Justice Committee on May 8th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I call this meeting to order.

If the cameras could leave that would be excellent. It is a televised event. You guys can go watch it on TV if you really want to. Thank you.

As the committee knows, the bells will be going in about 25 minutes or so. We'll have the minister give his opening statement, and then we'll get at least one round of questioning to the minister before we have to go back to vote.

Minister, the floor is yours.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Colleagues, I am delighted to be here with you this morning.

I'm pleased to appear before this committee to answer your questions regarding items in the main estimates. I note this is my 45th appearance before a parliamentary committee, which is a very important part of our parliamentary accountability process.

Mr. Chair, joining me today eventually will be Brian Saunders, George Dolhai, of course my deputy minister, William Pentney, and Marie-Josée Thivierge.

Chair, in my role as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada I'm responsible for helping and in some cases shepherding our justice system through various iterations of our efforts to remain relevant, fair, accessible, and of course, to support Canadians in many ways. Justice must not only be done but be seen to be done, as the old well-worn legal maximum says. This is what Canadians expect.

The items that the Department of Justice has submitted to be tabled under main estimates will further our work to ensure just that—that our justice system continues to evolve, to be fairer and more inclusive, and enhances the personal safety and security and confidence of Canadians through our criminal laws, policies, and programs.

To turn to the numbers, the Department of Justice is estimating net budgetary expenditures of $630.6 million in the year 2014-15. Of these slightly more than half is allocated to grants and contributions, 38% is allocated to operating expenditures, while the remainder is allocated to statutory expenditures.

This spending will support the wide-ranging and important services that the government provides to all of government. That is to suggest that the Department of Justice provides those legal services across many departments, which includes a large number with respect to litigation, legislation, and advisory services.

These figures also represent a net spending decrease of $26.9 million from the 2013-14 main estimates. The decrease I can note is mainly attributable to the cost savings found through the strategic operating review as well as sunsetting of several initiatives.

Mr. Chair, while the choices that facilitated the cost saving required the prioritization of programs, it illustrates the department's commitment to supporting the government's economic action plan and to achieving savings for Canadians, where possible, through innovation and modernization to ensure that we better meet the needs of today, never losing sight of the importance of providing meaningful support and access to justice for Canadians.

One important area of expenditure, representing an increase of $1.4 million, enhances the victims fund and expands the reach of the federal victims strategy, specifically for time-limited operational funding to non-governmental organizations serving victims of crime and in particular the child advocacy centres. These centres, which now span the country, are one of the most innovative, compassionate, and important contributions that I have seen in my time as both a practising lawyer and as Minister of Justice. These centres provide crucial services to young victims of abuse and their families. I believe their contribution is offering front-line services day to day that make a real difference in the lives of youth.

Mr. Chair, there has also been an increase of $3.98 million, in addition to the initial funding of $40.17 million under the Roadmap for Canada's Linguistic Duality 2013-2018 for Access to Justice in Both Official Languages.

The initiatives described earlier will enable the Minister of Justice to build a justice system that is more equitable, that will improve access to justice in both official languages and that will meet the ever-changing needs of Canadians across the country.

In addition to our current success, the future is promising. The Government of Canada has taken action with respect to a number of criminal justice priorities in order to guarantee rights and make communities safer for us to live in, thrive and raise our families.

Mr. Chair, on April 3 of this year, the Prime Minister and my predecessor, Mr. Nicholson, announced historic legislation that would transform the way victims of crime are treated in our country's justice system. After extensive cross-country consultation with numerous individuals and stakeholder groups, I had the honour to table in the House of Commons the victims bill of rights.

This is intended to establish statutory rights for information, protection, participation, and restitution, and to ensure that a complaint process is in place to deal with breaches of these rights. This legislation would entrench the rights of victims of crime at the federal level. Protecting victims and providing them with a more effective voice in our justice system is a key priority for our government. Victims of crime deserve to be treated with courtesy, compassion, inclusion, and respect—basic rights, in my view, necessary for public confidence and trust in our justice system.

Chair, colleagues, above all Canadians expect that their justice system will keep them safe. Public safety is a fundamental and foremost responsibility of any government. The government understands this expectation and is committed to protecting Canadians from individuals who pose a high risk to public safety. Our laws and current legislation reflect our commitment to this responsibility.

To that end, the government introduced Bill C-14, Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, which received royal assent on April 10, 2014. The bill helps protect Canadians from persons who are found to be not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, and who pose a higher risk of committing violence if released. This, I should note, is a very small percentage of individuals who are actually deemed not criminally responsible, and is somewhat akin to the dangerous offender applications and findings in our Criminal Code.

The legislation enhances the safety and confidence of victims specifically by considering them when decisions are being made about mentally disordered accused persons, making sure victims are notified when accused are being discharged, and where they intend to reside, if the victim desires, and allowing for non-communication orders between the accused and the victim.

In addition, Mr. Chair, our government will continue to take action to protect the most vulnerable through the tougher penalties for child predators act, as well as Bill C-13, the cyber bill. We are working to maintain the safety and security of our communities and our streets by ensuring that legislation responds to the evolution that naturally occurs, and that includes, of course, the Supreme Court's ruling in Bedford, which struck down Criminal Code sanctions as they pertain to prostitution.

So to conclude, Mr. Chair, our government is committed to maintaining the integrity of our criminal justice system. We are strengthening that commitment with the level of funding that the Department of Justice portfolio has received, and the funding that Justice has received delivers concrete results for Canadians. I'll continue to do my best to see that those taxpayer funds are spent wisely, while ensuring that Canadians have a fair, relevant, and accessible justice system.

I want to thank you and the committee members for the essential work that you do for providing our department with the opportunity to make these comments and to interact in a way that I hope is meaningful for all.

I thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Minister. Thank you for coming in to answer questions about the main estimates.

Our first questioner is Madame Boivin from the New Democratic Party.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, unfortunately, we will not have a full hour with you. While we would like to be able to discuss a bit more in depth the major issues we are studying, the members in the House are debating another time allocation motion on a democratic reform bill. That is more than 60 time allocation motions introduced by the government.

It is quite a strange process. We are studying the main estimates, which are quite voluminous, and there are some aspects that fall under your responsibility since they concern the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Department of Justice's entire budget, the courts administration service and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. However, we have to study all that with only five minutes for questions each.

I will try to be brief and I would like the answers to be brief as well.

My first question has to do with the budget of the Supreme Court. Are we to understand that you are going to appoint someone to the Quebec position that is still vacant? Is that part of your main estimates? When are you going to start spending those funds? In other words, are you going to proceed with the appointment as soon as possible?

I have a second question for you.

In these estimates, the Department of Justice funding for transfers to provinces for legal aid services drops significantly. That funding comes from t. We know that the provinces are asking for a bit more funding in that area because the needs are huge. I don't understand why savings are being made at the expense of legal aid.

Here is my third question.

Bill C-31 is creating a new administrative tribunals support service as an act. Do you expect this service to involve spending? I am not sure your estimates list the financial impact of the 11 tribunals that will fall under this service. Do you expect to save money with this service? Or do you expect to have a period of transition?

I would have liked to have more than five minutes to have an intelligent discussion. I doubt I will be able to have answers to all those questions. Perhaps you can promise to provide us with the answers later, if you don't have time to answer all my questions.

I assume that I will have to ask your colleague, the Director of Public Prosecutions, about his mandate, as described in the main estimates, and about his role in the RCMP. I will come back to that later.

Mr. Chair, are we going to come back to committee after the vote?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We will come back tomorrow.

After the vote the plan is to come back here.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Excellent, so I'll reserve my Director of Public Prosecutions questions. I have some questions for Mr. Saunders when he'll be here.

So go ahead, Minister, about the nomination for the Quebec judge on the Supreme Court.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much Madame Boivin. I'll try to answer your questions in the order that you presented them.

With regard to the Supreme Court budget, of course that money is there. It is allocated. That money will be there to cover the salary of an eventual replacement for Mr. Justice Fish, so there is every intention of course to fill that post and to do so in an expedited way. I've now had the opportunity to speak with my new counterpart from Quebec, someone well known to you, Madame Vallée, so we had a face-to-face meeting this week in Ottawa. I intend to move as expeditiously as possible to fill that post.

With respect to legal aid, you would know that in the face of all departments making difficult decisions and in reductions in many areas we did not reduce the budget with respect to legal aid, so that money remained stable while at the same time provincial transfers did increase to provinces like Quebec and others across the country, in some cases as high as 25% in the province of Nova Scotia. So increase in transfers and no decrease—

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Maybe I'm not reading well but when I see

Under “Listing of the 2014-15 Transfer Payments”, there is something I don't understand. It says: “Contributions to the provinces to assist in the operation of legal aid systems”.

For the main estimates 2012-13, the amount is $119 million, whereas for 2014-15, it is $108 million. I see that as a drop, but perhaps I am missing something in the documents provided to parliamentarians.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Yes, Madam Boivin, you will know that there is a sunset provision that applies across provincial transfers. These transfers, with respect to legal aid, have remained consistent. They were not decreased. When supplementary estimates receive approval, then that money will flow. I've already signalled that in writing to all of the provinces and provincial attorneys general—

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

What we see in the main estimates is one thing, but through supplementaries, it's always

in separate sections; that is how we do this wonderful exercise of managing public funds.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

You are correct.

With respect to administrative tribunals—

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Minister, we're out of time. I'm sorry.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Okay, but the bill hasn't passed yet with respect to administrative tribunals, so again this will reflect future funding with respect to administrative tribunals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Madam Boivin. If you have further questions, feel free to send them through us and we would be happy to send them to the department and to the minister to get a response for you.

Our next questioner is from the Conservative Party, Monsieur Goguen.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Minister, and I thank the officials for coming today to what will be a shortened event, but we'll certainly plod through it.

Minister, I'd like to talk to you about Bill C-13, the cyberbullying bill. I know this is something that's close to your heart with the Rehtaeh Parsons issue in your home province.

We've seen an increase in criminal activities on the Internet and we know that youth are especially vulnerable to online exploitation. Their search for acceptance, their perception of anonymity, and the privacy online can also lower their inhibitions, and of course, this leaves them open to manipulation by others. In a recent review of case law involving the offence of online luring of child victims who did report concerns, 75% of the children had already been sexually abused or exploited prior to coming forward.

Canadian parents, we know, do not want their children victims of crime on the Internet or to fall into the hands of some predators. How does this bill balance the need to gather information regarding criminal activity with the need to protect the personal privacy of Canadians?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Goguen. I know that you've also had a long-standing interest in this particular area, as does Mr. Dechert. This bill, we believe, does strike the proper balance, but to be clear, what we're attempting to do here is not to in any way create a new protection for criminal or civil liability for those who voluntarily assist law enforcement. What we are very much attempting to do here, obviously, first and foremost, is to protect people from online criminal activity.

You highlighted, as would I, the importance of protecting children. We know there has been a massive proliferation of hand-held devices and online activity, which, quite frankly, leaves children vulnerable. We've seen extremely insidious behaviour, including luring of children, including the type of very detrimental behaviour that led to the incredible tragic circumstances around the loss of life of Rehtaeh Parsons, Amanda Todd, Todd Loik, and other youth across the country who have suffered tremendous distress, to the point where they took their own lives. I've met with a number of those family members, as I know you have, and the ramifications for this are still being felt certainly in those families and communities.

We've introduced this bill, which is now in a place where it will receive rigorous examination. We have done so after tremendous consultation, not the least of which included a report from my provincial counterparts. We heard quite definitively from our provincial and territorial counterparts about the need to move in this direction.

Again, I want to stress that the provisions here provide protection for those who participate in the provision of information and do so voluntarily, but still they must do so in a way that is consistent with other Criminal Code provisions and other provisions with respect to the handling of information. PIPEDA plays a very important role in determining whether those provisions have been followed to the letter of the law.

Again, I would suggest to you that persons who disclose personal information without a warrant have to do so in accordance with the law. This does not create new protections or in any way afford some sort of blanket protection for individuals to provide private information. That is not the intent of this bill. The intent is to, in fact, buttress the protection for those who may fall prey or may fall victim to online criminality.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you.

By and large, it's safe to say that all parties appear to have accepted the necessity of curbing Internet crime, and of course, sexual abuse online. A number of parties and a rather wide spectrum have backed the government up on this bill. For instance, according to Lianna McDonald from the Centre for Child Protection, Bill C-13:

...will assist in stopping the misuse of technology and help numerous young people impacted and devastated by this type of [crime].

You mentioned Amanda Todd. Carol Todd, the mother of Amanda, who was a victim, declared to Canada AM on November 22, 2013:

I see this as a good step forward because there has to be consequences for actions and instead of this being a grey area; it’s more black and white.

David Butt, counsel for the Kids Internet Safety Alliance, in The Globe and Mail, November 21, 2013, said:

...the new bill is a great improvement over trying to fit the round peg of this particular problem into the square hole of our existing child pornography laws.

This is from Wayne MacKay of Dalhousie's law school:

The Criminal Code is our biggest sanction and making it an offence sends a clear signal.

Allan Hubley, Ottawa city councillor and father of a bullied teen who took his own life, said on Canada AM:

When we were younger, you always knew who your bully was, you could do something about it. Now, up until the time this legislation gets enacted, they can hide behind that.

They have the anonymity. He continues:

Not only does it start to take the mask off of them, through this legislation there is serious consequences for their actions.

So victims are saying it's time for this law to be enacted, and of course, there has been some fear that there would be intrusion into privacy. How is this act and the ability to gather information and evidence on Internet crime balanced with the need to protect privacy?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

In thirty seconds....

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Goguen.

All of those people that you've mentioned are tremendous advocates and very articulate spokespersons for this holistic effort that we've undertaken to protect children generally, but anyone from bullying.

I must say that Lianna MacDonald in the work that she does with the Centre for Child Protection is just an extraordinary individual with an extraordinary organization. So we are working in collaboration with many groups and individuals. There are efforts through the government's Get Cyber Safe campaign. You should also be aware of the NeedHelpNow.ca website that provides direct instruction and help to individuals and families who may be experiencing bullying.

But to your point, we are very much working in partnership with the public and private sectors. We're also, of course, working very closely with police to ensure that we get this balance right, that we do not step over the line, if you will, when it comes to the protection, and the need, the very real need, to protect personal privacy. So tracking individuals with the proper judicial oversight is really no different than the efforts that were made years ago to provide warrants to aid police in their investigations for physical evidence. We're now looking at trying to garner the necessary protections to collect the Internet information and Internet evidence that can be used to forward prosecutions and protect people who need protection.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

Our final questioner, likely before the bells, is Mr. Casey from the Liberal party.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, we're going to be interrupted by the bells. Will you be prepared to come back to complete your hour after the vote is done?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

I do have appointments after 12 noon, but I will endeavour to come back, yes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Can you shed any light on the request that was made of Justice Nadon to resign from the court and join the Quebec bar?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

What do you mean?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

You read the media. You would have read the reports that indicated—