Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the knowledge that the member displays on these issues.
He seemed to indicate that there was a potential problem with the reverse onus part of the bill. I question that.
If a person comes up to me, points a gun at me, pulls the trigger and misses, and thankfully, to me he is a dangerous guy. I do not want to live next door to a guy like that. I would move away if he did not. That is just the first time.
The legislation being proposed has a person doing things of that nature, attacking women and children. He does it, not once, not twice, but three times. In each instance, we, the people, through the Crown, have already shown that he is dangerous because he was charged and convicted three times.
To me, the reverse onus is almost a misnomer here. We should not say that. Rather we should say that the person has proven to us and courts have convicted him of these charges three time. It is now just an automatic, he is a dangerous offender and ought to be put away for a long time. To me, that is a given.
Yet now we are somehow saying that reverse onus is a violation. Some people say it is because a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, he has been proven guilty three times.
What we ought to be doing is looking at this issue as giving this guy a chance when he really does not deserve it. If he can convince the court, after having been convicted three times, that he is not a dangerous offender, then he can somehow avoid being given that designation.
Could the member enlarge a bit on the nature of his objection to this?