Thank you, Mr. Albas, for that question.
When we were looking at this, there was that transition. At the beginning, and based on the sentence that was meted out, it was only six months, but then as we were discussing it, the change had taken place so that it was the hybrid offence, so we were caught in the middle.
However, when we took a look at it, we recognized that the focus was still there. It was still a case of recognition that this was what the courts were going to be looking at. They would be looking at the five-year maximum, I suppose, under these circumstances. However, we would still have this opportunity to let a victim know there was a serious reason that they were stopped and what happened and why they were put in that particular position.
I think in a lot of ways, if we imagine ourselves in that case, lots of things happen to us that we wish didn't and are unseemly and so on, but to think that you were put in that position because of some type of an activity, that, I think, is the critical part. Again, it's the idea, the concept of using a gun to stop somebody. You're not going to stop. If somebody comes up to you and starts waving, sneaking up on you, you know you're going to lock the door. You're going to take all the precautions you possibly can, and then you can stand up and say you're doing what you can to protect yourself under these circumstances. But when you give yourself up openly because you're wondering why the police are coming to you, and that maybe they need your help.... I look at it from that perspective. Usually, if I'm driving, I have an idea why they might want to talk to me, but there are a lot of other circumstances like donations to the policeman's ball, that I get along the road.
Nevertheless, it is a situation where you don't want to be duped and you don't want other people thinking that you did something improper to put yourself in that position, because that certainly isn't the case. It wasn't the case in the incident that was the impetus for this particular bill, and it certainly isn't the case for anybody else who has had something happen to them either.