Thank you, Chair.
I want to address a couple of things my colleagues have pointedly said about my remarks. I stand by them. There is no solution to intimate partner violence without wraparound services in communities such as Mississauga and Peel, or all across our country.
My colleagues have been talking about how judges should not be able to use reasonable hypotheticals in their decisions, as we discussed earlier. However, I have spent a very long time listening to legislators present hypotheticals in order to decide whether certain things should or should not be moved in a bill such as this one. Bill C-16's intent is to provide safety and security to women when combatting intimate partner violence.
I have the utmost respect for Mr. Brock, but when he talks about the context of diversity, equity and inclusion not being necessary in sentencing or in finding a solution to X, Y or Z, I take exception to it. I do think it is necessary. I do think such context matters. What happens in an urban city like Mississauga is very different from what happens in rural Quebec, for example. I think judges need to be able to look at a situation and work from there. I trust the jurisprudence. I have full faith in the justice system in our country. Yes, we can obviously make it better, but not by overstepping the bounds and imposing our hypotheticals on judges as they try to make just decisions and set jurisprudence that defines how laws are interpreted in our country. Absolutely, we write the laws, but that interpretation matters. That interpretation is different in different parts of the country, as it should be.
There's a reason, in our country, for the separation between all the different branches of government. It is to secure fairness. It's to ensure that communities are safe and that we're rehabilitating them, not punishing and holding everybody to account at the same level. We should be nimble and allow our judges the discretion to apply the law as is just.
I'll stop there, Mr. Chair. Thank you.