I remember very profoundly one of the things that the minister said as he went across the country. As many of my colleagues said, I can give you cases where people go to court 28 to 30 times over a period of two to three years. To put anything in this bill that would delay the current system of justice would be a major mistake. This is a good step in the right direction. We have lots of work to do to make the criminal justice system much more efficient, and then I think we can talk about other things at that time.
The minister was really clear to our organization that this would move victims rights in the right direction, but it wouldn't delay the criminal justice system. He was very fair with us right there, and that same message as he went from coast to coast consulting was delivered to us. We had reasonable expectations. We were able to give things that we thought would move along.
We really believe, despite those figures that you stated, that impaired driving is the leading criminal cause of death in this country, that our victims are treated as second-class; they're not treated the same way as murder victims, homicide victims, sexual assault victims, etc. within the system. Just in the compensation piece that the provinces do, every victim of impaired driving is exempt from any criminal justice compensation. It's wrong; it's fundamentally flawed. We talk about, yes, let's let the provinces do the job, but our hope is also that they take this as an opportunity to be fair to all victims.