Yes, I will respond briefly to Mr. Rathgeber's question.
There always was judicial discretion under the current legislation, and there would be judicial discretion under my amendment. Of course I believe in prosecutorial discretion as well. But according to the evidence we heard from prosecutors, and it was a concern of this committee, if you leave the discretion in the hands of prosecutors to make an application, sometimes it's not done. Sometimes it's inadvertent. Sometimes it's plea-bargained away. And I think we all agreed that we didn't want that to occur. We wanted an application to be before the court automatically upon conviction, and I'm comfortable with that.
What I do think, though, is that none of us in this room can say that every single case of a conviction for those offences, in all circumstances, always, should result properly in, and that justice will be served by, having registration occur. That's why I still think that in the rare case when the case can be made before the court.... And remember, the onus is on the convicted person to meet that burden. I know that my friend's a lawyer, and he knows what the burden of proof means. He knows what an onerous burden of proof is, and he knows what a reverse onus of proof is. With those protections, I trust the courts of this land to interpret that test, as they have.
Finally, I will point out one more time that the evidence before this committee from the Department of Justice officials was that the current system, which has judicial discretion, is working well. We did not hear any evidence of any situation when someone escaped registration who ought to have been registered. So I would urge us to make a decision based on evidence and not on speculation.