Senator Dalphond: Thank you for expressing your policy on the issue. I think you’re right: The Supreme Court has made clear there are policy decisions to be made here.

You tell me that conditional release should not be imposed to protect the victims, but here we’re talking about the less serious offences that deserve less than two years.

Are you saying that someone who receives a sentence of three months — and the judge thinks that is the proper sentence, according to all the principles and based on his case-by-case analysis — should serve the time in jail? So after three months, what would you do? The person will be released, and will maybe live next to the victim again.

What are you proposing — that the law be amended to specify that the person be forced to live in a different city? Please explain it to me. I understand the victim’s perspective, and the right to be protected, but you think that the conditional sentence is a fix? I don’t think it is a fix. So after three months, what would you do?

(1550)

Senator Dalphond: Don’t you think the real problem is the root cause of this violence? That the real answer is to address the real cause of this violence — that jail is not the answer to it, that three months or three weeks in jail is not going to change a person, that the judge should impose conditions that the person go to therapy to follow some education to better understand his reaction and to have to wear a bracelet that will signal to the victim he’s coming by? Don’t you think three weeks in jail is not protecting the victim enough? There are other ways. We have to address the real issues. It may be sensational to say, “He shall serve three weeks in jail because he did something to deserve jail,” but is that the answer?