The committee proposed practical solutions for improving mining's environmental accountability while improving the environmental assessment process to include, as in the Quebec scheme, firm deadlines for the various stages of the procedure. Although we opposed federal interference in environmental assessment, the Bloc Quebecois must, for the good of the mining industry, ask the new ministers of the environment, fisheries and 230 transport to use better judgment than their predecessors with respect to the Canadian and Quebec mining sectors. Let me identify just a few of the unconditional victims' rights that will exist in a Canada governed by the Reform Party. Victims must have the right to choose between giving oral or written impact statements. Victims must be informed in a timely fashion of the details of the crown's intention to offer a plea bargain before it is presented to the defence, and victims must also know why charges were not laid if that is the decision of the crown or the police.
Criminals have far too many rights under the Liberal government.
We must devote ourselves to victims' rights as we should have done in the first place. Ten years later we still have not seen a federal government willing to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians in the Canadian human rights code. The current Liberal justice minister said initially that it was pretty hard to do in pre-election time. Then he said we had to fight separatism and that is why he could not put it in the human rights code. The Prime Minister said he would like to see it in the human rights code but we were just running out of time.