Justice committee  Right.

Justice committee  Yes, we will undertake to do that.

Justice committee  I can undertake to follow up on that. We had a case law review done in the summer of cases that were easy to access. I'm not certain, at the moment, of the timeframe, but they were recent cases. There were changes to the maximum penalties in the last several years. Some of them were committed before those changes came into force, so they would have been decided under the previous sentencing provisions.

Justice committee  In the context of the work we do in the department with respect to victims, in the Policy Centre for Victim Issues, we've looked at the use of victim impact statements, and some of that work has revealed how courts have accepted community impact statements. To our knowledge they have not been challenged, but a lot of issues are resolved within the judge's own discretion.

Justice committee  That's correct. We're just making the English more--

Justice committee  Yes, certainly. As Mr. Moore indicated, this is simply an amendment to clarify the language. The English and French basically convey the same notion, and that is to explain that once this act comes into force, the provision that it refers to in subsection (1) is not applicable anymore.

Justice committee  Yes. It's not a translation, but a better interpretation of the French.

Justice committee  Those are regarded as procedural changes to tighten the regime that's currently available to those currently eligible for faint hope.

Justice committee  No. The minister did indicate that those procedural changes were regarded as constitutionally feasible. They are procedural. We're changing it for those who are still subject to the faint hope clause in some respect--that is, for crimes committed before the law changes. There are three changes.

Justice committee  We can't speak in terms of today, but if that case were to arise after this law comes into effect—if this law is passed and is proclaimed into force and if the crime were committed after that time—anybody convicted of murder would not have an ability to rely on the faint hope clause.

Justice committee  The statistics we referred to were for what had happened to the group of those who had first applied under “faint hope”. There would also be the case of those persons who were serving a life sentence and who waited until their parole eligibility date and then applied for parole.

Justice committee  The only data I have is what I already quoted to you, that out of 265 faint hope applications, 127 people were ultimately granted parole. According to our statistics, which are from April 2009, 13 were later returned to custody, but I don't know specifically for what reason they were returned to custody.

Justice committee  That is accurate as far as we're aware.

Justice committee  Yes. There's no obligation on a person to apply for parole, even at their eligibility date, if it is 25 years. Some get to that point and wait until they think they will have a more successful application. It's difficult to speculate on why people apply when they do and why others wait.

Justice committee  I don't have that breakdown of why they were returned to custody. There were a variety of reasons why a parolee would be returned to custody. They are very closely supervised and sometimes certain things are done that are not as serious as others, and they are still returned to custody.