Mr. Speaker, the argument that would be brought forward under section 12 of the charter, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, would be that the pre-incarceration conditions were so bad that they amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and therefore the sentence has to take that into account or, as happened in Ontario under the Askov ruling of the early 1990s, the charge itself may be dismissed. That is a real risk.
We lost 40,000 to 50,000 cases in Ontario in the early 1990s because the backlog was so long. The consequences of a breach of charter is we would not even get to the sentencing process and the charges would be dismissed. A number of those charges in Ontario and across the country, because that ruling was followed across the country, were quite serious, some involving violent cases.