Justice committee  Chair, what I would suggest, and the stats we were able to find, which were really from media reports, suggested very much the same thing, is that few dangerous offenders coming up are getting parole. But the key from our perspective to maintaining the legitimacy and justice of t

Justice committee  Legitimacy from the perspective of the right of the government to incarcerate someone. Now that we don't have capital punishment, incarcerating someone is the most egregious thing that we allow governments to do to anyone. In situations like these it is quite merited that the in

Justice committee  We put out a report this past year on mandatory minimum sentencing that I'd be happy to send to the clerk. There is a natural, intuitive sense that longer sentences make us safer and that they will deter offences, but countless studies have shown there's no evidentiary basis to

Justice committee  Yes, thank you. The only thing I was going to add is one of the things that continually creeps up over time in terms of the Criminal Code, which I'm sure members are well aware of, is the tendency toward creating piecemeal solutions by making individual changes to certain crimes

Justice committee  I don't believe they were, other than here. But we get a lot of e-mails, so if something came to us that we missed, I couldn't say for sure.

Justice committee  I have nothing to add to my friend's answer.

Justice committee  Thank you very much for having the BCCLA here. I listened to the really moving remarks by the member for Okanagan—Shuswap in debate in the House. I actually went and watched the video. It's clear to see the goodwill with which the member has brought this forward and the desire

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Jacob. We are convinced that the bill is unconstitutional and violates sections 2 and 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In our view, there is no way to fix the problems with the bill. That is why we would like the government to withdraw the bill o

Justice committee  Thank you very much. Yes, it is very clear that the court does say that maybe you do want to do something. It is your option—as you yourself recognize, Mr. Dechert. What we say is, that something, whatever it is, ought not to be within the criminal law or using these criminal

Justice committee  If I may, sir, and I'll come to that, one of the reasons we say so is that it's very clear in the law as it currently stands, and this has been recognized by the justice committee in its own study in 2006, that there's an exhaustive list of different criminal provisions that are

Justice committee  —from Ms. Kiselbach.

Justice committee  There are I think two things. The first is that by not having those provisions there... And I'm not going to go through an exhaustive list, as there is a list in your report from 2006 of all the different possible offences from trafficking, to extortion, and whatever. You are wel

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Casey. We don't take a great deal of comfort in the constitutionality of this section as I said in my remarks. We do think it is overly broad. Certainly part of the language here was borrowed from elsewhere in the code, but the government has unfortunately left a

Justice committee  Thank you for the question, sir. Anytime there is a reverse-onus provision, we're put in potentially more difficult constitutional waters. I'm just pulling it up here on my computer. Of course, there is a presumption in that section that you are guilty of a criminal offence unde