Justice committee  I would agree with those comments.

Justice committee  Maybe I don't need to elaborate on that, but it's the issue that if a youth is charged with a serious offence--an aggravated assault in which somebody has lost an eye, for example--the public will not understand that this youth can walk the street the next day, even though they m

Justice committee  To clarify the point, it's not the existing provision and the existing period of time, but rather the change in scope that what I would term the unintended amendment or consequence would bring.

Justice committee  I think the issue is that if that's allowed to proceed unchanged, then you will have a different character of youth--a more dangerous character of youth--who would now be able to serve those sentences in the community.

Justice committee  The two issues are that there would be a determination as to the threat they pose to the community. In some cases, if it's an out-of-control youth or a youth who is violent and can't be managed in the community, custody may be the only option to protect the public. The second iss

Justice committee  I think it would be something that we'd have to take a look and to try to consider. I think the point we made with the proposal we have--and I would make again--is that it's not so much that we were trying to wordsmith or come up with wording that was absolutely prescriptive; i

Justice committee  The only thing that I would add to the response is from a Manitoba perspective. In 2007, Manitoba brought a non-partisan delegation that we called the “mission to Ottawa”. It included not only the then premier and justice minister, but the leaders of both opposition parties and r

Justice committee  Thank you. I will address the issue of deferred custody sentences. By way of background, paragraph 42(5)(a) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act provides that an offender may receive a deferred custody sentence for any offence “that is not a serious violent offence”. Paragraph 4

Justice committee  My only comment is on timing. There will be a meeting of deputy ministers responsible for justice next week. Some direction may come out of that. Perhaps the timing could be flexible to allow us to give some thought to a possible response.

Justice committee  I guess the difficulty is with respect to dealing with the youth motor vehicle thieves. We've had some success with our Winnipeg auto theft suppression strategy, and I indicated in my comments that we have had a 75% reduction in auto theft. So we achieved some progress on that. B

Justice committee  I just want to add that I think it's important to recognize--and this picks up on the comments by the member earlier--the need to achieve balance. One of the reasons Manitoba would support the way it's drafted now, and also the inclusion of deterrence and denunciation, is becau

Justice committee  Thank you. By way of background, I am the executive director of policy development and analysis for Manitoba Justice. I have been doing criminal law policy work now for a bit over 14 years, and prior to that I was defence counsel, dealing with both adult criminal cases and youth