Justice committee  Yes, thank you. I am the mother of a teenaged son, and when I was preparing for this I had some discussions with my son's friends and my daughter—who is pre-pubescent—and some of her friends, and in a very interesting way, the least informed were the most supportive. Let me put it that way.

Justice committee  I would certainly support the last point made. I would invite Professor Gilbert to talk a bit about the implications again in terms of the constitutional issues of marriage, because, as many of you well know, especially in generations preceding ours, a gap of more than five years between marriage partners is not unusual.

Justice committee  I was referring not necessarily to needing more police. I think you're right, that it's targeted. Sometimes it's very difficult to investigate and uphold sexual assault charges, and in our experience, and certainly in my experience now—I'm at the law school with Ms. Gilbert right now teaching a course around these lines—it's very clear that the ability and the will to police and protect children and women when they're in abusive situations is problematic, and that's what I was referring to.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for inviting us to appear. I bring regrets from members of my board of directors who were unable to appear with me. I come representing 25 member societies that work with victimized and criminalized women and girls across the country. My comments will be brief, but I look forward to some of the discussion.

Justice committee  For most people, no. And certainly our position is very much for women, in thinking there should be an incarceration strategy.

Justice committee  Certainly. We support the use of community-based sanctions. We support the use of added supervision in the community. We support the use of more appropriate supervised and structured interventions.

Justice committee  It's not one that we've seen work very effectively for most people.

Justice committee  No, we're on record taking a position against mandatory minimum sentences generally, because of some of the issues we've already raised. To pull back to some of the discussion around the table a little while ago and to some of the examples we talked about in our brief, at this time when we're seeing crime rates and rates of imprisonment generally in other areas going down, we're actually seeing the rates of imprisonment of women going up.

Justice committee  No, we did not when they were brought in.

Justice committee  Well, our position is that the least restrictive measures would mean those who are a risk should be removed from being made a risk—but in fact the ways we've used imprisonment have not been effective.

Justice committee  Thank you for asking the question. It's been a while since I worked in the community with the police, but I did volunteer with the police, and I at one time worked at the RCMP as well. One of the initiatives that I think you may have been alluding to is focusing on those individuals who are seen as causing the greatest difficulty.

Justice committee  If there was equality before the 0.08, then I think that argument might hold more water. When we look at mandatory minimum sentences for drunk driving, for instance, the research shows that it has predominantly been the public education activities that have been effective. It shows that those people who are picked up still tend to be those who can't afford to be taking taxis and don't have money for expensive intervention programs.

Justice committee  If we were talking about only people who are involved in organized crime and senior members involved in organized crime, we might be having a different discussion. But what we know is that these laws won't only apply to those individuals. These laws will apply across the board. For those who do think about the penalties—and I would suggest that's not the average person I've seen in the prisons, whether it was when I worked with men, with young people, or, for the last fifteen years, with women—they will be the ones offered up.

Justice committee  I'm actually very surprised to hear that was the representation put forth, because the Correctional Service of Canada--not the Department of Justice--has projected that by 2017 the number of aboriginal young people in this country will exceed most other groups of--

Justice committee  Okay. Pardon. Je m'excuse. There are two major factors. I apologize if it's not clear enough in the brief from us. There is the Gladue decision that provided extra mechanisms that the Supreme Court of Canada said should be looked at and followed for aboriginal prisoners. Mandatory minimum sentences will not permit that.