As a good crown I'm going to carry into effect whatever law Parliament sends me.
Do I agree, on a principle basis, that if an offender repeats criminal conduct and he's convicted, he ought to attract a higher sentence? Absolutely.
The critical problem we have, though, is that—and I'll give Ontario as an example—we have a criminal justice infrastructure that can support a trial rate of about 7% or 8%, and that's just a number. If the other 90%, or 92%, or 93% of the cases that come into the court system aren't diverted from trials by way of plea bargaining or withdrawals or guilty pleas, then we get into problems with paragraph 11(b) and those charges are stayed because we can't get them on within a reasonable time, pursuant to the Charter.
So this is a very critical issue with respect to Bill C-10 and all other legislation that toughens sentencing, because it impacts on the trial rate. If fewer accused people are interested in pleading guilty, there are more trials. We don't have the infrastructure to support more trials.
Often what is heard when we make those comments is criticism of legislation. We're not in that business. We're just telling you that systemically this system can't support any more workload.