Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank all the presenters for coming here today. It's difficult to be cut off in mid-sentence, and I don't know what we can do about it, other than have longer hearings with fewer witnesses. But thank you for coming.
Ms. Harvey, I am the member of Parliament for St. John's East. I'm very aware of your daughter's murder and I want to express my deepest condolences to you. I know you've had a very, very difficult time, not only with that, but also with ensuring that your granddaughter is well looked after.
I do want to say that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board was developed in the nineties with support and encouragement from the Government of Canada. Unfortunately, that support from the Government of Canada has disappeared. As a result, provinces have reacted differently to that. In the case of Newfoundland, in fact, getting rid of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board altogether I think is a bad situation. I would hope the federal government would want to do something about that. They long expressed their concerns about victims of crime, but this is an area where, as in your case and in many, many others, societal assistance to victims of crime in a monetary measure obviously cannot make up for the crimes themselves or for the loss, but they can certainly make it more likely and more possible for you to deal with your circumstances.
So you do have my very strong condolences on that. And thank you for coming and expressing your views.
I have a question for Mr. Chaffe. I know you didn't get to say everything you wanted to, but I'm looking here at the Canadian Bar Association's brief, which they presented to the committee on Tuesday. Perhaps you could elaborate on some of your concerns about more trials or more resources being required. They expressed an analysis of the changes in the sentencing for growing marijuana. It seems to me extremely complex, and they say that it's arbitrary and complex and it would lead to necessities of proving all sorts of mens rea for each aspect of the crimes proposed.
Have you got a handle on how complex that will be from a prosecutorial point of view? What would be the consequences of that? The minimum sentences are doubled when you go from 200 plants to 201. They criticize that. And some of the arbitrary nature of it...by talking about being a certain distance from places where children under 18 may frequent. What does all of that do for you and your members as prosecutors? What will that lead to? What do you think about that?