Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Scheer.
When I look at mandatory minimums and at the question of judges needing guidelines, I think back to something I was involved with in the justice area. A lady had two daughters, five and six years old, and a judge made the decision to force them to visit their pedophile father in jail.
That has always been a major factor in how I think of the justice system. As a result of it, I had 84 other people from across the country in whose cases judges had made the same decision to force children to visit a father who had sexually attacked them. The judge said, “Parliament has not given us guidance, and that's why I had to make that decision.”
I think this is somewhat the same, in that a judge might say, “Really, Parliament hasn't given us clear guidelines.” I guess I see this bill as being clear guidelines: when a third-time offender commits the same crime, they have a definite guideline, in terms of a mandatory minimum.
I think we should really look at that. Judges today I think are asking for those kinds of guidelines.
But my real question is this. When I talk to the police in my community, they tell me over and over again: “We're getting really tired of dealing with the same offenders. We pick them up, we take them into court, they get a minor sentence, or because something wasn't quite right, away they go again. Three weeks later, the same person is before the judge, and again there's some reason why they get off. It happens over and over again.”
Do you think this will help the police in doing their job of getting that second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-, tenth-time offender? Is this going to do the job for them in terms of car theft?