Justice committee  I would like to add to that, sir. With respect to your example of the street gangs, starting off with the 14-year-olds and on up the chain, I can tell you that in Alberta the offenders at the lowest end, the ones who have just been dragged into it and are still young and don't k

Justice committee  I think Mr. Thompson and I approach this from different premises, because what we've heard today is that when you give individuals in the community all the information and then ask them what sentence they would impose, they come pretty close to the sentence imposed by the judge.

Justice committee  I have a lot of victims as clients. These are the families of my clients, the wives and the children. So when their husband or their father goes to jail and they are cast onto welfare or cast out of their house, they are victims too. We don't hear much about them, but I deal with

Justice committee  We've been consulted regularly since 1992, and I've been to Ottawa and Toronto any number of times to meet with the Department of Justice. Prior to coming here today, I spoke to Judge David Orr in Newfoundland, who is the chair of the provincial judges law section. I asked him

Justice committee  No.

Justice committee  Yes, we were asked for input and in many cases we were asked to attend meetings in Ottawa or Toronto on various legislation that was on the way.

Justice committee  It's an order of the court. The person is in jail, so it amounts to jail. If they don't follow the order, then they get punished. It's as simple as that. So it's the same as if they were in jail and then got caught with drugs—they go into segregation. So there's no difference. Th

Justice committee  Mr. Moore, if I might respond to your initial premise, I once appeared in front of a wise judge in Regina. He took the position that judges are representatives of the community; they in fact reflect the community feeling about a particular matter. He saw his role as passing the s

Justice committee  The short answer to that is no, and I'll tell you why. On a conditional sentence, which is somewhere between half to two-thirds or longer than a jail sentence—and I'm talking about serious matters, about sexual assaults where they've been issued, or serious assaults with violen

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers was formed in November 1992 to represent the voice of the criminal defence bar across Canada on issues of national importance. We have representatives on our board of directors from every province and territo