Justice committee  Hopefully my message was, to assist you in making a law; if you're going to pass a law, let's make it usable. I think you've identified, Mr. Chairman, a real problem that you're going to have with the way the triggering provision is. To try to connect things to membership in a cr

Justice committee  No. But to be blunt, maximums are meaningless, because maximums are never imposed. To be blunt, you can make it five life sentences for certain crimes and it wouldn't make any difference in terms of what a person is sentenced to. Let's be clear about my discretion. Mine is a li

Justice committee  I suppose I'm a bit of a pragmatist. Some people may well argue that we should have general discretion for all of the sections in Bill C-10. I don't think that will fly, with all due respect. I believe the tenor of the community, of the country, is that they do want some tougher

Justice committee  Let's deal with the scenario I gave you with the woman who shot her husband. The prosecution started with the murder charge. There's a dead person here, a victim, and we're all very concerned about that. Prosecutors will not end up saying, let's just do alternative measures here

Justice committee  Yes, and she would have to challenge the legislation.

Justice committee  It's hard to imagine, but there could well be. For example, in the attempted murder, you might try to reduce down to an assault causing bodily harm of some kind. For sexual offences, you may well, rather than charge with aggravated, have what we might call just a simple sexual as

Justice committee  I'll just make a couple of general observations. If you're going to look for statistics to show that deterrence works, you're not going to find them, quite frankly. I think all the studies have indicated that maybe there might be minimal input. This issue isn't really for crimi

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to first of all thank the committee for inviting me to appear this afternoon. It's my honour and privilege to do so. I don't represent any association. I don't represent any lobby or interest group. I'm simply a law professor who has been teachi