Thank you to all our witnesses. Your testimony is certainly very helpful, and certainly, you have our deepest sympathies on your plight, Ms. Ashley.
I think you've captured the essence of this bill. One of the salient features of what this bill is trying to do is basically to reduce the number of parole hearings that one would have to attend. That in itself can be a complete trauma. It's thought that maybe making people ineligible for parole for 40 years could save families as many as eight parole hearings, and I think one alone would probably be sufficient to satisfy the test of what this bill is trying to do.
Thank you for presenting it, Mr. Mayes.
Some time ago, back in 2012, in the London Free Press, there was a quote from you, Ms. Ashley. I have it here, and if you don't mind, I'll read it out loud:
If they let him out he will be somebody's neighbour, he will [have to] live by somebody's child's school. He will walk the streets of somebody's town. I can't bring my sister back, but I can certainly warn the public. We don't want this to happen again.
It's clear that one of your motivations, and I think it's a very solid one, is to keep the offenders behind bars, because in walking the streets they're an absolute danger. I mean, they're the stuff that the Stephen King movies are made of. Right? We know that in some instances these people will be released. This is not retroactive. Some offenders who are guilty of similar crimes, as horrific as that is, will eventually be out.
Do you see any value in perhaps warning the public, in publishing the names of these high-risk offenders on some sort of registry, so that communities can in fact, despite the fact that they're walking our streets, have some warning of what danger they present and where they would be? Would that bring any kind of comfort despite the fact that these monsters are walking about in our communities?