Mr. Speaker, I have no hesitation at all in praising my colleague for the intent behind his bill. However, as legislators, we have a responsibility to understand all the circumstances and facts on which we base amendments. That is a particularly onerous task on our part when we deal with the criminal justice system.
I appreciate some of the research he has done, particularly with the comparative jurisdictions in Australia, England and the United States. Has he done any research on what the experience has actually been in Canada? This section is a relatively new section to the code. For instance, are there any cases where judges have said that they would like to impose a more severe penalty than five years, but they cannot do it because of the existing subsection 172.1?
Similarly, what has been the experience in those other three jurisdictions? Have they come anywhere close to imposing sentences, whether it is 10, 12 or 15 years in the examples that he gave? My belief, from the limited research I have done, is that in the vast majority of cases it is the separate section of a summary conviction offence that is laid by the prosecutor and the police and no consideration is given to a sentence longer than two years.