Those of you who were in attendance at the Cambridge Law Lecture Series in 1989 remember the comments of Chief Justice Mackay as to the difficulties of dealing with the European Charter of Rights. We had been grappling with these issues since 1985. President Clinton addressed the problems of the deficit on Wednesday of this past week. We have been grappling with the problems of a crippling national deficit since 1984. When the Home Secretary visited Canada in 1992 I provided him with all our public reports of the Canadian Security Intelligence Review Committee and we discussed its operations.
Recent reports indicate that the United Kingdom has adopted our approach.
One of the centrepieces of the government's public protection agenda is the new Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which came into force November 1. This important new piece of legislation, which I had the privilege of sponsoring, enshrines in law the principle that the protection of society must be foremost in the minds of those entrusted with the administration of sentences in the federal correctional system. In addition, it places in law significant protections of rights as well as reasonable limitations on those rights. The Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which replaces the Penitentiary Act and the Parole Act, amounts to a complete modernization of corrections law. A key feature reflecting this modernization is that for the first time victims rights are officially recognized.