First of all, I would like to thank our guests for being here today.
I do not agree with Vancouver's position, though it is a magnificent city. Appointing one person as a judge rather than another because he promises to give harsher sentences makes no sense.
Having said that, have you already carried out a study? I read your study on repeat offenders, but have you already looked at parole services? The problem is not when someone goes into prison but rather when they come out. Have you seen that prisoners are coming out too quickly, that they are not doing their time? It is not right that a prisoner should be freed after 3 months when a judge sentenced them to 22 months.
Stop asking for longer sentences; that is not the problem. Stop asking for direction from judges. Ask the government to change the parole laws. Prisoners are freed too quickly. If you do not admit to that, we are off to a bad start, particularly as far as organized crime is concerned.
White-collar criminals or leaders get out of jail. We never see them. They are not the ones who hit people with baseball bats; they tell someone else to do it for them. When they go into jail, they behave like gentlemen and they are quickly released.
Ms. Sutton, you will certainly come back to the committee. I would like to get more information about parole. What does one-third of the sentence mean? Are there certain things people have to do to get a third, a half, or a quarter of the sentence? It has gotten to the point where we release people after one-sixth of the sentence. I know; I was a criminal lawyer for 30 years. My clients who had been sentenced to 32 months could not care less, because, 4 months later, they were back out on the street. In our jargon, we call a first sentence a "bit", which means that it is not serious.
I would like the National Parole Board to provide us with a study on this issue, which would meet the needs of our friends from Vancouver and probably those of our colleagues opposite. What criteria do you use to establish whether or not a person should be freed? For example, if a person has been sentenced to 40 months in jail, how do you assess whether or not they should be freed?