Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.
I became a member of Parliament for three basic reasons. The second one was that I was exposed in my 30-year career in policing as a general police officer but also as a court officer in three jurisdictions to sentencing and laws that I thought needed improvement, and this is definitely one of them.
I'll start with an anecdotal story. It's probably the main impetus behind my decision to get involved with politics, and that was an incestuous relationship between a father and three of his four daughters, and the subsequent sentence. By the way, these girls ended up being married...it's a long story, and there were years and years of counselling. The sentence was six years in jail and six years probation. He received that “severe” a sentence, in the judge's words, because he was a police officer. In the United States, I believe he would have gotten sixty years. Now, I'm not saying sixty is the right number, but for sure--and I know that case--six wasn't.
I'm going to ask you some questions, and because of the time, I'm going to ask you not to just say yes or no--because you can't really always answer questions with a yes or no--but to try to keep your response short so that everyone has a chance to answer.
I don't believe a pedophile can be cured, but I want your opinion. Given all of your experience in the field of law enforcement or in child advocacy or victim counselling or criminological studies, do you believe that a person who is a pedophile can be cured?
We can start with Ms. Campbell and work across.