Senator Plett: Characterizing what I asked. Sexual assault, minister, is a serious crime — a very serious crime, minister. If this bill passes, sexual abusers will be serving their sentence in their communities. Yet, as Jennifer Dunn stated, you have women on the other side of this who have to live with what happened to them and have to look over their shoulder in the community. That, minister, is a lifetime sentence. That is serious, minister.

What message is your government sending victims of sexual assault by treating sexual abuse with leniency? Given that sexual assault is the most under-reported crime in Canada, what do you say to the advocacy groups who say that this will further deter abuse victims from coming forward?

Conditional sentence orders, in any case — but particularly in the very serious situation that you have cited — are only available where there is no threat to public security. That includes victims, honourable senator. We are moving forward in a way that corrects the failed, so-called tough-on-crime policies of the Harper government, which have only resulted in clogging up the criminal justice system, in the overincarceration of Indigenous, Black and other racialized people in the Canadian justice system and which even an esteemed judge and expert like Michael Moldaver said have basically failed.

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