Certainly. The bill takes a purely procedural approach to hybridization. Some of the concerns that have been raised are based on the concern that hybridizing offences makes a statement about the severity of the offence. However, as the minister has mentioned, it's a purely procedural approach. It's looking at how to make courts more efficient. It took an entire category of offences, without looking at them offence by offence, and hybridized everything that currently has an indictable penalty with a maximum imprisonment of 10 years or less. That's the general approach.
The idea, as the minister has mentioned, is that it doesn't change the sentencing outcome, so it's not really based on the severity of the individual offences, but just on allowing the Crown the discretion to maximize the efficiencies of the court by choosing the right venue for a given case based on the severity.
One thing I didn't mention earlier when I mentioned the different types of offences is that a hybrid offence, generally, is an offence that's recognized as having a range of conduct that's possible. That's why it could be prosecuted in different ways. Now, with a number of the offences that are not hybridized, even if the Crown is seeking something in the summary conviction range, if it's clearly indictable, it has to proceed by indictment and the full range of procedural protections have to be available.