Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When we talk about the witnesses we had, I think there were two groups of witnesses. We had people supporting offenders, which we need to look at, and I just gave a speech about that recently because I think that's very important. However, when we had the victims come in, it was certainly a black-and-white picture. The victims were certainly extremely upset, and they were upset with the whole bill.
I'm looking at the victim side of it. If we just drop the offenders, because victims should be first in my opinion and then we should look after the offenders, a period of six months, which is reasonable, still demonstrates to Canadians looking at public safety that we, as a government, are still interested in keeping our streets safe and supporting victims.
These are pretty serious offences. I would think, in a lot of cases, our judges would be handing out more than six months. It gives them the discretion to do more when the offence warrants it, but it also gives them the discretion to do the six months.
From what we had from witnesses, especially the victims, I feel we're missing the point of where Canadians stand if we start thinking that these violent offences are something we should be completely removing the mandatory minimum penalties for.