Justice committee  Maybe Ms. Joncas will be able to deal with that. I don't know whether there are situations in respect of judges—

Justice committee  I can deal with the examples of the constraint in terms of the whole process of dealing with matters, and that is one of them—

Justice committee  —and I'll give you others. You have obviously mandatory minimums with respect to offences involving distribution of child pornography. If those are situations that present themselves where the Crown might recognize that the person is actually in need of rehabilitation, and the be

Justice committee  I won't cite the actual case, but this is an actual case that has occurred. You have between dates.... November 15, 2005, is the magic number, because on that day it was proclaimed that for sentences beyond that date there should be a mandatory minimum for distribution. If you ha

Justice committee  With respect to Mr. Bernardo, I don't know what the sentence is beyond life, in that particular situation. That is obviously the maximum that Mr. Bernardo's under. I don't accept, with the greatest of respect, that with judicial discretion I have to accept that it must mean we

Justice committee  First, I'll address the issue of the example that came up with the crop-duster, and then I'll turn things over to Ms. Thomson to address who we're representing today. I couldn't agree with you more in terms of there being no excuse for that individual who shot down the crop-dust

Justice committee  The view of our section, in reading through it.... I just don't see that the bill addresses the issue of pre-trial detention at all. I don't see that there are provisions specifically excluding that calculation. It will remain to be seen, if this bill were to pass, what it would

Justice committee  Obviously the section goes to both prosecutors and defence. I can speak from that experience, from the experience of being a defence lawyer. The way the system is—and when I say “is”. I mean it's in terms of where a judge exercises discretion and is entitled to impose the appropr

Justice committee  I don't speak on behalf of a crown attorneys association. All I can say is that in consulting with our section--both crown prosecutors and defence lawyers--it is the view that mandatory minimums should be opposed.

Justice committee  Then, going to the five-seven-ten rule, you have these sorts of calculations, in our view: that there is not much use in appearing in front of the judge, that the data could be input into a computer and it would spit out the results. But that's not our system. In the example I g

Justice committee  The national criminal justice section's position when the four-year minimums came in was that we opposed them.

Justice committee  What I can say, for obvious reasons, is that I don't know what a lot of judges are feeling, because there are certain constraints on what they're able to tell us. I think there's no doubt there are lawyers who have been in situations where a judge has made a comment during a sent

Justice committee  In terms of that, I know what our position has remained before and when those amendments came in. Obviously, with data coming forward, I'm sure it's going to assist you. But aside from that point, it still doesn't take away really from one of the main points we're making, which i

Justice committee  Thank you. While the criminal justice section supports measures to address violent crime rates, such a call to action must be acted upon using only measures that are both fair and effective. This section opposes the use of mandatory minimum penalties. Any action must proceed onl