Thank you very much.
And thank you to the witnesses for coming this morning. We've heard some very good evidence.
Last night, when I was having the second part of my evening meal at my apartment, I happened to be needing some brain candy. I didn't get any, because there was a program on, one of the more popular police-type shows. It had to do with the very subject matter we're talking about here today.
Earlier on in the week we heard some testimony from the police witnesses, and then this morning of course we're building on that and dealing with some issues. I don't think anyone, whether they be police officers, defence counsel, prosecutors, judges, or even victims, for that matter, would want their personal privacy to be exposed to the extent that they would really have none. But that's not the purpose of this registry, at least as far as I know.
Nor would we want to restrict the ability of judges to exercise discretion. But in the view of many people--and I believe Mr. Stephenson--this discretion has gone to the point where the weight of the needs of society and the victim seem to be still tilted towards the needs of the accused. We get so worried and so bound up in making sure the person who has perpetrated the crime--and in this case it's on conviction, so we're not dealing with somebody who is accused, we're dealing with somebody who's been convicted--that we forget what the purpose is.
This program has some similarities to what the police said. Number one, the first few hours of the investigation are crucial. We're dealing with the office kiss and that. I'm going to allude to that, and then I'm going to ask for some comments from the Stephensons. But the first few hours are crucial if you're going to find that abducted person who will be sexually assaulted. The first few hours are critical, and the whole purpose of the registry is to give the police a tool.
When we talk about the efficacy of the registry, it's not actually designed to solve the case; it's designed to assist the police in narrowing in on the few individuals who might be the perpetrator of the crime and then solve it. It's only part of it. In that way, I guess it's very difficult to quantify. It's very difficult to say how good it is except to ask the very people who use it and who do the investigations.
If we look at their testimony, it leads us to a few things: time is of the essence; as much information as can be gleaned from the convicted persons...their habits, sexual preferences, sexual appetites; and then of course the very significant part is where they live, because that's going to narrow in where the crime occurred, etc. The other thing of course is that you bring in people like profilers who help with that.
My question to the Stephensons will be this. I don't want you to go into something that would be difficult for you emotionally, but talk about the system you would like to see. It sounds like it would be a system similar to Ontario's, with a few things that are better.
Based on your experience, and from similar cases, which I'm sure you've look at, do you think there would have been a more successful outcome were there a better system? I would like you to comment on that.