Finance committee  Certainly. Section 7 of the charter provides that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of the person, and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with fundamental principles of justice. The courts have consistently found that a person who is on parole and who has his parole suspended and is returned to prison is thereby jeopardized in terms of his qualified right to liberty.

Finance committee  Let me respond this way. The cost saving of abolishing the right to a hearing in a post-suspension context is estimated by the parole board officials to be $1.6 million a year. The impact on the unfair revocation of aboriginal offenders in terms of further contributing to disadvantage, lack of economic opportunity, and further years of incarceration is far, far greater than that, simply in economic terms.

Finance committee  Nowhere in any of the reports that were the foundation for Bill C-10 or in any submissions to these committees by officials from the parole board was there any recommendation, not even a footnoted hint, that a further far-reaching amendment to the CCRA would be introduced. Yet what is now before you, just a few months after the passage of Bill C-10, buried deep in a 400-page budget bill, is a change to the correctional legal landscape that, in its impact on constitutional rights, eclipses anything passed in Bill C-10.

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, my name is Michael Jackson. I am a professor of law at the UBC Faculty of Law. I am in equal measure surprised, disturbed, dismayed, and alarmed that I am appearing before you today. I say this for three reasons. First, over the past winter I made submissions and appeared on behalf of the Canadian Bar Association before the House committee on justice and human rights and the Senate committee on constitutional affairs on Bill C-10, the Safe Streets and Communities Act.

Finance committee  Yes.