Thank you.
I think it was explained quite well in both comments. I know that Madame Boivin has a legal mind, so my trying to give my version of interpretation probably won't help. We could sit around and talk about it all day long, and I certainly appreciate where she's coming from.
I was just reading over the clause, and the great news about this is that this act, Bill C-36, finally enshrines this category of individual into legislation where it wasn't enshrined before, and we can all celebrate that it's automatic, that it doesn't need to be considered as an aggravating factor any more.
The challenge, or maybe the danger—and this is rather funny, and Madame Boivin pointed it out—is that we might be swapping sides here. They're being tough on crime, and we're relaxing a little on our position here.
You can simply say that the evidence of an offence had an impact on a victim, but I think it's pretty simple to say that every act of crime has an impact on the victim, plain and simple, regardless of age, gender, or location.
The challenge is measuring what that impact is. Let me give a quick example, because I know I don't want to get into a legal interpretation debate with Madame Boivin. I know she's well versed in this, and we've had some back-and-forth on different committees, playing our perspectives.
If, let's say, an elder's vehicle is broken into when that person is not around, and it's a youth who does it, then there's going to be some impact of that crime on the elder. If that instantly becomes an aggravating circumstance and the sections kick in, then there's no room for interpretation. There's no room to back off that; it becomes a little bit of a challenge on the offender's position. It may very well put the victim in an awkward position in trying to deal with a crime that is now being treated as though there's a direct aggravating circumstance that invokes this section.
I think our position is that the word “significant” already acknowledges that there's an impact, and we don't want to have that as the baseline variable here. “Significant” adds a little bit more. I appreciate the point that we have to be careful about how big a burden that puts on the person who's testifying, but I think the courts and the crown will be able to work out that term—work out those standards, work out the guidelines around what “significant” means—and maintain that consistency. As Ms. Findlay and Mr. Villetorte indicated, it's just maintaining that consistency.
There you have it. I think Ms. Findlay's argument expresses our position.