No, I wouldn't agree with that.
I think certainly there is a need for increased resources, and my experience with probation officers whom I've had the experience of working with is that the real concern has been the lack of resources to support these orders. For instance, we were directly involved in one of the very few cases in which a manslaughter conviction resulted in a conditional sentence. There was also a long history of violence against the woman. There were many questions raised about whether charges should have been laid in the first place, about whether it was defensive. The man who died happened to be working for the RCMP. There was evidence that there was difficulty getting evidence to bring before the court. There were many other issues. Suffice it to say that when the judge heard all the information, even though the jury brought back a conviction not for murder, which was the initial charge, but for manslaughter, the decision was taken that a conditional sentence with many other conditions in place was the appropriate penalty. That woman has gone on to try to contribute in whatever ways she can, including raising her and the deceased's children.
I think it's very clear that we need to look at the issues and the conditions that need to be met and the issues raised by the particular individual who's charged. I could go on with many cases involving aboriginal women. I just came back from a trip across the country in the summer. I heard many stories of the number of aboriginal women who were counselled by their own communities to take responsibility in a context in which every lawyer who talked to those women thought they had a defence, and those defences weren't applied. In some of those cases they received community sentences, but not all. Most of them, in fact, spent extensive periods of time in prison as well. We would not want to see the removal of a conditional sentence for those cases.