Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to all the witnesses today.
This is an important piece of legislation. I know the focus is often on critiquing the provisions in the bill, but I want to invite any of the witnesses who may wish to propose amendments that would deal with the existing deficiencies of the existing act to send them to me for consideration.
I want to address some questions to Chief Weighill. I thank you, Chief, for your presentation, which I thought was refreshingly balanced, looking at some of the good things in the act and some things that you might do differently. I was particularly interested in your comments about the problem of intimidation of victims and witnesses. That rang a bell with me because we heard from a mother whose son was beaten to death. She had a second son who was terrified because on at least one occasion someone pulled up in a car and started shooting from it in his vicinity.
Now we've heard from some witnesses whose position is that no matter how much violence might exist in a person's conduct or how dangerous a person's conduct is, unless you can prove an intention, we shouldn't consider it violent. As was pointed out by another witness, young people's brains aren't fully formed until age 18, so we don't even know if we can prove that they knew or should have known that something was going to endanger someone. But without that proof, witnesses have said we shouldn't say that an act or a conduct is violent.
The mother of the victim I mentioned to you earlier had a different view and felt that whether or not the person who shot the gun in her son's vicinity intended...or should have known it was a danger, and she felt this was a violent act. Consequently, she would like to give a judge the discretion to impose a custodial disposition.
I tend to lean toward the mother's point of view, but I wonder how you view that, from your experience, particularly around issues of proving intent.