Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question.
My experience over the past number of years with victims groups and with individual victims certainly highlights the stresses imposed on victims, particularly the families of victims of homicide. These are cases that obviously inflict incredible trauma and stress among the families. The last thing they need is to not be told what is going on, and this happens time and time again. It does not happen all the time, I must admit. Through my own experience I am not afraid to basically go to the horse's mouth for the answers. But most people cannot do that sort of thing. It delays the grieving process. It is part of dealing with the issue to be kept informed and to be able to talk about these things.
I have heard of cases where a person takes an afternoon off to go to court because somebody who is accused is supposed to appear and when they get there they find out the accused appeared in the morning and nobody bothered to tell them about it.
I know of cases where an accused has been released on parole and their victim has come across them on the main street in town. It retraumatizes victims.
Victims rights legislation and dealing with those kinds of issues regarding specifically notification and the victim's role in the criminal justice process is long overdue. I am happy to say the justice committee is finally starting to hear testimony on this. We will keep our fingers crossed and see what the government plans to do. Like I said in my speech, I am not going to hold my breath for a long time.