Justice committee  Yes, I'm not familiar with the program, so I'm not sure how it interacts with police. My guess is that if it's part of public safety, maybe it's with corrections and parole programs, so it's for guys who are on conditional release. For those people, I think the more resources you

Justice committee  Yes, how much time do we have? I mean, we know in general that crime prevention programs can stem this in the very beginning. We're talking about a variety of different types of offences, so it might be people involved in gangs, certainly people who were abused children. If we ca

Justice committee  I think if convicted sex offenders are travelling to Thailand, certainly that's the information you want to be able to share and to access. I think the bigger problem about child sexual tourism, Mr. Butt, is with those who don't have convictions for anything and who are travelli

Justice committee  They're not on the radar. In some jurisdictions it's encouraged because it's good for their economy and those kinds of things. It's a complex issue. But I think on sharing information about someone who has a conviction for a child sexual offence and who's travelling to one of th

Justice committee  I don't pretend to be an expert on all sex offender research, but I've read a fair bit. What we know is that those who abuse within the family tend to have a lower risk for recidivism, whereas for the category of sex offenders who have a sexual orientation towards young children,

Justice committee  It's called a database in the legislation, but I call it a website, because frankly, I think that's what it will be. It will just be a compilation. Manitoba already has a website of high-risk offenders, and Alberta has a.... These are cases where the police have deemed someone

Justice committee  As I read the legislation, it actually says that the database only contains information that a police service has already released. So if the Ottawa Police Service released information about so-and-so, then that person would be eligible to go on the federal database or website. I

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've worked in victim services, victim advocacy, for 20 years, but I'm here as an individual today representing my own views. I have only five minutes, so I'm just going to touch really quickly on a couple of elements of the bill, and then I hope we can hav

Justice committee  I think that to make it binding you're fundamentally changing our justice system, and that's a bigger debate. The key to this is resources. There's not a crown attorney or a police officer in the country who wouldn't love to do more for victims of crime. It's about resources. To

Justice committee  To be honest, I don't know how that would work. I've never thought of that perspective, but it's quite possible that they wouldn't impose a surcharge.

Justice committee  There's a provision in here I think that is good. It allows the crown to ask for an adjournment to get those readily ascertainable costs. I would suggest letting the victim have the chance to ask the court for that as well. I think where it would really help is if the provinces d

Justice committee  I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but I think it's a fairly consistent definition. It's probably similar to the one that's already in the Criminal Code, although I don't have a copy of the Criminal Code with me. There may be some other adjustments. I think if you

Justice committee  I don't think it will play out any differently now. In the Criminal Code now there are provisions for not criminally responsible cases where victims can do impact statements. I understand that because the person isn't found guilty of the crime in a sense they're not criminally re

Justice committee  You're right; the restitution can be complex. It can be very simple if it was a stolen bicycle, if there was TV, and you have the bill, and that's what you're going to order. Where it gets more complicated is in personal injury situations: there's violence; some might need couns

Justice committee  If I had more sway, then victim services would have a lot more resources. First, I'll say this. One of the dangers in over-promising when it comes to victims' rights, and there's some research that supports this, is that if you tell victims this and you raise their expectations,