr. Speaker, the U.A.E. met with the Prime Minister a couple of months ago, and it said it was going to invest $90 billion in our economy, and the Liberal government was not able to identify one single shovel-ready project for the U.A.E. to invest in. I heard about that summit in Toronto. It was a fun place. I heard there was a max plate fundraiser the night before for the Liberals. What we do not have is a single investable project ready to go. That is the fault of 11 years of Liberal governments, and the current Liberal Prime Minister is going to have the same legacy.

Mr. Speaker, 500 projects are available for approval right now that the Prime Minister can get going on. He does not need a 250-page bill. That is two projects that are ready to go for every page in the bill. At this time, Speaker, I would like to request a brief indulgence. Surrounded by his loved ones, Glen McFarland passed away last night. Glen McFarland was the financial agent for the York Centre EDA during the 2025 general election and was previously the financial agent for my nomination. Glen was a remarkable man. He is survived by his wife, Lisa, and their three children. He was an extraordinary accountant and a fellow with CPA Ontario. He was a managing partner of the McGovern Hurley accounting firm, which is proud of its more than 100 employees. He was such a gentleman. He passed away last night after a long fight with cancer. His family should know how much he was loved by his friends and his loved ones. He was a remarkable man. May he rest in peace.

Mr. Speaker, I believe the member whose riding is west of mine was not attentive to my presentation. I love the city of Toronto. My first love is the city of Toronto. What I do not love is what we have done to Toronto's transportation. Line 5, which goes from my riding into that member's riding, was not on time or on budget. There is a streetcar on Finch Avenue. What an absurdity. The Eglinton LRT took double the time at double the budget. The St. Clair streetcar is insanity, and the Ontario line is also a debacle.

Mr. Speaker, serial rapist and killer Paul Bernardo will have a fourth chance at parole this January. The lawyer for the families of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French said, “It's just pure entertainment for [Bernardo].” Sadistic murderers should not have a parole hearing every two years. They traumatize their victims' families again and again. Conservatives put forward a bill to end this practice, but the Liberals voted it down. I would like a clear answer from the public safety minister. Will the Liberals finally protect these families by scrapping Liberal parole?

Mr. Speaker, on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a shooting took place outside a Belleville synagogue. Constable Smith, who was stationed outside the synagogue, was shot and is now hospitalized in critical condition. This is a back-to-back statement in which I thank, and pray for, a police hero hit by gunfire in the line of duty. What happened to our country, so Canada's Jewish community is afraid to go to temple? I asked my colleagues on the Liberal side to save their tweets. They did nothing to protect the Jewish community, get rid of the IRGC and Hamas networks in Canada, empower the RCMP to intervene locally or stop dehumanizing Jews by accusing Israel of genocide. Civilian casualties of war are not genocide. Finally, people who promote Islamist jihad do not belong in Canada. Open your eyes. Enough is enough. On this difficult day, I wish the Jewish community G'mar chatima tova.

Mr. Speaker, part 2 of Bill C‑22 would force providers to retain the metadata of all Canadians. Liberals say the data is no different than the phone book, but the phone book did not log every phone call in every location of every Canadian for the last 12 months. There are also real concerns that foreign actors would exploit a back door to encryption. Law-abiding Canadians do not want their privacy breached, but Liberals are cutting off debate and ramming the bill through. Part 2 is not ready to be passed into law, so will the Liberals work with us to pass part 1 of Bill C‑22, but pause on part 2 to allow us to fix the bulk of this bill?

Madam Speaker, it is finally sunny in Ottawa, but to me, this is one of the darkest weeks in the history of Canadian democracy. Bill C-9 is back in the House after a brief stint in the Senate that did not make a dent in the problems with the bill. Predicated on false pretenses, the repeal of the religious defence to hate speech remains. The new hatred offence would still criminalize conduct, contrary to a civil statute. Nothing that minority communities are actually worried about in terms of security would be changed by Bill C-9. The Liberals are ramming it through at the end of the summer sitting as the government-subsidized media is already at the cottage. In the same week, the Liberals are ramming through Bill C-22, a bill that would require telecoms and Internet companies to seize all Canadian metadata, including their geographic location and who they called or texted in the last year, without their having committed an offence and without a search warrant. Bill C-22 would allow the Minister of Public Safety to order Internet providers to break encryption, something that has never been done before, even though every security expert is sounding the alarm that the privacy of law-abiding Canadians would be at major risk. In the same week, the Liberals are also introducing Bill C-34, the digital safety act. Of course, we have to protect children, but that does not mean that we have to deny children their charter rights to access media communications, which is an explicit right, or prevent them from communicating with each other through popular apps. It is a plan that failed in Australia and that will fail everywhere else. Unless we are prepared to implement a Beijing-style, authoritarian Internet surveillance regime, this is unenforceable. Are Canadians ready for that? Obviously, they are not. In the same week, which is the last week before the legislature rises, the Liberals are introducing so-called privacy legislation, which would eliminate the Privacy Commissioner in favour of their so-called digital safety czar, who would regulate, enforce and judge all at the same time. This would be a Liberal government appointee reigning over what we do on the Internet, with unlimited powers over how we communicate and how the world's most innovative companies do business. Surely by coincidence, the same thing is now happening in England this week, and it just happened in Australia. I was trained in the common law. It was the beacon of hope for any modern civilization. Anywhere the common law went, prosperity followed, but now we have these egomaniacs, career technocrats and misguided lefties who think they know better than everyone telling us how to live for our own benefit and how to keep us safe. I want to be safe from them. Bill C-9 would do nothing to protect the Jewish or Muslim communities. It would not protect any community. This entire thing has been a major Liberal failure. The Liberals wanted to eliminate the Attorney General's ability to consent to prosecutions. They realized how bad an idea it was and rolled it back. They wanted to redefine the term “hatred”. It is a definition that the Supreme Court used for 40 years. I am proud of this. It is one of the greatest accomplishments of my career that the Liberals have accepted my amendment to keep the old definition of hatred and not dilute it. People would not have to go to jail when they offend someone. Just when I thought we were out of the woods, I saw the digital safety bill that attempts to regulate harmful conduct online. Surprise, surprise. Harmful content would include content that foments hatred. The bill states, “content that foments hatred means content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group”. The Liberals are at it again. We just fixed the definition in Bill C-9, and now they have come back with a digital safety bill to regulate our conduct online and they have a different definition for hatred. Why is it “detestation or vilification”, not “detestation and vilification”, as the Supreme Court says? Where is the extreme or intense emotion that is required by the Supreme Court, like we agreed on in Bill C-9? Where is that in the digital safety act? Why do the Liberals hate freedom of speech so much? The Liberals hate it because they are afraid of the truth. The Senate was asked to fix the new stand-alone motivated offence in Bill C-9, because this new offence that the Liberals dreamt up would not target criminal conduct only. It would target any offence under any act of Parliament. For example, people could violate the digital safety act or the human rights code, and that may attract criminal prosecution. The Liberals are turning our democracy into a banana republic. Earlier, I heard the member for Whitby ask my colleague why she is opposed to a new hate-motivated offence. Does she not want someone to be punished when they engage in hatred? First of all, hatred is already an aggravating circumstance in sentencing, so do not give us that. Second of all, if the Liberals want to introduce another offence, introduce it for criminal offences. Do not penalize civil conduct, thereby putting civil conduct at risk of criminal prosecution. The Liberals tout all of these benefits for the Jewish community, which is my own community. Let me tell the House something about what has transpired here. Everything the Liberals have done to clarify any existing law is already in law. They say they will have to protect people's ability to enter synagogues and be free from obstruction. We are already free from obstruction in entering a synagogue. Nobody can obstruct me from entering a synagogue. That is called assault. How about intimidation? People should be free from intimidation when entering a school. Of course, that has not stopped the multiple school shootings that have happened in my riding. Nothing is happening about those. It is already a criminal offence to intimidate someone entering a school. It is called intimidation contrary to section 423 of the Criminal Code.

Mr. Speaker, they are heckling me because they know I am right. They are heckling me because they cannot handle what they are doing here. I welcome their heckling. I wear it as a badge of honour. The only thing the Liberals would do is eliminate the religious defence to an allegation of hate speech, and it is all because the Bloc says a guy named Charkaoui was not charged for calling for the extermination of the enemies of Gaza. The Montreal police said very clearly he was not charged because “the enemies of the people of Gaza” were not a identifiable group of people so as to attract prosecution under subsection 319(1) of the Criminal Code. It is not because of the religious defence. The religious defence does not apply to incitement to violence. Everyone knows that. The Bloc knows that. The Liberals know that. The religious defence that the Liberals are looking to repeal does not apply. It does not excuse incitement to violence. A religious defence does not apply to statements that are not spoken in good faith. Calling for the extermination of people is not good faith. This is a charade. The main operation of the bill is predicated on a lie. The more lies we get, the more we go down a rabbit hole, like we did with Bill C-9 and Bill C-22, the digital safety act, and as we will now with the changes to the Privacy Act that would eliminate the Privacy Commissioner. Leave us alone and enforce the law. Stop trying to keep us safe. We need to be safe from the Liberal government. I am blessed to represent one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. Every Sunday, thugs come to Sheppard and Bathurst and intimidate local neighbours. They deny us the enjoyment of property. That is mischief. Every Sunday, they try to walk down Sheppard and then make a right into Bathurst Manor or left into Clanton Park. That is intimidation. Every week, we see the arson or firebombing of a Jewish business or a store. Those are called assault or arson.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals say I do not want to protect them, but I am pleading for help for my Jewish community. They are telling me that repealing the religious defence would do something about it. It would not, but enforcing existing laws would. That would send a message. We should do that, instead of sending another $100 million to Palestine and instead of hearing the Prime Minister accusing the state of Israel, which is engaged in a lawful, self-defence war, of engaging in genocide in Gaza. That, in fact, fuels hatred against the Jewish community. The Prime Minister fuels violence and hatred against the Jews by engaging in the greatest libel of the 21st century, which is that the state of Israel is engaging in genocide. The Prime Minister recognized the state of Palestine on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. We will never forget that. It was all for electoral politics. We should all be ashamed of the government for the way it is treating the Jewish community and the way it has betrayed all of us. We will never forget it. What the Liberals are doing to usurp Canadian democracy is inexcusable. Shame on all of them.

Excuse me. Mr. Speaker, B’nai Brith said they wanted to repeal the Attorney General's consent. What did the Liberals do? They rolled it back, because CIJA told them not to do it. CIJA told them not to criminalize civilized conduct. Did they listen to it? No. What did they do for the religious organizations? They called them last week. I saw them in the Ottawa airport lounge and told them we are going to announce a commission on anti‑Semitism. Who did the government bring in to that commission? Omar Alghabra. He lobbied to keep Hezbollah off the terrorist list. This is the same government that paid Marouf millions of dollars, knowing he was promoting anti‑Semitism. Do not do us any favours. We are not asking for this. We are asking that basic laws be honoured. Assault, intimidation, mischief—

Mr. Speaker, there is one loophole that needs to be closed. It is the wilful promotion of terrorism. My bill, Bill C‑257, was endorsed by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. In fact, the contents of Bill C‑257 somehow magically made it into the member for Mount Royal's amendments to Bill C‑9, and then he was instructed to withdraw them. The one thing the Jewish community actually asked for was criminalizing the wilful promotion of terrorism. The Liberal member for Mount Royal wanted to bring it in, in furtherance to my bill, Bill C‑257, and he was instructed to withdraw it—

Mr. Speaker, it was brought in as an amendment to this very bill. The member for Mount Royal wanted to amend Bill C‑9 to criminalize the wilful promotion of terrorism, but the government would not allow him to.

Mr. Speaker, nobody is mixed up. In fact, the government has eliminated and deleted the previous mischief and arson provisions for places of worship and added a much more difficult standard. By adding the fact that the act on which we could predicate one of those offences has to be wilfully promoting hate, they have actually made it tougher to convict of mischief or arson of places of worship. Mark Sandler even told them so.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with a heavy heart to address a tragedy that struck the Toronto Police Service and our entire nation. Early this morning, tactical officers from TPS and the RCMP executed a high-risk search warrant in North York. The search was related to a national security investigation into the March 2026 shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto. ETF Constable Marc Pinizzotto, age 43, a father of two from Oakville, Ontario, and an 18-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service, was shot and killed in the line of duty. When civilians run one way from danger, the men and women in blue run the other way, into danger. Every day, police officers across our country put their life on the line to protect Canadians. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. We cannot fathom the grief of the family, friends and colleagues of Constable Pinizzotto, but we stand with them in mourning the loss of this Canadian hero. We will never forget Constable Pinizzotto, and we will pray for all of Canada's police officers, who risk their lives to keep us all safe. May Marc's soul rest in peace, and may God bless his family and our entire grieving nation.

Madam Speaker, this is yet another example of the Liberal government stifling debate. We are here to debate the bill in good faith, and unfortunately, we are in for another time allocation motion, which does not allow members to fully debate their mind. I believe that is not the way to go. I would like to ask the Attorney General a specific question. He knows that at committee, I brought a motion forward to bring a further amendment to Bill C‑16 to invoke the notwithstanding clause in response to the Senneville decision, in which the Supreme Court struck down the mandatory minimum sentences for the possession of and access to child pornography. I subsequently read in the newspaper that the Attorney General had, in fact, considered invoking the notwithstanding clause. I ask the Attorney General this question. If he refused to invoke the notwithstanding clause in response to the minimum sentences for the possession of and access to child pornography being struck down, is there a possibility that he would ever do it with respect to any legislation? Would he ever specifically invoke the notwithstanding clause, or is—

Mr. Speaker, remember how good life used to be a decade ago, before the Liberal government? We had the wealthiest middle class. Now the middle class is poor, and Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. However, the best thing we had was how safe our country used to be. My city, the beautiful city of Toronto, anywhere, anytime, day or night, any neighbourhood, was safe. After a decade of Liberals, violent crime is out of control. Residents are no longer safe. Parents are afraid for their kids to take the transit. There are robberies on the street, home invasions and extortion. It seems like every day I wake up and a person has been shot in my North York riding. Last week, there was a murder at Sheppard and Magellan, in the beautiful community of Downsview. Three men shot a man to death outside his house. What is happening? What is happening is Liberal bail and sentencing laws. Every police officer will say that. We need to close the revolving door in the courts. First, we got the Liberal failure of Bill C‑14. That was for bail. Now we are here on Bill C‑16, to deal with sentencing. Again, we have a Liberal failure. Instead of increasing mandatory minimum sentences, the Liberals do the opposite. They create what they refer to as a “safety valve”, which would allow judges to disregard mandatory minimum sentences. Under the Criminal Code, mandatory minimum penalties apply to a range of serious offences. These mandatory minimums are designed to set a sentencing floor, a minimum term of imprisonment that Parliament deemed necessary for denunciation, deterrence and public safety for specific categories of crime. In recent years, courts have been striking down mandatory minimum penalties under section 12 of the charter as cruel and unusual punishment. That, of course, includes the Supreme Court. The Liberals frame the safety valve as a response to this jurisprudence of striking down mandatory sentences. They point to recent decisions like Senneville, where the Supreme Court struck down a mandatory minimum penalty for possession and distribution of child pornography. I will come back to this decision. What would they do with a safety valve? The valve would allow courts to impose seLiberalsntences below the mandatory minimum if a judge thinks that applying the mandatory minimum would amount to a cruel and unusual punishment. The Liberals ironically say they would strengthen mandatory minimum sentences, but instead they do the opposite. They make them non-mandatory. Effectively, the valve would allow a judge to disregard mandatory minimum penalties, so a minimum penalty is no longer a mandatory minimum penalty. Jail time would still be required, but a judge would be free to sentence the convicted person to one day in prison. If they feel that this House, Parliament, has prescribed a sentence that is too extreme, they can just disregard what we say. This is crazy. It would result in lighter sentences for serious repeat offenders. The Liberals are doing the exact opposite of what is required. In effect, what previously required a constitutional argument would be an automatic argument every time at sentencing, that something is cruel and unusual. The safety valve is a major concession to judicial activism. It would undermine the role of this Parliament. We are the ones who set sentencing policy. Worse, the principle of deterrence is lost. I listened to some comments a short time ago from folks saying that there are empirical studies that state mandatory minimum sentences do not work. They do work, because someone cannot commit a crime if they are in prison. Many of these violent offenders who offend repeatedly, again and again, should be left in jail, away from the community that they seek to terrorize again. Therefore, we need to do the opposite. This is especially in response to the Supreme Court striking down the mandatory minimum sentence on distribution and access to child pornography. At the justice committee, I moved a motion to invoke the notwithstanding clause to protect mandatory minimum sentences on possession and distribution of child pornography, but the Liberals voted it down. Again, they failed to protect children. This is not just about kids who have already been abused and exploited in these pictures and videos. It is about kids in the future who, God forbid, could be raped because the courts have failed to punish these perverts and deter future perverts. We had to go hard here so that we could kill this awful industry, but the Liberals refused. Why? They say, “All we heard from the Attorney General was that it is a sunset clause, and in five years we would have to do this again.” Well, fine, let us do it again. What was the point of the notwithstanding clause? It was to prevent absurdity. Attorney General Jean Chrétien used the clause to seal the deal on the charter, and he specifically used an example for absurdity that the Supreme Court could potentially come up with. It was a hypothetical that Chrétien used: that the Supreme Court would find possession of child pornography protected by freedom of expression. I think everyone in this room, even the Liberals, would agree that such a finding would be absurd. Now, that is not the scenario we had in Senneville, but pretty close. Senneville pleaded guilty to possession and access to over 300 images of children, mostly girls between the ages of three and six, being sexually exploited. The co-appellant, Mathieu Naud, pleaded guilty to possessing over 500 images and almost 300 videos, most of which were of children ages five to 10, in many cases being subjected to rape and sodomy. This is disgusting. Striking down a mandatory one-year sentence for each of those two counts is precisely the type of absurdity that Attorney General Jean Chrétien had in mind. This is precisely why section 33 was explicitly inserted in the charter. We said to the Liberals at the justice committee, instead of narrowing down and diluting the mandatory minimum sentences, let us preserve the mandatory minimum sentences for the worst of the worst, and this is one of them, but the Liberals refused the amendment. I am proud of the Leader of the Opposition and my Conservative colleagues. We will invoke section 33 to protect children from these monsters and to prevent this absurdity that the Supreme Court arrived at. The Attorney General is refusing to invoke the clause, refusing to do his job, refusing to protect children and safeguard the law. Instead, the Liberals weaken sentencing laws with a safety valve. It is a shame, and it is regrettable. I spoke to a police officer in my riding. I do not want to name them, and I do not even want to name the division. He said to me, not too long ago, “Roman, you know how upsetting it is when we arrest a guy again and again. We had a situation where an officer got injured during the arrest of a guy he arrested again and again, and a couple of days later the same offender was out on bail again.” We tried to deal with bail, but the Liberals refused to remove the ladder principle, and still the courts are required to release at the earliest opportunity under the least restrictive terms. We dealt with sentencing and with activist courts that refuse to impose the mandatory minimums that the House prescribed. Instead of preserving mandatory minimums, what did the Liberals do? They did what Liberals do: They weakened mandatory minimum sentences. They now tell judges to go ahead and disregard the mandatory minimum if they think the mandatory minimum is disproportional. I do not understand what it is we are doing here with Bill C-16. We need to do the opposite. We need to protect Canadians. We need to take a bite out of crime and not let criminals loose, as this bill would do.

Mr. Speaker, the member should stop yelling and start protecting children instead. The member believes that preserving mandatory minimum sentences is far right. The Liberal Party has gone so completely insane to the left that anybody who disagrees with it on anything is deemed to be of the far right. I am proud of the fact that the Conservative Party wants to preserve mandatory minimum sentences, and we will do so when we form Conservative government.

Mr. Speaker, repeatedly, the chair of the justice committee called our amendments to reintroduce and strengthen mandatory minimum sentences out of order. This is despite the fact that this is precisely what the bill seeks to do, which is supposedly to strengthen mandatory minimum sentences. Why the chair of the justice committee called them out of order and out of scope, I do not know, but ironically, something interesting happened during that process. In one specific instance, which had to do with the use of a firearm during extortion, the chair of the justice committee initially called the proposed amendment in order, contrary to the fact that every other amendment was out of order. I do not believe that the ruling was correct. We were overruled again and again.