Thank you to the witnesses for coming today.
I want to focus on something Mr. Cotler talked about earlier about specificity and symbolism. There are, of course, under the Criminal Code the offences of mischief—mischief relating to religious property, and to cultural property also.
Mrs. Latimer, you're arguing that these two first offences have no mandatory minimums, and of course the one we're proposing would. You've argued that basically this puts an argument between higher values. The Criminal Code in essence is the codification of public order, and it's obviously more heinous to commit a murder than it is to do a shoplifting. There's always a scale of values.
Bearing in mind that this act does not apply to young offenders because there's the Youth Criminal Justice Act, I would argue that it is warranted to have a higher value on this particular offence. The people who laid down their lives and who we are honouring by these war memorials in fact fought for democracy and for the purpose of religious freedom, for culture, all of which are in the Charter of Rights, which is the highest law of the land.
Is it not warranted to give a greater dissuasive power to the state in the case of those who have died for the ultimate reason—for freedom?