There are several provisions, as I mentioned at the outset, that provide me as a practitioner with significant assistance in terms of bringing forward to the court all of the information that the court needs to make a decision. So in that sense, of course the bill is quite helpful. And because it's more helpful, it will undoubtedly enable us to deal with more cases. So the answer to your question in both respects should be yes. That is a good prediction of what should happen, in effect.
The number of cases will no doubt change somewhat. I don't know that it will be a dramatic change. It does assist us in bringing forward particularly the assessment provision for the breach of long-term supervision order. That is an enormous assist.
What I haven't mentioned to the committee yet is that you may be under the impression that these assessments are conducted in an institution. Five years ago, that would have been the case. When I first gained an interest in these cases, almost all of them were done in an institution. We would get reports not just from the psychiatrist but also from the psychologist, the nurses' notes, from the recreationalist, from the master's of social work people. We'd have a very comprehensive report. Now in Ontario there are only two locations that offer beds at all--the Royal Ottawa Hospital on occasion, and I think there are two beds, for the entire province of Ontario, available at Penetanguishene.
So the vast majority of our cases, if not well in excess of 95%, are assessed at the jail in perhaps a four-hour interview. That's a long way from where we were five years ago. The facilities are simply not there at present. I just wanted to clarify that. The ground we're gaining is sometimes compromised by the reality of what's available to us in the community.
On the whole, I think the assistance rendered to us as practitioners will move us forward significantly. In terms of providing the material to the court, what the court does with it is, of course, the court's call. The best we can do as crown attorneys--and as defence counsel, for that matter--is to assist the court as fully as possible.