Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Minister, it's certainly refreshing to have someone as committed to getting tough on crime as you are as our new Minister of Justice.
Before I was elected a member of Parliament, I served as a city councillor. Certainly one thing I noticed each year in terms of the growth of crime is every year our police force would come back with a double-digit increase, and the rationale was because of an increase in incidents. Certainly this is one of the reasons municipalities are as cash strapped as they are--the growing rate of crime--and I saw that even in the small town of Barrie.
The growing rate of crime isn't just simply in the large communities in this country, but it's also becoming the domain of small towns and small cities. So your approach is certainly refreshing.
I had a town hall meeting last November before the election. I had our chief of police there, I had representatives from all aspects of the Barrie city police, and one of the criticisms raised about the status quo of the Criminal Code and of the policy of the then Minister of Justice was that it simply felt like a revolving door.
The question I have for you is, what initiatives have you taken to help curb that sense of despair from our hard-working police officers, who are doing their jobs and simply seeing people they've brought in back on the streets a few weeks later?