Justice committee  Judicial discretion in sentencing is not fettered by the length of available sentence or by whether it is a summary conviction offence or an indictable offence. It's fettered by the maximum punishment. What I'm clumsily trying to say here is that I don't think how you classify th

Justice committee  I just wanted to really quickly add that I would support what's being advocated in terms of supervised students. My concern is that agents can be people with no legal training at all. That's where I would be concerned.

Justice committee  It does, and it's one of the things that also concerns me about mandatory minimum punishments. It's important when an accused is exposed to a loss of liberty at the hands of the state that there be a transparent process. The reality is that prosecutors make a number of discretion

Justice committee  With the greatest of respect, the evidence really flies in the face of the notion that the length of a sentence has any deterrent effect at all. Professor Parkes could probably speak to that with a little more data behind her. I think that's what Professor Parkes was getting at

Justice committee  The decision that an accused has to make when deciding whether or not to avail him- or herself of a jury trial is a complex one. There are a number of factors that have to be considered, especially in terms of the nature of the factual issues at play, because the jury is a trier

Justice committee  I've had to make that decision myself on a number of occasions. There are several different factors. Often one factor that can operate is in relation to limitation periods. If a longer period of time has elapsed since the date of the offence, you may have missed a limitation per

Justice committee  Is there an advantage for the Crown...?

Justice committee  I can't really think of a reason why the quality of the justice would be impacted by the decision to proceed either summarily or by indictment. When the Crown proceeds by indictment there are implications for that in terms of the accused elections. If the Crown intends to seek

Justice committee  From the perspective of accused people, it is serious. That's why I tried to be clear in highlighting that it would not necessarily violate the charter for the reasons you explained. The charter sets the bar at five years to reflect that level of jeopardy. The reality is that the

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Emilie Taman. I'm a lawyer with expertise in criminal law. I have worked as legal counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada, as a federal prosecutor at the Public Prosecution Service of Canada for eight years, and for the last two years I have been