Thank you.
Thank you to the witnesses for your testimony. I found it most useful.
Don't feel bad about not having all kinds of statistics, because that's not why you were invited. I don't know why the opposition continues to ask for these statistics; these are not the bodies that gather all kinds of statistics. You're here to represent the chiefs of police, victims, and the John Howard Society. I wouldn't expect that you would be able to thrill us with all kinds of national statistics.
What I am interested in is your perspective in representing victims, front-line police, and chiefs of police. We hear stories as members of Parliament. Ms. Gray-Donald, who happens to be a constituent of mine, referred to a situation--her mother appeared as a witness before the previous government on the voyeurism provisions--and those anecdotal things are very important.
Mr. Lee said that we don't like the look of people doing hard time. That's not the case at all. The fact of the matter is--and Mr. Pecknold mentioned this--the public is losing faith in our justice system. We have to have faith in our justice system. I think that's so important. We are acting to restore that faith.
The opposition says that this is perhaps arbitrary. Well, in each of the offences that are enumerated here, previous Parliaments set a maximum of 10 years. That's somewhat arbitrary. Maybe some of them should be 10.2 years or 9.6 years maximum, but someone drew a line at 10. We're drawing the line that when proceeding by way of indictment for these offences that Parliament considers serious that an individual not serve time in their community, that we actually bring that denunciation and that deterrent into our justice system so that they have to serve some time in prison.
Can you give me a bit of the perspective from a victim and from the police? From the victim's perspective, how do they feel when they've been victimized and the person is serving time in the community where the victim lives? For the police, how do your officers respond when you've done the hard work to bring someone to that point, you've done your job, and then you find out a week or two later that the person you thought was going to be put away for a serious crime is back in the community?