Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of the committee, for allowing me to come here today to talk to you a little about our views on the bill.
Just briefly, I am the former Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime and I'm currently with Ottawa Victim Services. There are provisions in the bill that we do support, particularly the enhancements of victims' rights within the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Those are enhancements that many victims' advocates have been calling for, for some time. They originally crept up, I think, in 2000 in the committee's report on the review of the CCRA, and were first introduced through similar amendments by the Liberal government in 2005. So we've been waiting for these provisions to become a reality for a long time.
I know the current ombudsman talked about the report on the CCRA by his ombudsman's office and some further enhancements to those rights. I would encourage members, if you haven't already, to take a look at that report as you deliberate the bill.
I will offer support for the provisions regarding victims of terrorism. I don't pretend to understand the complexities and subtleties of how that process will unfold and, frankly, whether it will be available or useful to many victims of terrorism, but I do support the principles. I know that some of my friends who have been victims of terrorism support those provisions, so I would echo their support.
Our biggest concern about the bill is what I think victims are being told they can expect from it. I've heard some of the testimony of some of my good friends, including Sharon Rosenfeldt and Yvonne Harvey. I think the government has talked about this as a further pillar of its commitment to victims of crime, that the bill is going to enhance victims' rights. I take a different view. From working on the front line and having discussions with many of my colleagues there and with a lot of our networks, the issues in this bill, frankly, are not the issues that come up when we talk about the day-to-day challenges of victims of crime.