Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
Commissioner, for four-plus years we have heard from premiers of every province, police chiefs, presidents of police associations, mayors and victim advocacy groups, all asking the government to do their job: keep Canadians safe and introduce appropriate bail legislation that is actually going to make a difference.
I know that you must be deeply disappointed that Bill C-48 has not had the desired impact. The former justice minister claimed that they had delivered bail reform. The proof is in the pudding: Every day we wake up to one heartbreaking story after another of someone on bail committing carnage on our streets across Canada.
We were all hopeful that the government finally got the message with the introduction of Bill C-14. The title of Bill C-14 is the “bail and sentencing reform act”. To your point, sir, earlier you said there have been 80 changes to the Criminal Code. This bill is some 35 pages long, and there's hardly a mention of any sentencing reform, apart from talking about “consecutive” sentences for “violent...motor vehicle theft”, the commission of a break and enter offence, “extortion” and “arson”.
Apart from that, apart from making certain offences an aggravating feature on sentencing, we have one sentencing reform. I don't know if you caught it. It's embedded in this act and—wait for it—it's one of the most serious violent offences in this country, called “contempt of court”. I say that facetiously, because the government wasted a precious opportunity.
I'll eventually be talking to the president of the Crown association in B.C., whose province is suffering an extreme rise in extortion.
Here was an opportunity. What do you say to the government about these missed opportunities when important stakeholders have been giving advice to the government repeatedly for the last four years?