Seven minutes, including questions, answers, exchanges, jokes and humour. It is a package deal.
Welcome to the committee. It is always a pleasure for me to meet with you.
Clearly, I was not surprised when I learned that you supported the bill. I hope that I will not lose your friendship by telling you that the Bloc Québécois will not be supporting it. We have supported a good many bills, but we fail to see the need for this one. Furthermore, we believe that there is a danger that the precedent that will be created might bring about automatic responses.
I would like to ask you two questions. Yesterday, I tried to understand. First of all, I think it should come as no surprise that the threshold for the burden of proof is high, when we are talking about incarcerating someone for an indeterminate period. We are not talking about putting an individual in jail for three, four, five or ten years. People have rightly been declared dangerous offenders; they constituted a threat for society. We are clear on that. There must be provisions in the Criminal Code in order to be able to declare an individual a dangerous offender. There is agreement on that. There is no need to wait for the person to have committed three crimes. I hope that at the very first offence, the individual who is unable to control his impulses and who is suspected of being a serial killer, will be declared a dangerous offender and that we will not wait for him to wrack up three offences. We agree that the burden of proof must be substantial.
What is to your mind problematic within the present system, beyond the fact that the threshold for the burden of proof is high? Why the attorneys? Why the prosecutor? As the organization that is the spokesperson for Canadian police, why is it that the present system, with the way it now functions, is not always successful?