I think you made a very good point, Mr. Petit.
You want judges to have before them all the information that is relevant to deal with the case. You are quite correct that there are provisions that will assist in that. I tell members of this committee to look at each of the different sections. These things make sense.
You talked about statistics. I mean, I hear it both ways. Somebody said to me that youth crime is going down and asked me why I was bringing in this legislation. Somebody then said to me that violent crime among youth is going up and asked me if that was why I brought in the legislation. I said that we're bringing in the legislation because it makes sense. We're responding in a couple of instances within the act to the recommendations, the very sensible recommendations, of Justice Nunn in the Nunn report. We're listening to what provincial attorneys general are telling us. We're listening to the public, the victims, law enforcement agencies, people who deal with this. We're listening to what they are saying.
I don't go out and say yes... I know that violent youth crime has been up. It's up 12% in the last ten years. Nobody wants it to be up. We all want it to go down, but that being said, we're not bringing in the legislation because of that; we're bringing it in because we're responding to the concerns of Canadians.
We are concerned when people tell us that there are gaps in the law, that the law is not keeping pace with what's taking place out there. Indeed, some of the laws that we brought in and passed... You dealt with it. There was identity theft. We're now capturing activity that wasn't captured at all. People say that kind of activity has gone down because there is no prosecution. I say that there wasn't any law dealing with some of these issues.
Again, ours is a very balanced, focused approach. We're trying to assist victims and law-abiding Canadians to have a fair and reasonable up-to-date justice system. That is all our mandate, and that's what we're striving to achieve.