Justice committee  Thank you for that question. I think one of the things you get with a longer jail sentence is, for starters, more sophisticated diagnostics in terms of why somebody is there in the first place and what their needs are. We all know it's a multiplicity of things. It isn't just that they're drug-soaked, or whether they are.

Justice committee  I think you can, and you absolutely have to, and I would remind everyone here to look very closely at who it is we're actually talking about. We keep hearing that young people are being drawn in, but young people are not involved in crime anywhere near where they used to be in Canada.

Justice committee  Yes, absolutely.

Justice committee  Absolutely. And don't take my word for it; look at the behaviour of judges over the last couple of decades. We have to be very, very careful of what data we look at here. I know there's been plenty of so-called evidence put forward to say that judges aren't becoming more lenient and there's no need to limit discretion, but I would say there are serious problems with the way they've done that analysis.

Justice committee  From my perspective, tailoring is still allowed because there's a maximum that goes with it. There's a minimum, but you can still have it up through the range of that maximum. Beyond that, I would argue there is an ability to tailor sentences through correctional practices because people are eligible for release after serving one-sixth of their sentences.

Justice committee  Well, the first matter is that it's been referred to here a number of times that we have a concern about young people. The fact of the matter is, if you look at the individuals generally involved in the drug trade, they're everything but young people. I know this, having looked specifically at over 30,000 grow-op situations in British Columbia.

Justice committee  It's more than that. I gave one part of the report. The rest of the report speaks to the same problem. If you look at sentences awarded for less than a year, you'll see that the percentage of instances where that occurs has increased significantly over the last decade. There's an overriding message in that Statistics Canada report, which tells us that there has been erosion in sentence length over the last decade.

Justice committee  Yes. The statistic comes directly from Statistics Canada. It provides a comparison of the sentence lengths that were awarded by judges in the 2006-07 fiscal year versus a decade earlier. One of the analyses was on the matter of sentences of eight days or less. The analysis showed that, a decade ago, 14% of people given a prison sentence were given a sentence of eight days or less.

Justice committee  I would say it is certainly the norm that they are not following that. I know, for example, that the chief administrative judge in British Columbia, Hugh Stansfield, said that not only do they take it into account, it is taken into account as the most serious aggravating factor.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I have them here.

Justice committee  I thought there were only six people here for some reason, foolishly. People can see at a glance here what I'm talking about, the situation—

Justice committee  I wasn't talking about studies that I've read. I'm talking about studies—

Justice committee  Over and over and over again—

Justice committee  Yes, I will say it again.