Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To all of the witnesses, thank you very much.
I'd especially like to thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Stephenson, for coming here and sharing your story and your passion on this very important issue.
I'm somewhat troubled by some of the comments I heard from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, so I'd like to go there first.
Mr. Baggaley, I accept the premise that society, and we as parliamentarians, must balance privacy versus the value that a sex offender register brings to society. But I suggest to you that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that a sex offender registry becomes ineffective if, by statutory definition, you limit its scope.
Now, we've heard some suggestion that the Ontario registry is more effective because it is more exclusive, and therefore, by definition, the national registry is less efficacious because it is more restricted. Do you agree with my premise that if you restrict its application to such a narrow...or to making it optional, at the discretion of the judge, by its very definition you're going to capture fewer offenders?