First of all, surrounding domestic violence and policing and law enforcement and the culture, we have changed. We have learned a lot from those days. That's exactly the way it was when I started the job. Violence was looked at through quite a different lens and that was the way it was handled. We have learned a lot over the last 30 years from a law enforcement perspective in what is going on with crime and how people are victimized.
The only thing I don't agree with is when you say that this type of legislation is going the extra mile. To me, this type of legislation is about fairness. It's not going the extra mile. The extra mile has a connotation that we're going above and beyond. I think you're seeking the threshold for these victims.
I'm not only here speaking as a police officer who worked in some of the toughest communities in Toronto where violence was a reality, serious violence, murder, and so on, but also from our officers' perspectives. We've had officers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice: they lost their lives. You heard about Bill Hancox, and the last time I was here I talked about Michael Sweet.
Some of the cornerstones of what we were talking about around BillC-479 were just the acknowledgement of victims and letting them have a role and a say, because what continually happens in the legal system is that victims are never a victim on the first occasion and then it's over and they go back to their lives and everything's fine. They are continually revictimized.
Part of having somebody who is accountable and responsible for the death of your loved one is that's always there in the back of your mind, even when we're going through a process like the parole process when there are hearings every year and so on and so forth. That's one level.
To have the victims there to take part in that and to at least feel as if they're having an impact on what's going on is one thing, but then when we talk about Bill C-483 taking away.... It's one thing for them to participate in the parole process, but then to have any citizen go home from that process and then to be arbitrarily cut out and the system usurped and the warden say that we're going to go on these ETAs, where's the procedural fairness? I believe that revictimizes the victims.