Justice committee  My simple answer would be that I'd tell the government to go back to the drawing board. If you have the bill as it stands and you have no judicial discretion, it's not going to be an effective piece of legislation. It's not going to achieve the goals, as I mentioned. One thing

Justice committee  I don't think so, because paragraph 718.2(e) has withstood.... That provision could be invoked to override the presumption against the conditional sentence in a case involving an aboriginal offender in which restorative objectives were uppermost in the mind of the court.

Justice committee  We can't tear ourselves away.

Justice committee  It's incompatible in the sense that it's not consistent with the fundamental principle of proportionality, which, as I say, has these two branches. This bill would remove the ability to establish the culpability of the offender. It's prejudged by the parliamentary committee that'

Justice committee  Yes, it would be, but I think you need to take a look at the research on public opinion. It's all very well to say communities don't like this or communities don't like that, I've had tonnes of letters, blah blah blah. Take a look at the research—and the Department of Justice con

Justice committee  It was done under the previous government.

Justice committee  Yes, it's a complicated question. But in a nutshell, what Proulx did was give trial court some direction as to how the sentence should be constructed and how breach should be responded to—and the message from Proulx is tough. So if you breached without a lawful excuse, there wa

Justice committee  I'm not sure it's necessary, but I certainly think that would be a superior solution to having a list of offences, or this dual approach involving maximum penalty and prosecutorial discretion. You could say that if denunciation and deterrence are uppermost in the court's mind,

Justice committee  I think that bill was superior because it contained presumptions. It didn't take it off the table entirely. I think it would have changed the practice of trial courts, and it would also have focused on these more serious offences, and things like fraud, which is a category of off

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to point out that although I've just come from the University of Oxford, I'm not some presumptuous British academic coming to give some opinions. I lived in Canada for 35 years. It's a great country and I miss it greatly. I'd like to put