Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I certainly appreciate your appearing before the committee today and providing your expertise on this, with the background that you have with respect to some of the hate crimes that have been inflicted on the Muslim community and so on and so forth.
I wanted to ask you about another specific section of the Criminal Code. Section 718.2 of the Criminal Code gives a judge some discretion to add on to a sentence if the judge feels that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate based on all of the identifiable factors, including religion.
Does the NCCM have any experience with how judges have used their discretion in the past? Can you provide us with some background on that? Has that section of the Criminal Code that allows the judge that kind of discretion been helpful in itself? Can you provide any commentary on that?