Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Hanger. Thank you, committee members, for allowing us to appear on Bill C-9. I should tell you a bit about ourselves. I'm a recently retired 30-year veteran of the Toronto police service. I left there at the rank of detective sergeant, and in my last posting I

Justice committee  Yes, thank you, sir. I have just a couple of things. One is that I don't think Bill C-9 in any way takes away from the opportunity for a judge to customize, to engage in judicial discretion, or to be flexible. Judges are wonderful triers of fact. They do a great job of that, an

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Moore. I've talked to victims both as a serving police officer and also in the six years I spent at the Office for Victims of Crime, where we managed complicated cases in which victims were being run off the rails by constituent members of the justice system. Ther

Justice committee  Correct. Some of it's a lack of understanding of what judges are confronted with, but they complained about judges in terms of sentencing. In particular, the number one issue around sentencing was the giving of conditional sentences inappropriately for serious crimes. I know it's

Justice committee  Thank you, Ms. Barnes. I don't have the list in front of me; I didn't bring the information research, but from my recollection of my reading of it, it was “trafficking” and “possession for the purpose of trafficking” offences. If indeed there were some straight possession offenc

Justice committee  Right. I understood they were mostly trafficking offences or trafficking types of offences. You mentioned possession. I just didn't see any possession.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. André. It's a good question I just want to lead by saying that we're a poor charity, Mr. Lee, but we will pick up the tab for Mr. Thomson's--

Justice committee  Not everybody knows this about me, but over the course of my career as a police officer, I have spent a lot of time working with academics, social workers, and people who were on the front lines trying to help children. I actually was one of the founding members of the original s

Justice committee  Thank you. There is a volume of evidence, most of it from south of the 49th parallel, the United States, that makes it very clear--and it's very convincing--that where you identify the recidivist, the serious offenders, the people who keep committing crimes, and you lock those

Justice committee  Thank you for the question, and thank you for making it clear that these offenders aren't desperately trying to stop their defence lawyers from getting them conditional sentences of imprisonment in their homes. It doesn't happen. I don't want to be disrespectful, but it's almost

Justice committee  The Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness went out to ten sites across Ontario: Belleville, Hamilton, London, Newmarket, Orillia, Ottawa, Peterborough, Sudbury, Toronto, and Windsor. We invited some guests, and some other people just said they were coming too. Anybody who wanted to

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Hanger, members of the committee. My name is John Muise. I'm a retired 30-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service, as I think you know, and I'm here as the director of public safety for the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness. We certainly welcome the opportuni

Justice committee  Sorry.

Justice committee  The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the current mandatory minimum of four years for a conviction involving a firearm and commented specifically on the wanton and reckless disregard displayed as a result of the use of a firearm by the offender. In addition, it is impor

Justice committee  About two minutes.