Justice committee  Thank you very much. I do have some notes I'd like to start off with.

Justice committee  Thank you. Good morning. Let me begin by thanking each of you, members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, for having me appear today to comment on this very important issue. It is truly an honour and a privilege for me to be here before you.

Justice committee  Thankfully and fortunately, this is the only experience during my career that I've had to deal with such a horrific investigation. This has been the worst that all of us have experienced in our careers, and I'm talking about the 1,000 police officers who shared in this investigat

Justice committee  Yes, sir, I think it is. That's the short answer. As a police chief and a father of two kids that are under 16 years of age, I have absolutely no mercy and I see absolutely no justification in a circumstance where a stranger would scoop up a child—any child, male or female, under

Justice committee  I can tell you that I've been part of the justice system for 34 years. My career is 34 years, and I have great faith in the system. I've seen it work. I've seen it fail. It's not a perfect system, but none are. The sense I am getting, though, from speaking to many people in my c

Justice committee  I'd be pleased to, and thank you very much for the opportunity. In speaking with Mr. Wilks, we see this as just a starting point. In some of the other cases you may have reviewed with the penalties of eight years and so on up to life, those sentences may have included other off

Justice committee  I'm not familiar with that statistic, but I'll accept what you're saying.

Justice committee  It is.

Justice committee  You do have to consider all the circumstances, but quite frankly, I'd be at the upper end leaning toward life imprisonment. They can't be rehabilitated. They've harmed sweet, innocent children. That has had an impact on the family, and the ripple effect is incredible. My entire c

Justice committee  I fully believe that's happening out there in some cases. That's why I chose to stand with Mr. Wilks on this bill. That is entirely unacceptable. I don't care what other peripheral circumstances may factor into the decision, that is absolutely unacceptable. I believe the victim

Justice committee  I would agree with you, sir. Yes.

Justice committee  Thankfully I've had very few abduction investigations, but I have had a couple. One I will remind you of, which I was involved in when I was chief in Fergus, was Peter Whitmore, now incarcerated for life, I believe. He was a sex offender in Ontario who had a propensity to abduct

Justice committee  Thank you, sir. My short answer is, no. I don't think additional police officers would stop this problem. In this investigation we brought in 1,000 investigators in the aftermath to do the investigation. These predators, the people who are preying on our children, do so very co

Justice committee  I don't think this would have stopped him, no. He is an absolute monster, and he is now away, hopefully for the rest of his life, where he will never, ever harm another child, as is his accomplice. Those two were fuelled by the Internet, by pornography. They were googling a lot o

Justice committee  I'd like to comment that we could do a lot better in a lot of areas of the Criminal Code. I think that's why Canadians are looking at our system and sometimes viewing it as too weak. I think there are improvements we can make. In the case of the kidnapping of a child under 16 ye