Justice committee  I would as long as it was a sentence of imprisonment, whether conditional or custodial.

Justice committee  Right now, it says things like that the judge can consider the nature of the offence and the circumstances of the victim, but all of those invite or at least permit stereotypical reasoning. I would like to see an addition of a list of factors that the judge cannot consider or can

Justice committee  Maybe I could forward that, and that would be more useful than trying to read out a long list here.

Justice committee  I'll just say, as I read the legislation the way you have structured it, I'm not sure that it could be plea-bargained away, because even where it's not mandatory it's presumptive. It's only the secondary offences where the application has to be made and that could be the subject

Justice committee  Sure. I'll just give you an example. Right now in the Criminal Code, when we talk about an application to access counselling records—third party records, private records of the complainant—there's a list of factors that the judge is not supposed to consider or, at least, is not

Justice committee  Sure.

Justice committee  Yes. I would recommend that the trigger for mandatory registration get rid of the reference to prosecution on indictment and simply say that where it is an offence committed against a victim of under 16 or 18, depending on the offence, and a sentence of imprisonment is imposed, t

Justice committee  Yes, I'll leave it for questioning, except to say that I was going to support the point that Professor Fehr made. There needs to be a list of factors that the judge may not consider in deciding to grant the exemption. That's present in other parts of the Criminal Code, and it oug

Justice committee  I would say, yes. Certainly, a sexual offence against a child that attracts a sentence of imprisonment, whether custodial or conditional, is a serious offence. The route at which that is prosecuted, summary conviction or indictment, is really irrelevant. It's the facts of the off

Justice committee  Thank you for inviting me to take part in this consideration of Bill S-12. I'm sorry to say, because we're starting just a little bit late, that I do have to teach at 2 p.m. Vancouver time, which is 5 p.m. your time, but I hope I can be here for most of our discussion. I'm goin

Justice committee  That's right.

Justice committee  I'll just say that while I appreciate very much the work that Ms. Wood is doing, I certainly don't agree with her analysis that 80% to 90% of the sex trade involves people who are not exploited. Whether a third party is involved or not, there's still a considerable amount of expl

Justice committee  The Palermo protocol, when it lists the ways in which people can be exploited by traffickers, mentions many of the things that are in this bill—force, coercion, deception and fraud—but it also speaks about the exploitation of “a position of vulnerability”. That's the language in

Justice committee  Just to be clear, as I said in the beginning, this applies only where there's a third party involved. Prostitution, the commercial sex trade, can be very exploitative even without a third party involved. Many of the circumstances that drive people into prostitution are hallmarks

Justice committee  Sure. As I said in my introductory remarks, I think there is a reason the definition of exploitation in the Palermo protocol refers to the exploitation of a condition of vulnerability. Indeed, the other offence in the Criminal Code, in section 153, which is drafted in terms of se