Justice committee  In terms of the costs to the victims or the public, in relation to crime, no, there's been nothing on that. What I can tell you about our data, in relationship to the bill, is that of those coming through the courts and the number getting convicted, the number is low. The number

Justice committee  There are two points here. First, we didn't analyze the 70% to see if there were other prior convictions, so I can't say clearly that they were first-time offenders. They were first-time for those firearms offences, but they could have had other convictions on other matters.

Justice committee  They're not first-time offenders. These individuals wouldn't have had a prior conviction for one of those ten mandatory minimums. They could have had either other contact with police, other contact with the courts, or other prior convictions of a different type. It isn't strictly

Justice committee  They would be the ones that had those provisions.

Justice committee  That's right.

Justice committee  The base file we use, the point of reference, is the last year. We looked back over the past history going back to January 1, 1996, and presented that information. In that way, it was much easier to put it on one chart. We don't have to worry about double-counting persons as we g

Justice committee  So specifically on plea bargaining, there's nothing on the file that would indicate whether or not there was a plea bargaining process.

Justice committee  The information we get from the courts is docket-based information, so the information that's entered on the statute section, subsection, or paragraph of the offence is on the record that's supplied to CCJS. It's that information that's used to determine the characteristics of th

Justice committee  From the court data we have?

Justice committee  Yes. We can look at the personal identifiers we collect. It's an encrypted version of the accused's name, the date of birth, sex. Within a specific geography we can look back at the criminal history information that we have with that key to identify whether or not there were prio

Justice committee  Not within the data we have, no. I can go back to offences that occurred on or after January 1, 1996, when the distinction was made in the Criminal Code and those provisions were broken out. That's how far this data goes back.

Justice committee  I can break down the data by statute, section, subsection, and paragraph. So where it's complete, at the very least at the section level and depending on the offence at the subsection and paragraph level, it can tell you how many cases there were, how many convictions, and the ty

Justice committee  It would be a “sexual assault”. Rape was repealed as an offence, and it's now called sexual assault. If it was a rape offence, that would definitely be one of those old sexual offences.

Justice committee  On chart 12, it's a person-based analysis. What that is, is the last case for each of those persons in 2003-04, whereas in chart 7 it looks at all cases, and each person may have multiple cases before the court. That's what's in those....

Justice committee  There are very few offences in the Criminal Code that specify young victims, so for sexual assault it could be any person who is assaulted. With the court data that I have available to me, it's not possible to determine the characteristics of the victim, unfortunately.