I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being here. It's always interesting to note that the Liberals would do a whole lot of things, but in the 13 years they were in government, none of these issues were approached. That's what we're trying to correct here. We're just starting.
It's interesting to note that when all the statistics were being read about the people who were eligible for parole and what it would all mean, we were thinking that these are people who are trying to get their lives back on track. But the one thing Mr. Gravelle said that really struck a chord with me was that one person caused havoc with over 9,000 direct victims, and those 9,000 victims have husbands, wives, children, and friends.
Then I listened to Mr. Ali Reza Pedram, and we heard it was about 158 people. Just dealing with the one victim, that person is eligible for parole after one-sixth of his time, but you work five, six, seven days a week, 18 hours a day. There's no pantheon of social workers telling you that you are the victim and asking what kinds of services they can offer you. You can get some services through your health plan, but you are probably too busy trying to pay back the banks what you have lost through a criminal act of a person.
Madam Jackie, you said more than once that you don't have a whole pantheon of highly paid people, both in government and advocates on behalf of the very people who have defrauded you, and pantheons of studies. All you know is that there is a huge void in your life and in the lives of many people like you.
My friend next to me just made a very good statement that we wouldn't need extra prisons and all these extra things if people didn't commit crimes. When they commit crimes, we worry so much about why they committed the crimes. We need to treat them. As I said, we have a responsibility as legislators that if we are going to put people in prison, we have to give them the tools so that when they get out of prison they don't have to go back to prison. But that doesn't mean we have to enable them to keep doing these things. We need to say, “What you did is wrong. You are going to pay your debt to society, and we as a society are going to help you get better.”
Does that mean we have done everything we can do? No. Our government actually started the very study that Mr. Davies talked about. It was commissioned by our government. They asked this committee to please look at this. We're not afraid to look at it, but we're saying that before anything else happens, we have to listen to the victims. We have to know how they feel, and we have to do something about that.
I'm a practising Christian, and I don't know too many in my congregation or my wife's congregation who think we're going down the wrong path. There are things you want to say in areas like this that you can't say. But lighting a bonfire and playing the guitar singing Kumbaya is not going to make the world better. We will make the world better, quite frankly, when we listen to victims and try to balance the need for people to feel that they've.... You mentioned that you have figuratively been raped. That's a serious thing.
Mr. Gravelle, would you like to talk about some of the experiences that you know some of your friends have gone through as victims?