Okay. I'll try to be quick.
It's a complicated question in some sense because it's a complicated provision. Essentially, the dangerous offender designation has been around for quite a while. Originally, you could get an indeterminate or a determinate sentence when you had a dangerous offender designation, prior to 1997. The criterion for a dangerous offender designation was a habitual failure to control one's impulses regarding violent and sexual offending.
In 1997 we saw the introduction of the long-term offender provisions, which are also in part XXIV. They're somewhat married to the dangerous offender designation, because if a judge refuses a dangerous offender indeterminate sentence, he or she can in fact impose a long-term offender sentence. With the long-term offender sentence, you'll get the sentence you'd otherwise get for the predicate offence--for example, 10 years or five years--plus the court may impose up to 10 years of federally supervised long-term supervision orders. In that case, the National Parole Board, upon your release into the community, can set a list of conditions for you to abide by while you're living in the community. The conditions can be quite regimented and strict and, again, last up to 10 years, with the purpose of ensuring public safety and rehabilitation of the offender.
Under the new provisions, of course, what we're seeing is the big change toward reform since Bill C-27. That is, a breach of a long-term supervision order will enable the crown to bring you forward on the breach conviction instead of having to wait for an additional sexual offence or violent offence before they can rehear the indeterminate sentence option, as was the case prior to this.
Again, we're now seeing a large number of individuals, who would otherwise be designated dangerous offenders, being released into the community since Johnson, and that's the target audience for these new provisions. Again, if they are unable to control themselves under the watchful eye of the National Parole Board and Correctional Service Canada, it demonstrates a long-term problem beyond what the current long-term supervision order can manage. That being the case, if they are convicted of a breach, they're brought back before the court, and the court can reconsider the indeterminate sentence option.