When you tabled your bill in the House of Commons, I raised the issue of the 104 weeks for women who are on maternity leave and lose their jobs. There is a problem in this respect.
In several cases, regardless of the collective agreement, when workers are absent for over five days, they are laid off and lose their seniority. These people, even if they are incarcerated, may have committed a simple mistake. It is possible that people may not be acting in bad faith. Several people simply place their ticket in a basket on top of the refrigerator and forget about it. One fine day, police officers show up, but because the individual does not have enough money to pay, he or she will be jailed for two or three days. We will be penalizing these people. When they lose their jobs, their only recourse is employment insurance. This is not widespread, it is really quite specific. This is what worries me. People will be jailed for one or two weeks over simple things.
We need to come to some agreement on the word “criminal”. According to me, someone who has not paid off a ticket is not a criminal. However, some people are negligent and do not pay, which leads to problems. These people will be penalized. We are going to be creating another class of people who will be punished. It's six of one, a half-dozen of the other.