Mr. Chairman, currently under the summary convictions provisions, the maximum is six months in jail. You have told the government that you are going to proceed to make it 18.
In the provincial courts they always can proceed on the indictment and handle the more serious charges but I see that the principle here is to take away the options of the accused to elect to go to a superior court.
In these situations as practice has it, these theft offences are usually cumulative. Generally the information is multi charges against an offender. To limit this dollar amount related to summarial procedure is going to really hamstring a judge in being able to give the latitude of sentence required.
We feel that there is really no current problem in the justice system that is reflected in this change, that it sends the wrong message to the community and that we are looking for substantive justification of why this clause is here.