Justice committee  Neither can I, and neither can most right thinking people in this country. The fact is, some people do that, and the question is, why do they do that? They are not doing it because the Criminal Code is too soft or we're not punishing them enough. Maybe we don't even know the answ

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Generally speaking, yes.

Justice committee  That's a good question. I could say this to you. With the exception...actually it's a minimum with murder. Many of the maximums have never been approached because there haven't been many cases in which that has occurred. The discretion probably hasn't been fettered, just by the w

Justice committee  Again, I repeat my comment. Careless storage of a firearm probably takes in someone who didn't put their trigger lock on right, and they might be a legitimate hunter living in rural Saskatchewan. That's usually the kind of case involved for careless storage. Those aren't people w

Justice committee  With respect to the prosecutors, it is difficult to say. I would suggest that there are probably many prosecutors who would agree with the bill. Similarly, I would say there are many prosecutors who would disagree with the bill. It's not an uncommon incident, where we have alread

Justice committee  I would say this: I think there are a number of myths, and one of the myths is that the status quo is not working. It's not working because some people are saying it's not working. I think there's a myth of a revolving door. I don't have the statistics here, but I know that there

Justice committee  And they are. That's another one of the myths, that judges tend to be soft on crime or incapable of meting out a stiff punishment. Maybe I'm not a very good lawyer, but my clients who are recidivists get whacked the second time around. By whacked, I mean they get hit a lot harder

Justice committee  No, I haven't. Frankly, I would have thought that if someone is drafting legislation of this magnitude, they probably would have considered that, but I apologize for not having done that. We certainly can do that.

Justice committee  It may be early yet, because it's still being considered, but one of the considerations there is that you'll see applications to the court--the defence calls them “Rowbotham” or “Fisher” applications--where the judge can order the attorney general of the province to pay for couns

Justice committee  I believe you are reading the section the right way. Some parts of Bill C-10 refer to firearms and others refer to restricted and controlled weapons. There it refers to restricted and controlled weapons, not firearms per se, so that does in fact mean that if a person robs a corne

Justice committee  I was going to speak much more quickly, but I'll speak slowly so that people understand. I'm a provincial director, as well, of the Criminal Lawyers' Association. This is an association of just over 1,000 criminal lawyers from the province of Ontario. I'm the representative of t

Justice committee  We've kept that in mind. I think we're both going to make brief speeches.