It is clear that as a result of the omnibus crime bill we will have more crime, less justice, skyrocketing costs, fewer rehabilitation opportunities for offenders, less protection and voice for the victims, and less protection for society. This is a sad day for Canadian criminal justice.

When constituents of mine began reporting that they were receiving telephone calls asking if they would support the Conservative candidate in the pending or imminent by-election, I rose in the House to assert that the practice breached my privileges. But somehow the Speaker of the House was powerless to provide a remedy. No Canadian voter should be confronted with false and misleading calls and expected to sort out truth from rumour.

The one common feature in the omnibus crime legislation and long-gun registry is that both ignore, marginalize, and mischaracterize the evidence. Indeed, the Government's justifications for both bills are arguably polar opposites, much like the two cities of which Dickens writes in his seminal work.

While the world is mourning the loss of a hero to all humanity, it behooves us to recall his fundamental moral courage and commitment. In his words, "The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle." Indeed, as the tributes upon his death attest, Vaclav Havel's influence in Europe stretched far beyond Czech borders.

Absent formal charges, Canada should not acquiesce in Tepper's detention in Beirut. Why are we tip-toeing around a Government bound-up with a designated terrorist entity under Canadian law and whose own dealings appear replete with money-laundering operations?

It is beyond the pale that the international community continues to engage in "business as usual" with the Khartoum regime, dispatching a series of envoys with baskets of "carrots" rather than combating the impunity inherent in this triangular assault and its resultant atrocity crimes. If not us, who? If not now, when?