Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome. This is not the first time that you have appeared before this committee. You always bring perspectives that are very useful for our understanding of the bills that the government sends us for study.
We have been dealing with this bill, but the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics has not been able to provide us with conclusive evidence on bail requests at bail hearings. As a result, the bill has no scientific basis to it. It is motivated by ideological concerns. That may be fine when you are forming a government, but it seems to me that the role of legislators is to decide on laws based on conclusive evidence. The same thing happened with Bills C-9 and C-10.
Mr. Petit reminds me that it was more the case with Bill C-10, but we did not have much information with Bill C-9 either.
You have stated that, in actual fact, when people are before the courts, it is wrong to believe that bail is granted to those accused of firearm-related offences, more particularly when the offences are serious, such as the nine proposed in the bill. This seems a reasonable view. It is important that it appear in the minutes.
Can you confirm that, in practicality, this bill is useless because it does not achieve any concrete objective?