Justice committee  It's a tool. I guess I err on the side of wanting there to be tools that can be used. If the usage of the tool is warranted, let's allow there to be the tool that is potentially used. If it turns out that the use was or wasn't appropriate, that can be viewed after the fact.

Justice committee  I think that as a victim what we're looking for is to be involved in the process and to have a sense as to what's going on, and to have been a part of the process. Nobody wants to create a rubric of rights that gets in the way of effective negotiation of a plea deal with the accused or whatever, so long as we've been reasonably involved throughout the process.

Justice committee  I think the unfortunate reality is that you can never go far enough to make a victim feel whole in the process. The fact that this is a start is a good thing. To be frank, I don't know how much further you could go at this stage. In my view, like most of what happens.... Twenty years ago the big debate around the justice system, or the “legal results system”, as I prefer to call it—there's no justice in the legal results system—

Justice committee  —was incarceration versus rehabilitation. Now we've moved to a time when we can consider a victims bill of rights and the focus on the cost to society of victims. This will be a continuing societal change where we increasingly focus on victims, the cost to society that victims themselves have, beyond the cost of incarcerating a criminal.

Justice committee  First of all, thanks very much for having me. It is good to be back and good to address the group here on this piece of legislation. I commend the government and this group for moving forward on legislation of this type, though in my view, it's not necessarily what this specific piece of legislation does so much as what it stands for.

Justice committee  My first question would be: is there a current problem out there? I'm not well versed in the day-to-day operation. I don't know if there's a gap that needs to be filled. My knee-jerk reaction is to say that I'm leery of things that are to be made public. Having spoken to this committee on issues where we ask and expect and tolerate our police forces to deal with information, and we trust them to deal with information on an increased basis in a changed world, we now seem to be talking out of the other side of our mouth if we implement a system where we're saying no, the public should actually have the information, we're not going to simply leave it and trust our police services to disseminate that information to the public.

Justice committee  The tough cases always make for the best points and the worst points at the same time. I'll speak directly to the Graham James situation. Graham was convicted in the mid-1990s for hundreds of sexual assaults on Sheldon Kennedy and another unnamed person. Three of us then came forward 15 years later.

Justice committee  It's actually worse than that. What happened was that Graham decided to plead guilty to two charges but not three, to keep the convictions limited to a set piece of time. He pleaded guilty to the charges against Theo and Todd, and not me. The reason the crown in Manitoba took that was that they didn't want to compel other witnesses, who we know are out there, and it wouldn't have been worth a trial.

Justice committee  Yes, absolutely.

Justice committee  Absolutely. Graham was found in Guadalajara. There are places to go and communities that support these people. There's a network of lifelines open to these people that goes beyond government money reintegrating them into society. Don't get me wrong. We want to help people when they come out of jail.

Justice committee  Unfortunately, I don't think so, and a specific example comes right back to me again. Four plus four plus four is twelve, reduced to five. Four plus four plus four plus four, or ten plus ten plus ten, or whatever, comes back to five because the fundamental analysis as the Criminal Code is drafted looks to what is fair and reasonable and not unduly harsh to the perpetrator.

Justice committee  Again, I guess if there's a problem, it should be addressed, but I truly defer.... I don't mean to be dismissive of the question—I think it's a very good question—but to me it begs for only a theoretical answer because I don't know the issues at play. I would truly look to the police force to see what they require in order to provide a safe outcome.