Justice committee  It comes back to the issue of the difference between impartiality and neutrality. It's not saying judges are going to be neutral, but judges have to be impartial. I'm sure judges, just like all of us, come to their job with a particular point of view. Judges are supposed to be

Justice committee  It's a broad question in some senses, because when you're talking about discretion under Bill C-10, there are a couple of things. First is the general issue of whether or not people believe judges are using appropriate discretion in dealing with sentencing issues. That's one of t

Justice committee  I don't know that I'll dwell on it anymore, but I think I'm going to reiterate what my colleagues have said. Certainly, and especially in the African Canadian community, we want people who are using guns to be off the street. I will make that very clear to you. We share in our

Justice committee  I'll focus perhaps a little bit on the issue of the different strategies we can use. I'd like to make it clear right away that given the impact that gun and gang violence has had on the African Canadian community, we certainly are in favour of strong laws that do protect us from

Justice committee  I would agree with Mr. King. In looking at the issue of how we address crime in Canada and anywhere else, it must come from a realization that the criminal justice system isn't necessarily the system that's going to be appropriate for dealing with the situation we're facing right

Justice committee  It's actually interesting that you should bring that up. Certainly the court challenges program is something we did apply to for funding, up until this year, actually, for doing research and also for doing test case litigation. Why it's important that you bring that up is becau

Justice committee  I certainly will. I'm just going to raise a couple of issues with respect, obviously, to the impact on the African Canadian community. It's going to take a couple of minutes, and then I'll conclude. It's our submission that given the widespread acknowledgement of the ineffectiv

Justice committee  It's not a problem. If any of the committee members have any questions, I would be willing to entertain those.

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. My name is Royland Moriah. I'm the policy research lawyer at the African Canadian Legal Clinic. With me today is Charlene Theodore. I'd like to apologize at the outset for not h