On your first point, about the statistics for Quebec, we do collect criminal court data for Quebec, but unfortunately at this time they are unable to provide us with conditional sentencing data. It's one of two limitations in the data sent from Quebec. The other is that we don't have any data for municipal courts in Quebec. We have a wealth of sentencing data for Quebec, but unfortunately not conditional sentencing data.
On the first part of your second point about decriminalization, I'm not sure whether that term is used elsewhere. I know that in New Brunswick and British Columbia they have pre-charge screening of offenders before a charge is laid. So the profiles of the court workload in those two provinces and in Quebec are slightly different from those in the rest of the country.
On your third point, on transfers and the assessment of offenders, I'm not really sure how I can answer that question with these data. What I can tell you about the seriousness of the offence is that the data we present for criminal court workload is reflective of the most serious offence against an offender. The seriousness is determined in two ways. For the court data that's presented, the seriousness is first determined by the type of decision, and convictions are always more serious than other decisions. Then if there's a tie, if there are multiple convictions within the same case, a seriousness index is used.
The seriousness index is developed based upon all of the sentence information that exists within the data set, and we look at the average sentences that offence received previously. Offences that have typically gotten a longer sentence or are more frequently sentenced to custody are ranked higher in that order.