Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
I'm not going to comment or ask questions on the mandatory minimums. In what feels like a sort of graduate course for me, we've been discussing mandatory minimums over the past five years. If I discuss them once more, my head is going to explode.
I do want to get at the issue of restitution in sections 738, 739, and 740 of the Criminal Code. You have précised very correctly what this act does. I'm not sure that anybody objects to anything in the act. I guess my argument most of the time with the government is, “You're not really getting at what you are telling Canadians you're getting at”. I think that's the substance of your testimony.
So I'm going to do something a bit unusual for us in questioning here. I'm going to take extremely little time in putting it to you to expand on your suggested I think improvements to restitution, which in my view is what is really at the nub of this.
Partly what you said is that the provinces have to step up, that the policing agencies, the regulatory agencies, have to step up. I consider it part of the job of the Attorney General for the Government of Canada to work hand in glove with that and encourage it. The other part, however, is that most of what is written in the Criminal Code is about the situation after conviction. There's very little in the way of pre-emptive forfeiture or the seizing of assets; I know as a lawyer that it's not done easily. What you have both said on behalf of victims is that the money is gone by the time you get a conviction.
So what specific improvements can be made to the latter part of the Criminal Code? And what can we do as a justice committee to encourage the government to help the provincial end of this to keep the money, get the money, and redistribute the money?