Public Safety committee  Once again, I would suggest that automatic registration has been the subject of a lot of discussion over the past number of years. There has been dialogue with provincial and territorial senior officials. There's been internal review between the Departments of Justice, Public Saf

Public Safety committee  In regard to the modus operandi, I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to. In the body of the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, section 2, there's a stated purpose that discusses the objective of public safety in regard to sex offenders, police investigation of sex

Public Safety committee  Well, in the first place, I don't think it would be correct to automatically assume the termination and exemption provisions are contrary to public safety. I think it's important to understand the context of policy development for this legislation. This was first tabled in Dece

Public Safety committee  I would only suggest that most, if not all, of the issues that we heard witnesses raise in front of committee, as well as questions asked by members, were issues that were common knowledge, based on prior consultations with provinces, police groups, victims groups. I don't think

Public Safety committee  I would only suggest that it would be a policy choice. As officials, we take our instructions from the government of the day. It is at the discretion of the government of the day to direct whether or not this should be a prospective or a retroactive scheme. If there were a direct

Public Safety committee  All I can suggest again is that the directions I received for this proposal were for prospective use.

Public Safety committee  I would not make that conclusion without further analysis.

Public Safety committee  It's still relatively new, as these things come online, but there have been successful prosecutions in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I believe there was a fine and two months of imprisonment in the Alberta case—the name escapes me—and I believe it was one month in Saskatchewan for a

Public Safety committee  Certainly, it's reviewable by appeal. The test is that the court must be satisfied, on balance, that the offender has demonstrated that it's grossly disproportionate. The onus is on the offender. According to the various courts of appeal decisions, he must do something specific,

Public Safety committee  From a Justice perspective, in criminal justice our objective is to ensure that the criminal law is effective, efficient, and fair. The courts have upheld the registry so far as being charter compliant and constitutional, so we're pleased with that. We believe that registries hav

Public Safety committee  When we first designed this, we were borrowing from the template and the case law that came out of the DNA requirements in the Criminal Code, which uses the same language. My view was that there was going to be some shakeout in the lower courts and that probably, as it was in t

Public Safety committee  I'm from the Department of Justice and am the lead counsel in the criminal law policy section on the sex offender registry file.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Consultations aside, the first thing to note is that this particular provision replicates an intent for the rehearing—and I'm talking not about the motion but about the original Bill C-2 provision—what already exists in subsection 753(6). That section has been around since the mi

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I'm not sure about the nature of the question. Are you asking whether a consensus is required before we bring in legislation?

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Again, our objective in consultation with all stakeholders, not just with attorneys general, is to ensure that we have full knowledge of how it will work throughout the country. I think it's important to understand, for example, that there are 13 jurisdictions, and within each of