It's a good question.
It's really raising the issue of public safety. When we first started looking at this, we tried to find studies that have been able to assess the risk of letting people out on bail and their subsequently, on bail, committing a violent offence, which is really what we're worried about. We couldn't find any studies.
What we were debating is whether we can use the data on release on full parole as an analogy, so let me speak a little bit to that. Granted it's not a perfect analogy, as one would expect that the number of releases on full parole who go on to commit a violent offence would potentially be higher than with those who we would see being released on bail. Keep in mind that it could be an overestimate.
If we take the fact that 140,000 to 150,000 adults are charged with violent offences each year in Canada, we were trying to find out how many of those had their parole revoked for a violent offence. Last year it was zero. The year before, it was five. If my math is correct, it means that .00005, or less than half a per cent, of those charged with a violent offence in the last couple of years were on full parole. Within that context it would seem that the message is that release on bail is unlikely to represent serious risks to the general public.