It's loss of life. We're looking at somebody basically using a car as their weapon. It's up to a 5,000-pound weapon. There's some point where punishment and rehabilitation.... Just rehabilitation alone, to me, does not send the strong message out to the public that this is not acceptable. We are burying our children.
They can get rehabilitation while in prison. To me there are two factors that are the problem here. One is that right now there is a mandatory minimum. It's a $1,000 fine. It does not at all seem to compare to other crimes that involve death and loss of life. For some reason, for this crime people just want to talk about rehabilitation, but it doesn't send that message out to the rest of us, the public, that this is taken seriously.
The second problem I find is that our judges seem to have a too wide view of discretion. They have a very complex job. I understand that. In one part of Canada, it might be a 10-month sentence. Elsewhere, for the same crime under almost the same circumstances or the same circumstances, it may be a three-year sentence.
Mr. Murie said he's seeing double digits. There have been three cases I know of that have hit double digits. There are four a day, so it's not that it's very popular to be in double digits. What is popular is the two- to three-year sentence. That's what I see. I see it all the time. I've seen three cases that hit 10 years, and that's in the last year.