Justice committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. I regret to say that I am not bilingual. I will therefore have to present my ideas and give my answers in English only. I am here because I'm very concerned about this bill. It will place our sentencing regime, aside from those of countries that stil

Justice committee  Mr. Head indicated that I could have his 10 minutes if he would answer questions.

Justice committee  I just want to point out that it was with great difficulty that I came here this afternoon--

Justice committee  Thank you. It will take me a minute to figure out where I was. I was speaking of the 90-day window and I was saying that prisoners are not necessarily confined in the province where the case originated. They therefore have to apply to be transferred and moved back to their orig

Justice committee  Could I follow? If in the future this bill passes, and if you accept the argument about pain--and I accept that it's how some people experience grief, and it lasts forever--it will still happen at the 25-year mark with the parole process, because our current Corrections and Condi

Justice committee  First, the 1990 case, which was Luxton, was at the time when we still had some aspects of constructive murder. I'm not going to get into a big lecture about this, but those were the major issues in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, and they succeeded. Constructive murder is u

Justice committee  It was a member of this committee.

Justice committee  You'd go through the section 12 jurisprudence--I can give you the names of the cases, Smith, Gault, Morrisey, Ferguson--and you make your claim about gross disproportionality in terms of blameworthiness and the effects of punishment. The effects of punishment are front and centre

Justice committee  No.

Justice committee  May I respond, Mr. Ménard? I agree completely that we should be sympathetic and respectful to the loss of victims. What I'm saying is that the loss of victims is not the issue here. With respect to your remark about juries, not only can the juries reject the application and set

Justice committee  That's 18%.

Justice committee  No. I mean, I think some of them may be bad policy, but being bad policy isn't the same thing as constitutionally suspect. Parliament is responsible for policy. The charter provides minimum standards of constitutionality, so whether I agree or disagree with the policy doesn't mak

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Number one, that is arguable, but my point is that if you look at the actual paragraph—and I quoted it in my brief—Chief Justice Lamer immediately says, “I reiterate that even in the case of first degree murder, Parliament has been sensitive to the particular circumstances of eac

Justice committee  No, because you see, our Supreme Court has said time and time again that sentencing is an individualized process, and section 12—cruel and unusual—looks at the individual, either the offender or a reasonable hypothetical, and compares culpability with that person's circumstances.