I want to thank you all for coming. We've heard an awful lot of good testimony from various groups throughout the country, and there seems to be emerging agreement among lawmakers and witnesses. What I've heard is that in these instances, the kingpins, the masterminds, have ways of insulating themselves from culpability. Whether they use child soldiers or other pawns, it is a trend. We all agree that those kingpins should be punished with the full weight of the law, with the harshest sentences possible, to remove them from society.
We also agree, I think, that in terms of youth criminal justice--the chief from Saskatoon put it so well, about the torment of the lives they are living--and in terms of general concepts of YCJA, they are pawns. They will not be deterred or changed by lengthy sentences. Nor, as children, should they necessarily be put away without treatment. I think there is virtually universal agreement on that. There is agreement on early intervention. There is agreement on lawful access, on keeping up with technology, and on getting the money out of organized crime and counterfeiting. Those are all things that are agreed upon.
The grey area, the difficult area, is where the pawn and the kingpin become closer in their actions. It is where people in Canada are expecting that, regardless of age, people who kill someone should be meted out sentences that remove them from society for a time, that deter other people from doing the same, and that hopefully have some rehabilitative aspects.
What can you say, as a panel, to help us in that grey area? As you know, we're going to be looking at amendments to the YCJA to change the focus of it, really, to meet the needs of society. What can we say about helping the situation with respect to organized crime in your cities? There is a vast part of rural Canada that this doesn't affect, but that's why this organized crime study is taking place in the largest cities in Canada. It's an urban thing that draws on the hinterland.
What legislative tools in sentencing can we use that will keep in mind a balance? They've talked about putting away the kingpin and protecting the pawns who are retrievable.
Let's start with the chief--not because of age, Chief, but because of your articulate line about the torment of their lives that caught my attention.