Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you, Minister, for your appearance today.
Minister, I hope you can appreciate the need to proceed cautiously on this. I was glad that we divided the bill into two sections. We were able to find a compromise on one half, and now we are dealing with the second half. You'll recall that we originally thought this was dealt with when Minister Day made a number of changes back in 2006. There was a sensational case, we were told it was fixed, and now we're back here.
My concern, Minister, is not with sexual offences against children. I think you get 100% agreement on that. It's not with changing the term “pardon” to “record suspension”. I think that's a good move and one that's supportable. My concern is that there might be a number of individuals caught up in this bill who either weren't intended to be caught up in it or for whom it could be very destructive to be caught in it. I'll give you some examples and maybe you could respond.
Suppose, for example, you have a single mother working hard to make ends meet. She makes a desperate decision, a dumb decision, to write a fraudulent cheque. That could be a hybrid offence, which could be indictable. Suddenly, a 20- or 21-year-old single mother, who makes a bad decision in trying to put food on her table, one she shouldn't have made, is in a position where now she is ineligible to get her record cleared until her mid-30s, potentially. That would mean that she's going to be—