Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. It is good to interact with him again after our first year in trade.
I would reject the premise of the question in the sense that we have created a number of hybrid offences that could be prosecuted either by way of summary procedure or indictable offence. We leave that discretion up to the Crown prosecutors as they move forward, but that is not to say that we are treating any of these offences any more lightly. Serious offences will be treated seriously. Depending on the facts of the case, the prosecutor will decide whether to proceed by way of indictment or by way of summary offence. The option to use the summary offence is there to accelerate the system to make it more efficient where the nature of the facts are such that the offence perhaps is not as serious. However, serious criminality will always be taken seriously under this and the procedure by way of indictment still remains.