Mr. Speaker, I appreciated that comprehensive view of the bill. I want to add some more things to the record during this debate. One, of course, is that we do have a bail system in Canada. It is a right allowed to citizens. We do work in a system where people are innocent until proven guilty.
Witnesses also explained that people in most of the serious gun crime cases were not let out on bail anyway under the present system, so this would not affect a large number of cases.
What all committee members were shocked at was that there were no statistics to support the bill. I hope we are going to be improving on that. The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics apparently does not collect these statistics. All members on all sides of the committee would have liked to have had some statistics about how many people are on bail and how many commit crimes while they are on bail, et cetera.
One of the statistics presented was that, particularly in the case of violent crime, roughly 40% of the people did not end up being convicted. Therefore, a number of innocent people are charged with crimes and, under this bill, could be more likely to remain in prison.
Hopefully we would have the support of the member to try to speed up the system so that as little damage as possible will be done to an innocent person who is put in prison for that time. That person might be one of those who are in prison by accident. That person would be affected by this bill, but could later be found innocent.