Mr. Lee has given me a pretty stern look, and a fair one, to say that we should get started.
Pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, October 26, 2007, Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, I want to welcome everyone back to committee.
We will spend our time this afternoon dealing with witnesses from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the John Howard Society, and, as an individual, Isabel Schurman from the Faculty of Law.
I want to welcome all of our witnesses this afternoon. Just as a brief overview—I think most of you have actually been here before, so you know the rules, but let me just review them for everyone's sake—each of you has 10 minutes to make your presentation. We have a small timer up here, so once you get a little bit close to the end, I'll just give you an indication to wrap things up. We will then begin rounds of questioning. The first round will be seven minutes in length, and it will start with the Liberals, then go to the Bloc, then the NDP, then the Conservatives. Then we'll go to five-minute rounds from each of the parties.
I would like to indicate that we try to keep things as concise as possible to get in as many questions as possible, so if that's something that all members of the committee can do, and also witnesses, it would be much appreciated, and I think we'll have a solid afternoon.
With that, I would ask Mr. Pichette to begin.