Justice committee  Well, the analysis would be very difficult. You'd have to take into consideration whether the offences were in sequence and whether that's important.

Justice committee  I couldn't tell you whether or not they're.... The data are based upon court convictions. The sequencing of those convictions is a function of the court process, not a function of the dates of the offence. So it is conceivable that an individual would be convicted of an offence t

Justice committee  What we can also say from the data and looking at those offences is that for 10 offences that came into force in 1996, there is a greater number pleading guilty to a lesser or included offence. They're not pleading guilty to the charged offence; they're pleading guilty to another

Justice committee  For court data, we haven't looked at sub-provincial data, because there are issues with police catchment areas and court catchment areas. Establishing a court geography is very difficult. In some jurisdictions, the reporting location would reflect a county or district. In other l

Justice committee  The offences I've seen in the data set I can go back to in 1994 under Roc85 have a difficulty around robbery as an offence between 1994, 1995, and January 1, 1996, and robbery with those sentencing provisions afterwards. If there was a distinction prior to that date for bank robb

Justice committee  One of the difficulties we have with the data set is that we can't determine what the aggregate sentence is. Although situations like that are rare, it is possible that a number of charges are convicted in the case. I know from the data set generally that three-quarters of all th

Justice committee  One of the things we can learn from the court data is that since the enactment of the 10 mandatory minimums, we've seen fewer convictions for those offences and fewer guilty pleas. Those are some of the lessons we can learn from the data on those offences. The impact and deterren

Justice committee  There's no way for us to break out the firearms relation prior to the enforcement date of the mandatory minimums because it wasn't identified in the code. The information we have coming from the courts is based on the statute, section, subsection, and paragraph. Unless “firearms”

Justice committee  It's not to say that there weren't any, it's to say that I can't determine how many there were from the data I have available.

Justice committee  It was specifically in the Criminal Code for robbery prior to January 1, 1996.

Justice committee  I'm sorry, in...?

Justice committee  So that would involve going to court registries and opening up files and finding those cases.

Justice committee  Yes, it is possible. That information would be available somewhere within a court registry, but not as part of the administrative record that these data are based on.

Justice committee  I don't have that information with me, but I could provide it.

Justice committee  Sure. I can show you the averages for robbery, criminal negligence, and all of those offences over a period going back to and including 1994-95. It would span the enactment of the mandatory minimums on January 1, 1996.