Justice committee  Thank you. My remarks might take a little bit longer, but not too much longer, than ten minutes. Thank you. I wish to thank the committee for inviting Victims of Violence to present our views on Bill C-36. I am appearing today on behalf of Victims of Violence in support of thi

Justice committee  There were two private members' bills introduced in the 34th Parliament that called for later access or an end to parole eligibility reviews for those convicted of first degree murder. Bill C-311 would have required those convicted of first degree murder to serve 20 years before

Justice committee  I'm sorry, were you talking to me?

Justice committee  I think we should, yes. Yes, definitely.

Justice committee  I'm not aware of anybody.

Justice committee  No, I don't either.

Justice committee  I don't know of any.

Justice committee  That is a difficult question to answer on behalf of all victims. I appeared here today on behalf of our organization to ask for the full repeal of section 745, which means that if it were repealed, there would not be any issues such as that. You are asking me to possibly take a

Justice committee  I don't know.

Justice committee  That's a very good question. To my knowledge, any of the victims I know do appear, and they read the victim impact statement. I would like to say about the victim impact statement that it is not a statement in which you can go in and spew whatever you feel you want to spew. Th

Justice committee  I'm sure that figure should be fairly easy to get.

Justice committee  It's not? You've tried?

Justice committee  I'll do my best. I can use my family's experience. We're going to attend a parole hearing probably in June or August of next year. It's not a section 745 hearing, but we're all ready. We started discussing about the middle of October that we're going next year. It usually takes

Justice committee  Well, it would still fall under the same—

Justice committee  Yes, that's a very safe assumption; it definitely does not help with closure. All that happens when you attend a hearing is that you just wait for the next hearing. So you prepare yourself because you know you're going to be going back again. I've always said that since we didn