Justice committee  Let me finish--

Justice committee  No. What I'm saying is that you're--

Justice committee  Can I answer the question now?

Justice committee  I am, absolutely. On victims, you are being disrespectful--

Justice committee  Do you want to ask me about “may”?

Justice committee  That wasn't going to be my answer, but--

Justice committee  I said to “listen” to victims.

Justice committee  I said listen to victims, but don't do it selectively. It is disrespectful to victims to treat them as one homogenous group in which everyone thinks the same and everyone responds to grief, pain, and loss in the same way. A variety of people in Canada are victims and provide services to victims, and many of those people will recognize that the people who commit crimes come from the same communities as the victims.

Justice committee  I don't know of any. Through American television and American newspapers we've all experienced a sentencing report in which someone received three life sentences, and hearing them talk about the expressive integrity of the justice system. In Canada, the courts concluded many years ago, after a lot of consideration, that you can't--in the abstract, in theory, or in reality--have a sentence consecutive to a life sentence.

Justice committee  We have to be respectful of both the views and the grief of victims, and Canadian criminal law has gone a long way in 30 years to be respectful. I'm not saying we've succeeded or that the job has ended. A big part of that is giving people information about the process and giving them an opportunity to participate, and the National Parole Board has done that.

Justice committee  When the Canadian Parliament and this committee first replaced capital punishment with the life imprisonment regime, the data collected at that time and presented to this committee showed that, on average, most jurisdictions that had repealed capital punishment looked to minimum life sentences of 10 to 15 years.

Justice committee  I have additional comments.

Justice committee  Thank you. I am not bilingual, so I can articulate my remarks and ideas in English only, if that is okay. I want to start by agreeing with Professor Doob that our sentencing system in Canada is in chaos. We lack workable principles. We lack appropriate guidance. We lack appropriate resources for options, including the state of our penitentiaries and prisons.

Justice committee  No, that is the second edition—the 2008 edition.

Justice committee  No. The Supreme Court....