Before I go to that particular remedy, I have to ask myself.... It's very serious when you invoke the notwithstanding clause. It's a decision to say that we're going beyond what is reasonably justifiable in a free and democratic society, and I don't take that lightly.
There are components of this bill that would address the issue in a slightly different way. They would address the problem in a way that I believe would be effective. Time will tell.
Specifically, we didn't look at just the seriousness of a crime, but also the complexity of the nature of a charge before the court. It's often the complexity, not the seriousness, of a charge that brings the delay to a standard that is unacceptable according to the timelines in the Jordan decision. We tend to see them in cases involving organized crime or complex drug trafficking where there's a preponderance of evidence from different sources, often of a digital nature. Increasingly, we're seeing them in sexual assault cases, which have a very complicated evidentiary regime that we're also trying to address with this legislation.
By extending the permissible timeline for those complex cases, I think we can solve the problem without necessarily resorting to reliance on the notwithstanding clause to address a problem that you and I agree is a very serious one.