Environment committee  Dr. Winfield, do you have any thoughts?

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely. I'll bring you back to what I was saying: It's not the severity of the sentence that deters offenders; it's the certainty of being prosecuted. Personally, a multi-billion dollar fine doesn't impress me much. I'd be much more impressed by the certainty that crim

Environment committee  That's an excellent question. I don't know. I don't know whether my colleagues can answer it, but I don't have any statistics on it for the U.S.

Environment committee  That's an excellent question. Up to a certain point, I think we're going to have to trust our Crown attorneys, who generally do their job quite competently. When making an order, the judge has the discretion to specify where the funds will go and what projects they will be alloc

Environment committee  That's a good question. I think its enforcement can be improved by ensuring that there are more investigations. There are a number of inspections, but there are very few investigations. There are about 20 a year. I don't think that's enough. What I see in the enforcement report

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely. It isn't a criminal penalty, but an administrative one. However, it's still a punishment. It has proven itself in many other areas. Administrative penalties bring some certainty about the duty to answer for our actions.

Environment committee  The Canadian Environmental Protection Act contains criminal offences. While it is true that no charges have been laid under the Criminal Code, the charges are still criminal under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Is this unusual? No. It's not common for the defence to

Environment committee  This is such an exceptional situation that it's difficult to find precedents. That being said, I think it's a very severe sentence, if not severe enough. Moreover, I wouldn't allow myself to express an opinion on the subject. It's important to remember that this is something that

Environment committee  It's a difficult question. In my view, the prosecutor is separate from the executive branch. I find it hard to believe that this type of transgression has occurred. Having said that, I have no information on this and cannot answer.

Environment committee  You're asking a great question. I'm not sure if it's a legislative question. To be honest, I think the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is a good act when it comes to penalties. In fact, it provides all the tools we need. Criminal prosecutions, tickets and administrative mo

Environment committee  Instead, I'm going to talk to you about what I'm criticizing about the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. It should be based on the certainty of being prosecuted and not on the severity of the penalties. There is no certainty of prosecution, and that's what needs to be improv

Environment committee  That's an excellent question. I'll honestly tell you that I don't see any problem with the Volkswagen case. As I mentioned, if we had wanted to punish Volkswagen much more severely, we could have. We could have laid more charges and asked for the maximum fines to be imposed. The

Environment committee  It's difficult for me to comment on this excellent question, but I think it has to do with prosecutorial discretion. It's difficult to interfere with that exercise of discretion. That being said, should the prosecution have laid a hundred thousand charges? No, absolutely not. Th

Environment committee  I'm talking about prosecutions because, as far as I'm concerned, I'm primarily interested in the enforcement of criminal law. It's evidence that's going to be presented by experts. It would be possible to get that evidence. Sometimes it can be obtained simply by inference, based

Environment committee  The fund is certainly a better solution than paying fines into a general Government of Canada fund, since it is dedicated to environmental protection. That being said, my preferred solution is that the money be allocated to a project directly related to the offence. It's importa