Thank you very much for being here.
There is a question that's been on my mind ever since we had our meeting the other night with the statisticians. It's over one particular slide they had, on which they indicated that of those arrested in relation to Bill C-35, 40% were found guilty and 60% were not.
I looked at that, and the first thing I thought was, holy cow, what's going on here? Is somebody not doing enough investigating, and they're coming up with insufficient evidence to convict on a charge? Or is Canada full of sharp lawyers like you who are able to get some of these guys off on technicalities or loopholes or whatever? If, out of all the arrests, 60% are found innocent and only 40% are found guilty, that draws a picture in my mind. According to a stat like that, we'd better be on the safe side and bail everybody out.
Yet in my riding there was one instance of a sexual assault with a weapon in which the individual was let out on bail, and as a result, two people are dead, and one is seriously injured. What kind of conclusions can you draw out of these situations?
To me, our job is to provide public safety.These statistics just blow my mind. When you have examples of a case or two in which tragedy has resulted because bail was granted, maybe we ought to be on the safe side and let society know that we will not release people, even on bail, until we're absolutely certain that they're not a threat to society.
Do you draw any conclusions from this 60-40 statistic?