Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I've worked in victim services, victim advocacy, for 20 years, but I'm here as an individual today representing my own views. I have only five minutes, so I'm just going to touch really quickly on a couple of elements of the bill, and then I hope we can have a few rounds of questions.
With respect to sentencing, I certainly respect Greg's journey and everything he's been through, his experiences, and his own opinion on the matter, but I would say not all victims feel the same about the notion of tougher sentencing. Most of those who abuse children are people known to the victim. It might be dad; it might be stepdad; it might be a whole range of people they know and, quite frankly, they love. So there's not always that perception that victims want to see offenders locked up for longer periods of time. It is the perception or feeling of many, and understandably so, but I wouldn't say that's universal.
Even adult victims whom we talk to, not all of them are concerned about what happens to the offender. They're more concerned, frankly, about what services exist for them. Most of the child sexual abuse victims and adult sexual assault victims don't report to police; the overwhelming majority don't. So the justice system has a response for a very small number of individuals, and there are various reasons for that.
There is some emerging research in the U.S. that stronger mandatory minimum penalties, stronger and tougher penalties, may actually discourage victims from reporting because they don't want to see that option happen in their case.
With respect to raising maximum sentences—I think other witnesses might have touched on this—I'm not sure that accomplishes a whole lot. It certainly sounds good, and it feels good, but if judges aren't giving the maximums now, then I'm not sure there's going to be much of a change in that.
Regarding mandatory minimum penalties, there's not a lot of evidence to suggest they have any kind of deterrent effect. In some cases you're going from six months to a year. I'm not sure that someone who's on the verge of abusing a child is going to really be deterred by any of that. Most of them don't expect to get caught, because frankly, most of them won't get caught. So I don't think there's much of a deterrence role.
With respect to the website, I think people have a perception out there that this is going to be something revolutionary; however, as Mr. Butt pointed out, this is really information that individual police services have released about individual particularly high-risk offenders. I would hope that the government, before creating a whole new website and the bureaucracy around that, has looked at the experience of Alberta and Manitoba. Has it reduced anything? Has it had any impact on registration rates for the sex offender registry? Those are questions that I would hope the federal government would have asked before embarking on this.
I'll just say quickly, I was going to talk a little bit about CoSA, but people who know a lot more about it than I do are here. As a victim advocate, as someone who's worked with victims for many years—child victims of sexual abuse, adult victims of sexual abuse—we support CoSA's mandate. We support the incredible work they do, and we would ask the government to reconsider its funding for CoSA.
I'll quit there.