Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Latimer, I want to go back to a couple of the comments you made in your opening statement: one, that this legislation is going to make our streets less safe; two, that increased penalties do not deter crime; and three, that this will massively increase the prison population.
One of the things that we continuously hear from people who come to this committee to advocate on behalf of criminals is that our communities are made less safe because the principle of deterrence doesn't work. But what you constantly fail to identify is that there are two types of deterrence. There is general deterrence, which means a penalty will cause a person to say “I perhaps should not commit this crime”, but there is also specific deterrence, which means that this person is in jail and therefore will not victimize other people in Canadian society.
Would you not agree with me that when somebody is in prison, they are therefore specifically deterred from further victimizing people in Canadian society?