So precise. Thank you.
Thank you very much to both of you, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Muise, for coming before this committee in such short order and for taking time out of your Halloween celebrations to refresh your memories on Bill C-2.
Mr. Cooper, you mentioned that there are very serious difficulties for crown attorneys in attempting to put together a dangerous offender case, in terms of collecting all of the records that would be documentary evidence presented to the judge; and that there is absolutely no coherent policy governing record-keeping across Canada, across the various institutions that would be expected to have evidence that would be useful in a dangerous offender hearing, whether it be the individual police services, the courts themselves, the prisons, the penitentiaries, or the halfway houses. Someone who has been repeatedly convicted of the kinds of crimes that could lead to a dangerous offender may at one point have been out on parole, may have been in a halfway house, may have been ordered to go into a detox centre, and so on. There is no comprehensive policy for record-keeping for the kinds of offences that could lead to a dangerous offender hearing.
You've said that section 760 should apply in every case, regardless of whether the sentence applied is a provincial sentence--i.e., two years less a day--or a federal sentence, two years and more.
Do you also believe the federal government has a role, or should be playing a role, in trying to encourage the provinces as well to develop a comprehensive policy in terms of record-keeping for institutions that come under them, such as the police, for instance? Federally we could require certain things of the RCMP, but not necessarily of the municipal and provincial police, of the provincial prisons, for instance, of the halfway houses, the transitional houses, etc.
Is that something that you think would go a long way, not just for dangerous offenders but simply for prosecution of anyone being charged with serious crimes?