Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Typically, as the crown does, I get the same information in the disclosure package, which includes the filed psychiatric assessment. Typically, in all dangerous offender applications, the routine is that once I get that assessment, that is going to dictate what I do next with my case.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I can't speak for the Conservatives, but certainly from the departmental perspective that is correct. There is no mandatory or automatic nature to these provisions.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  The last part of your question I think I understood. If I misunderstood the earlier part, you'll have to forgive me. If I have this right, you're wanting to know the difference between the designated and the primary list, the impact of those two lists. Is that correct?

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Again, on the designated list, if there are two prior convictions from the designated list plus, in the crown's opinion, the third conviction is for a serious personal injury offence, then the only thing that does is require the crown to declare his intent on whether or not he has considered a dangerous offender application.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  That's not applicable at all to the--

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Yes. Certainly I think that the concern expressed by provincial attorneys general was that individuals who, prior to the decision in R. v. Johnson in 2003, would otherwise have been designated dangerous offenders were not being designated dangerous offenders post-Johnson and were in fact being given lesser sentences.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Again, just to--

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  It would not apply in that case.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  No, not unless there was a significant nexus differentiation between the three offences. Ms. Kane's point is that by adding a requirement that there be a two-year sentence, it perhaps lends the court to move away from those convictions that are part of one series of events, because the court would potentially tie those together as the intent of Parliament that there has to be sufficient differentiation between the different offences.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  No. In that particular case the presumption may well apply. If you have, for example, three different victims months apart, clearly the intent of these provisions is that the presumption would apply in that case, because there is no nexus between the different offences. In that case the actual sentencing court would be saying “Okay, for this offence I'm going to give you two years, for that offence I'm going to give you two years, and for that offence I'm going to give you two years, and then for the current offence I give you two years”.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Okay. I'll try to be quick. It's a complicated question in some sense because it's a complicated provision. Essentially, the dangerous offender designation has been around for quite a while. Originally, you could get an indeterminate or a determinate sentence when you had a dangerous offender designation, prior to 1997.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  That's a fair question. Again, the way it's worded is to leave some discretion to the court. There is often a fine line between the nexus of one offence to the other. What we wanted to avoid was, in one sense, an individual who is subject to the presumption when there is a nexus between the offences, chain-of-events types of thing, but we did want to capture an individual who, for example, had a number of victims over even a short period of time.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I don't think so. That's certainly not the intent. If it's one of a series of events, then we would suggest, based on case law and jurisprudence, that in fact it would only be seen as one series of offences, not separate offences. In other words, if an individual commits a break and enter and commits assaults against two individuals, then that probably would be seen as one series of offences for the purposes of this.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Again, we're talking about a relatively large number of individuals who would go through that particular threshold. We're talking about each of those individuals taking up a very large amount of resources. We're talking about what I would argue would not be a significant increase in the number of successful applications, if any increase in successful applications.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Well, I would suggest that's the job of the crowns at the front end.