Thank you for the question.
I think I would disagree with what I heard at the end about sentencing, but more generally, this is where the law is really limited.
One of the most frustrating parts of my job as a lawyer is that people often want a clean legal solution to complex social problems, and there often isn't one.
I think what are being raised are really complex questions of the way...almost the temperature of the nation. That's why I keep talking about taking the temperature down and how we can see each other's humanity.
We can criminalize whatever we want. We have clear charter rights. But we can't shake our charter at somebody when they're coming at us to commit a crime. That isn't, of course, how it works.
We need to live in a society where the norms that we are enforcing among ourselves are protective and inclusive, and value all of us. The rising hate online and the kind of increasing polarization that we see in our society are, I think, the challenge, which is why I'm so grateful to this committee for undertaking this study. There are complex answers.
I don't think there is a clean legal solution here. This is why I chose to spend my remarks talking about being really careful with the way folks in a position of leadership in the country speak about these issues. They can often be inadvertently inflammatory. I think that most political leaders are very well intentioned, but there are consequences sometimes from the ways in which these issues are spoken about.