Good afternoon, Mr. Trudell. I am glad to see you again. With the Canadian Police Association, you are, no doubt, among our most regular witnesses. However, you rarely share the same opinion about a bill. But that is another matter.
This bill deals with subsections 515(6) and 515(10) of the Criminal Code. It seeks to modify the principle of release on bail before the hearing.
You have already touched on the point that interests me. First, you are right in saying that the government tabled the bill before we could obtain any reliable and conclusive statistics. Our first witness was the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. As was the case with Bill C-9 on suspended sentences and Bill C-10, we feel that the government is motivated by ideological factors that are not supported by any reliable statistics.
I think that you have much to contribute to the committee. You represent people who appear before justices of the peace and before courts on a daily basis, people who have committed offences, some of which are firearms-related.
Several witnesses told us that whenever firearms are involved, judges seldom grant bail, and as this was already well established in practice, it did not need to be enshrined in legislation.
Moreover, subsection 515(10) gives the judge an option to deny bail, if he thinks that evidence will be destroyed or that the individual poses a threat to society or that he will not show up at his hearing, despite the individual's constitutional right to bail.
Please tell us about how defence lawyers, whom you represent, approach release before the hearing when a client applies for bail in a firearms-related offence?