I appreciate the fluidity with which the words rolled off your tongue, Colin, but this is not against fundamental principles of justice. It's the Supreme Court of Canada that said, “An accused is presumed innocent and must not find it necessary to plead guilty solely to secure his or her release”.
There are other ways to ensure people show up for trial, which I mentioned in previous debate before this committee.
I find it bizarre, and I happen to have been wondering for some time why it is that when we demand sureties, the custom and the tradition.... I think that a lot of the general public would assume that if someone puts down bail and then someone bolts and doesn't abide by their conditions, that the people who put down the surety are out the amount of the surety. The reality is that the criminal justice system almost never goes after the people who posted bail to say, “Sorry, mom, your son bolted. You've lost your house.” The number of ways you can put conditions on bail could include actually treating these sureties seriously.
In this amendment, we're talking about whether they would be sent to custody pending trial. Judges have a pretty good sense of whether somebody's offence is going to lead to jail time or not; whereas the amount that you can, pretrial, be held in custody, can go into years.
It's pretty straightforward. I only reacted, because you said it offended the fundamental principles of justice. Clearly, it does not.
Thank you.