Mr. David French:

I would be very concerned about importing complexity into any legislation in respect of drawing lines between manslaughter and murder. Every case lands differently and there is a lot of context. If someone has been found guilty of killing - manslaughter or murder - we should be able to rely on the discretion of the family law court to make those distinctions. Families show up in many different configurations and one cannot legislate for all of them. The family law court can look in detail at the specifics of the case. There are maybe seven to ten of these cases every year. Rather than trying to foreshadow or pre-legislate for all these things, we should depend upon the family law court to figure out what is the best way going forward, with the assumption that in the majority of cases there will be a suspension of guardianship. That is the important part.

Getting back to the matter of monitoring, it is a function of the Courts Service to figure out whether this has an effect in the real world and how it is playing out. It must consider whether judges need additional training or learning or if the legal system has precedents on this. Trying to have that complexity in the legislation right now is a recipe for making life complicated.