Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the witnesses.
Professor Chartrand, I know that my colleague, Mr. Bagnell, will be keying in on your testimony, so if I pass you over on this round, please don't be offended.
It seems that when we discuss this matter, we're all I think on common ground: we want to make the laws of Canada more effective and make our communities safe. We have, however, some debate from time to time on the best tools to use. We were fortunate last week to hear evidence from the chief of police of Toronto, and in the same week here in Ottawa we heard evidence from a ranking RCMP officer charged with community safety--the chief superintendent, in fact.
There's a common theme between that bit of testimony and Mr. Cannavino's testimony on behalf of CPA, and I think Mr. Stuesser said this as well--and it goes to amendment time down the road, which we should all keep in our minds--in that distinguishing between the types of firearms used is really no way to deal with this matter. If we are going to talk about mandatory minimums, there seems to be fairly consistent evidence that we should consider crimes done with all firearms. I invite members of the committee to take that, whatever page you want to come from politically, as the overwhelming testimony.
The big question I have, and it's arising from the testimony, is that what seems to be missing here, and I would commend this to Mr. Lee and other members of the subcommittee, Mr. Chairman, is that we really haven't had sufficient evidence on what happens to the offender when he or she is in the prison system, or the system.
I'm quite struck by Mr. Lee's very emphatic--I'm not necessarily saying I agree with it all--evidence that the course of rehabilitation is not completed during a short sentence. You don't have a footnote to back that up. I'm sure you can give us the facts on that or elaborate briefly when I'm finished this questioning. But it does strike me that we have to examine what happens to offenders when they're in the prison system. There's quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that it's education for higher learning in crime, it's a rehabilitation model, or it's a model for further criminalization. What do we get out of the process when we put somebody away? What do we hope for and what do we get? So there's very much a gap in our testimony here.
I'll start with you, if I may, Mr. Lee. What is your basis for saying that the rehabilitation is not complete in one or two cycles? Are you suggesting that if 21 months were the standard sentence, everybody would come out rehabilitated? Surely you know that there are studies that suggest that some people are not rehabilitatable.