Justice committee  Let me back up. I think that there is a certain level of incoherence between the sentencing provisions and the release provisions. To some extent we're talking about that level of incoherence. I think that these are difficult questions. What is the appropriate length of time for offenders between parole hearings?

Justice committee  That's a good question. That's the best estimate we have. Some of those are from police homicide data having to do with incidents in which there were two or more people killed. Whether those were prosecuted would obviously depend on whether there was an offender who was alive.

Justice committee  My understanding is that in many countries this is the case, and judges are able to go below the mandatory minimum penalties when there's a good reason to do so. Of course you then get into the question of why then have the mandatory minimum, and that may be a way for Parliament or the legislatures in different countries to give an idea about the relative seriousness of offences.

Justice committee  Yes. However, the other side of that problem is that multiple murders come in different forms. The other form of multiple murder involves separate incidents in which a person has killed twice. These are single incidents involving a single police force, usually in a single location, and there are two or more victims.

Justice committee  The difficulty is that what we tend to do in public opinion polls favours simplistic solutions. When the public believes that sentences would make them safe because many political leaders, many police officers, and so on tell them that harsh sentences will make them safe, one can hardly blame the public for believing this is the best route to safety.

Justice committee  I would take the words that the legislation has, which is the requirement that the judge give reasons, but only in one direction. In effect that is a presumption, though it doesn't state it, so what this is going to do in those cases of multiple murders is create classes of them.

Justice committee  Yes, I will make the changes that I've handwritten very quickly and send it back. The point I was making was if you imagine that as a result of this bill something like 26 people a year—the number of multiple-murder incidents that we have had on average over the past 10 years—were to go to prison for an average of 15 years—somewhere between the lengths of the parole ineligibility periods for second-degree murder and for first-degree murder—in 15 years we would have a steady state of an average of 390 extra lifers in prison awaiting parole eligibility time.

Justice committee  I'm sorry. My text is a combination of typed and handwritten. I could make it available if somebody wanted it, but it would be easy for me to make the changes and email it back to you.

Justice committee  Okay.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. Professor Manson and I thought it would make sense for us to coordinate our comments because we think the most important message related to your consideration of Bill C-48 is something that probably has not been raised previously with you. To understand the problems created by Bill C-48, one has to consider a few important issues.

Justice committee  If you were going to do the simple arithmetic on this bill, it's not high-tech mathematics. Your starting point for all offenders would be 1.5 to one, because almost nobody wouldn't deserve 1.5 to one. Then one would do an imponderable and guess when a federal offender would be released.

Justice committee  No, I don't think it is at all. Certainly, that's one of the considerations that is presently taken into account, and it seems to me it would make sense. But my starting point would be that a day of a sentence does not mean a day served in prison. A person who gets a 30-day sentence will not spend 30 days, regardless of the conditions in which the prison might be.

Justice committee  It's because there are two federal laws that state that this is the case: the law that governs the way in which a federal sentence is served and the law that governs the way in which a provincial sentence is served. Those are the laws that deal with these matters, that people at the moment serve typically no more than two-thirds of their sentences.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I've prepared this presentation with Cheryl Webster of the University of Ottawa, who is also here. Thank you for inviting us to give our views on Bill C-25. For the purpose of discussing this bill, we will make a number of assumptions. First of all, we will assume that an appropriate length of sentence for a particular case can be determined.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  What I would like to see is a serious debate about how to make society safer so that you can invest in lots of things. The police would say that in certain kinds of circumstances we need more police resources. Schools would say that we need.... The fact is we're releasing thousands of people every day onto the streets with inadequate resources to try to reintegrate them into society.