Here, once again, this is a bit above my pay grade, because criminology isn't my field. I would say that if there were a decent chance that the people who did this sort of thing would get caught, and if there were a decent chance that if caught they would be convicted and sentenced, the deterrent factor should be fairly significant. I would think that what has to be done, really, is what some of my colleagues call “raising the pavement”. Let me explain what I mean by that.
If we had been having coffee and we decided to take a walk down Rideau Street and I asked you to walk right along the edge of the curb, heel to toe, you could probably do that fairly briskly. If, instead of walking along the edge of the curb, you were walking along the edge of a platform 20 feet high, you'd probably walk more deliberately and more carefully. It's the same skill set, if you see what I mean, and the same sense of balance, but the consequences of failure would be considerably greater. So if we could say confidently that yes, we have these penalties in place and people who do wrong will suffer these penalties, my own view, for what it's worth, is that this should be a pretty good deterrent.