Merci, monsieur le président.
I was just going to make a couple of statements and then ask a question that arises from your comments about section 1 of the charter. So you can get mentally prepared for that. I have just a couple of preamble comments about statistics.
My friend Larry mentioned that we didn't have the statistics. We're all a little disappointed by that. What we have, however, is the undertaking from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, CCJS, that they would be looking at the way they ask the questions to track bail, and that's encouraging. So there will be statistics, I guess, specifically on bail. They were talking about recognizance, remands—just different language. They were unable to satisfy us on whether these reverse onus provisions that already exist work, for instance, and secondly, whether there is an increase in gun offences for which this reverse onus on bail might have an impact.
It's not the lack of stats. I'm leading toward section 1 here. The Supreme Court of Canada is going to understand that there was a lack of stats because of how the question was asked, not a lack of stats based on the lack of evidence of efficacy of such proposed measures. That's my first point.
The second is that we heard very strongly that this was merely codifying the practice, and you said, in your own words, “I don't see significant changes” in the application of the law by the justices and the prosecutors and, well, defence attorneys. There's not a lot that's going to change. That was reassuring, I suppose, and it made sense to me that this legislation should pass, because it's codifying something.
The third point, the last point, is that with respect to your section 1 challenge argument, this code changes with time. We've been saying that here. If you look at the current reverse onus sections, it's “inciting to mutiny”, “seditious offences”, “piracy”. It's in part 1 of the code, and it does make you think of a different time in our Canadian history, not the time of armed gangs in downtown Toronto.
So the code grows with time. Do you not think—and this is the question—that the Supreme Court, in reviewing this, as they did in the Vancouver Sun case on the ATA provisions, would say that the intent of Parliament was to address a concern about gang gun violence that's out there, absent statistics?