Yes, I am aware that some of these bills have been considered before, in the House and by committee. But there are significant component parts of the bill that have had no opportunity for consultation.
The bill that my colleague Professor Jackson has focused on has had little or no analysis, and it represents a fundamental sea change in policy for Canada in terms of how we as Canadians are going to deal with our offenders and of how they are treated inside our corrective institutions and of how they are better prepared to be released back into our communities.
I also recognize that bills such as Bill C-4, dealing with youth criminal justice, have had extensive consultation. Yet many of the recommendations for amendments we have not seen implemented in Bill C-10.
And the amendments that were made were added in and not specifically drawn to our attention. We had to sift through these bills to find out what had changed, only to discover that the bail regime in the Youth Criminal Justice Act is set to be completely overhauled with no reference to the bail regime that is currently in the Criminal Code. We're going to see more and more at risk youth detained before their trials.
We also see changes in the Youth Criminal Justice Act amendments that will remove the high standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” that was put in place to ensure that young offenders are not subjected, improperly and contrary to the constitutional imperatives found by the Supreme Court of Canada, to an adult sentence and to publication of their names, with the stigmatization and labelization that happens thereby.
We had to sift through to find those changes so that we could come to try to make comment to this committee. We have tried to do this in our 100-page written material, which I commend to all of you and hope you will take the time to review carefully.