Thank you.
I'm sorry we're not able to get into a dialogue about why the ombudsman's recommendations in this area have been rejected by the committee. Again, this is a specific attempt to further delineate in a written form Marsy's card type of information so that victims are aware of their rights.
It would inject after line 36 on page 3, the following:
6.1(I) Every victim has the right to receive, free of charge, a written statement summarizing all of their rights under this Act.
There's a proposed subsection (2) this time which says:
(2) Every law enforcement agency investigating an offence and every prosecutor involved in the prosecution of an offence must, at the time of initial contact with a victim, during the follow-up investigation or as soon as is considered appropriate by the investigating officers or the prosecutor, as the case may be, provide or make readily available to the victim, free of charge, a written statement summarizing all of the victim's rights under this Act.
This also goes to Madam Boivin's point in trying to amend the notion of request or right. This way at least, if this amendment can possibly be accepted and I would urge my friends across the way to consider it, it's straightforward, and merely makes sure that every victim...and I know it's the rights of victims that the Conservative administration, in this case, wants to protect. The whole point of this bill and the information about it is to protect victims' rights. If they don't know of those rights, they can't request them and they can't make use of them.
In this fashion, very quickly and easily and without additional burden to anyone, a victim could be made aware of all of their rights in a simple piece of information. If California can do it, Canada can do it.