If I may speak to our amendment, we wish to amend the provision, which again, as has been pointed out, is similar to Mr. Cotler's amendment, but the wording is changed so that the parole boards make “the least restrictive decisions that are consistent with the protection of society”. That would be our provision. Again, we recognize the paramountcy of the protection of society, but we believe that it's important that those words be there. We see that clause 71, changing subsection 101.(c) changes those words from “the least restrictive decisions” to—and this is the phraseology that has been used in other places as well—“what is necessary and proportionate to the purpose of conditional release”.
That new wording has not been tested by the courts. Our amendment is consistent with the expert legal representations we received from Professor Michael Jackson in terms of the constitutional protection and reading. We want to see parole boards take as a paramount consideration the protection of society, but in so doing they ought to be restrained by the constitutional protection that their decisions are at least restrictive, and consistent with that, that they don't just add conditions to parole because they can or because they think they're “necessary and proportionate”, when they ought to be, in fact, “least restrictive”.
It's up to the courts to decide on the sentence, but once a person is incarcerated, the rule that's been recognized by the courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, is that the least restrictive approach is consistent with the role of the courts in sentencing and the role of correctional services in carrying out that sentence. That includes the role of the parole boards.
That's our amendment there, Mr. Chair. That's all I have to add.