Justice committee  Sure.

Justice committee  No.

Justice committee  I agree that there's a radical change, but I don't think the radical change, from our perspective, is in the proportionality situation. That's already built in. The change comes in adding the protection of the public right at the top, so that it's emphasized for a judge right off the bat, and also in the removal of “long-term”, and that's what I referred to back in my submission.

Justice committee  Is it paragraph 39(1)(a)? I'm just taking a look at the section.

Justice committee  I think that probably is right, with this one caveat, though: if you look at—

Justice committee  It's not completely correct.

Justice committee  If a young person commits what is deemed to be a violent offence and that violent offence will be subject to five years or greater, which all of them probably will be, it's also a serious offence, and a serious offence then comes into play when you're talking about bail. So violent—

Justice committee  I believe it says it's down.

Justice committee  Right.

Justice committee  I hadn't walked away with that impression from the studies I reviewed. But in fairness, that's not why we're here today. We're not here quoting study after study. There are other people who can do that, I'm sure, for the committee.

Justice committee  There are two things about longer sentences. The first thing is pre-trial detention, which is apparently on the rise, based on some of the StatsCan figures that were released. With pre-trial detention, for example, you don't have access to any of the programs you would need as rehabilitative efforts.

Justice committee  That's based on the study that I mentioned, which indicates so.

Justice committee  Of course you have to approach everything on a case-by-case basis, so I can't really answer for Mr. Fournel-Laberge's incident, and I can't say what the conditions were of the place where he was versus those of other places, or what kinds of programs were available to him. Based on—

Justice committee  Why? I don't think that there is a rehabilitative aspect, necessarily. When you have a young person getting one, what are they doing? They are going to go into a jail or a facility. They're going to associate potentially with people who are hardened criminals and have committed criminal acts.

Justice committee  Absolutely. I'm not saying that there are no exceptions to the rule.