I have two practical areas that I'd like to address.
First, on page 8 of your presentation you talked about the purpose of this pardon system, soon to be called “record suspension”. You say, and I think it's a fair summation, that it's “an opportunity to start over with what amounts to a clean slate”.
Going to that point, I agree with you that some convicted persons should not have this opportunity. We've discussed that, the three times up or the persons with schedule 1 offences. I'm fine with that. But this bill contemplates it being acceptable for some people to get a record suspension. For some people, it's never; for some people, it's a yes.
So my question for you is that in the circumstances where it's contemplated as being acceptable for some people to get these record suspensions, what's the public safety rationale to extend the waiting time for the summary offences from three years to five years, and for the indictable offences from five years to ten years? How does that extension itself help public safety? Specifically, do you have any learned studies or objective empirical evidence that somehow suggests that by putting those extensions in, you're actually solving a pre-existing problem?