You identified in your opening statement an issue that needs to be fleshed out a little bit. That was in response to the question from my colleague Mr. Garrison to the officials about how many times these publication bans are granted.
As a former Crown attorney, I can tell you—and I can speak only on behalf of the Province of Ontario—that every single time I was in bail court or in remand court for the first time dealing with a sexual offender on behalf of an adult victim or a child victim, the policy was to ask for those publication bans.
I see Ms. Stephens shaking her head, because she's a former colleague of mine.
It's something that federally we cannot work on; provincially we can. We need to broker a relationship between the feds and the provinces to ensure that best practices are adopted across this country so that there is uniformity, at the very earliest stage, in the use of all the tools we have as prosecutors. Getting that input from the complainant very early is key.
I thank you for raising that as an issue.
That's probably my time. Thank you.