Okay. I was about to speak on that, so thank you for letting me know.
On that basis, then, I'll skip a couple of the comments I was going to make and just say that I completely agree with Mr. Davies. It's important to maintain some degree of judicial discretion.
Are we dealing with the first amendment first, Mr. Chair, or are we dealing with both of them?
Okay, on the first amendment, saying that it would be grossly disproportionate to the public interest sets a very high standard for not including somebody on the registry. One of the things we heard from witnesses was the importance of keeping the efficacy of the registry by making sure that the individuals who are on it are people who belong on it. We were all frustrated, I think, because there were certain individuals who weren't being placed on the registry who we wanted to see there. We wanted to have that automatic inclusion. But similarly, we could have a problem on the opposite side, where there would be people included on the list inappropriately.
We have to recognize, as we've modelled a lot of what we're doing after Ontario--to echo Mr. Davies--that this is a longer list. As such, there might be some inclusions that are inappropriate or, in the words of this amendment, “grossly disproportionate”.
On that basis, I think it's critical to leave that there, because the public interest clearly isn't served. And this isn't just about the offender. This isn't just about a gross injustice being carried out against an offender who, because of automatic inclusion with no outs, somehow gets trapped in a situation that's unjust or unfair. It's about keeping the efficacy of the registry and making sure that the individuals who go on the registry are people who need to be on there, so that when the police utilize this tool, they're going to places, first and foremost, that are going to have the greatest likelihood of having somebody as a person of interest relative to whatever that crime is. If you overpopulate the registry or start having people on that registry who don't belong there because they've been included even though it was grossly disproportionate to the public interest, you're going to reduce the efficacy of that registry.
It establishes an extremely high bar, but I think it's necessary to leave that small amount of room to make sure that in circumstances that we either cannot foresee or are foreseeable, we don't have a situation where something is simply a miscarriage of justice and not in line with what we're seeking to do as a committee.