Thank you, Mr. Fortin.
I could keep you all day with thoughts about victims.
What if we had a criminal justice system that responded to victims by saying, “That never should have happened to you”?
What if there were a measure of accountability when recidivism happened, and offenders who had been to jail and had been through this system had not been helped? They were still homeless. They still suffered from addiction. They never got the counselling they desperately wanted. What if there were some mechanism of accountability for them? What if victims genuinely had a voice within the system? What if they didn't have to have their voices moderated through Crown attorneys or victims services, and they had a role?
The idea that a victim wants a template number, like the ingredients on a bottle of barbecue sauce, that says, “For this offence, you get six months. That's what you're worth as a victim”.... Victims want to be integrated, so that their stories matter and so that there is a connection to the court in the way they are considered. The principles of sentencing have that as their idea.
There is no such thing as a conditional sentence that should be ordered where there are public safety grounds. Where victims are able to have a voice—a real voice, not a pretend voice, where we give them a number for an offence that happened to them—we make a justice system that is more meaningful not only for victims but for everybody.
I don't believe there's any such thing as a meaningful number for any victim.