Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And my thanks to the witnesses who have appeared here today for us. I found it a very stimulating conversation.
I'm going to open by saying thank you to Ms. Latimer for approaching this on the basis of principled legal analysis. I often am amazed when academics come before this committee. I'm thinking of one particular recent event where the academic in question went on at length about what might go wrong in the application of a law and what circumstances might arise. I finally said to her, “I understand that could all go wrong and these circumstances might arise, but what is there that you object to, in principle, with this law?”, and she had no answer.
I'm very concerned about that because I wonder if in law school they even teach principled analysis anymore because this was a law professor who didn't seem to get it. So I want to encourage you in that. I find it refreshing. You and I might not always agree on the principles, but at least, then, we're having an intelligent conversation. I hope to come back to that in a moment. But before I do, I want to have a brief conversation with Mr. Russomanno.
I wonder, Mr. Russomanno, if you know, historically, how conditional discharges actually got their beginning? Have you ever heard that story?