Justice Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I said suspend, I'm sorry. I should have said starting a new meeting.

There you go, Madam Boivin.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Exactly. Now that's being on the ball.

I have questions on the supplementary estimates.

Mr. Pentney, I am not sure whether you remember, but during one of your most recent appearances with the minister before the committee, there were people from the

Teslin Tlingit Council. I know that in the supplementaries there are some funds that are added

for the aboriginal justice strategy. I was wondering whether you could give us an update on any related developments.

Is the matter being addressed? I am asking you this because I received a call about it.

Are things moving forward? Have those people started to benefit from the program?

[William F. Pentney]

Thank you for the question.

I think the Teslin Tlingit Council has been receiving funding for years from the aboriginal justice strategy to administer its aboriginal justice program in its community. The objective is to advance negotiations on self-government, but the funding is not directly related to those debates. The program is carried out in the community and is not directly connected to the negotiations. I think discussions are ongoing, but I know the situation is complex.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Is progress being made? Is there an end in sight?

[William F. Pentney]

I think so, but you should ask the Department of Aboriginal Affairs about the status of the discussions.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

My next question is for the new chief administrator of the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada.

Ms. Pelletier, congratulations on your appointment and welcome to our committee.

Many tribunals fall under your responsibility. However, the amount listed for the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada is $1. Considering the amount, it may seem strange for me to be taking the time to ask you questions about it. I told myself that it can be one of two things: there was either a miscalculation somewhere or, because the service is new, the decision was to include it in the budget. I just wanted to make sure that I had a good grasp of the situation and that you would not be required to fulfill your duties relying on a single dollar.

[Marie-France Pelletier, Chief Administrator, Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada]

If that were the case, Christmas presents would be very modest.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Yes, there wouldn't be much of a party either.

[Marie-France Pelletier]

You have understood correctly, Ms. Boivin. Under our enabling legislation, transitional provisions have been set out to give us access to the appropriate budget in various tribunals. That is how we got our funding for this fiscal year. The purpose of the $1 is to have us listed and to reflect the transfer of responsibilities and duties from the tribunals to the new service.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I have practiced labour law a lot, so I am interested in everything to do with administrative tribunals. You have been given a major responsibility. Not all tribunals are alike either.

How is the merger of the administrative services coming along?

[Marie-France Pelletier]

It is coming along very well. I have to recognize the work done by the transition team over the last six or eight months. When I arrived a few weeks ago, I was able to see that a huge amount of work had been done in preparation for the start of operations, which happened on November 1.

The management services of the various tribunals have been brought together now. The work and the mandate of each of the tribunals are very well maintained; the work is being done by the same employees, the ones who were there before November 1.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you.

For the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs, there is an additional budget to pay inquiry costs under the Judges Act. Could you tell me if there are more lawsuits against judges? What exactly is behind that?

[William A. Brooks, Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs]

Merci.

The issue there, and the request for the $1.6 million in supplementary estimates (B), is to support the Canadian Judicial Council, which is one of the mandates of our office, in respect of their conduct and inquiry work this fiscal year. They presently have, or they had until the other day, three ongoing public inquiries into the conduct of judicial judges. These are very serious inquiries that could result in a recommendation that the judges be removed from office. The Douglas inquiry was a very hard fought one.

The $1.6 million was our anticipated best estimate of what the costs would be for these three inquiries for the balance of this fiscal year.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Is it exceptional, as in, is it different from year to year? It seems to be more for this year than previous years.

[William A. Brooks]

It is. Public inquiries are rare. The Canadian Judicial Council receives about 160 complaints against judges a year. Most of them are disgruntled litigants and are easily dealt with. Where there are rare cases where a complaint is sufficiently serious that a finding could result in the removal of a judge from the bench, it's open to the Canadian Judicial Council to require and call a public inquiry into the question. It's unprecedented right now, but there are three on the go, or there were three on the go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Brooks, thank you for being here and answering those questions.

Our next questioner now is Mr. Wilks. I'm sorry for making you wait for five minutes.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I had to recompose myself, but I think I'll get over it.

I'll direct all my questions to Mr. Pentney, and you can divert them how you so choose.

In the supplementary estimates (B) for 2014-15, there was $50,000 in grants provided, and nearly $16 million in contributions for the supporting families fund. Could you describe the various services provided with the funding from these grants and contributions?

[William F. Pentney]

I will kick it off, and some of my colleagues will add more. Supporting families, as the minister had said, is a very important initiative of the federal government in trying to support a holistic approach to family law. Out of that money, about $15 million will be available to provinces to try to support things like mediation programs and family support services. It also supports our employees who administer the programs that the minister mentioned in terms of trying to support parents who are going through this, for example, trying to support parents who are entitled to custody and support payments through a garnishee program so that federal funds that are owed to parents are actually received by the parents who are owed. The money supports on-the-ground programming to help mediation and other services to help families through this process.

It also helps us administer a couple of programs: the garnishee program and the support program. We also run kind of an odd little program that prevents husband and wife from getting divorced in two different provinces at the same time. Given a federal state and provincial courts and given the fact that our court systems are not yet fully automated, to put it mildly, we run a program to try to ensure that there's a central registry of divorce so that, when a divorce proceeding is filed, we can make sure that the couple are only getting divorced in one jurisdiction. It's a practical Canadian solution to an issue.

I don't know if any of my colleagues want to add anything.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Also in the budget 2014, the government proposes extending its investment to the aboriginal justice strategy by $22.2 million over two years. Could you tell us a little bit more about the aboriginal justice strategy and how effective it has been in establishing community-based justice programs?

[William F. Pentney]

I can turn it over to one of my colleagues to provide more, but I can say that one of my first jobs in the Department of Justice was administering that program. You got to go to communities that are in some of the most remote, far-flung, and frankly, desperate situations in all of Canada. You got to see community leaders who have taken on the job actually trying to turn around their communities, and especially their kids, taking those kids whose first contact with the justice system could lead them down the path that we've seen, unfortunately, too many people get on to, and frankly, doing what your parents and my parents did when we were growing up, which was try to get us on another path through a supportive intervention. There are true heroes out there in those communities who are working very hard to try to use their traditional approaches and an alternative approach to diverting, especially first-time, low-level offenders, out of a path and getting them on to a better path.

The other thing I would say is that some of the offenders I encountered when I was in those communities would tell you that doing the ordinary process, and for those who did a bit of jail time, doing some jail time was easier than going home to face mom and dad and the aunts and having to work in the community to restore the harm that they'd done. That was, for them, a much more difficult personal thing to do. When you talked to them a decade later, it still had an impact on them. So many of the people working in these community programs were, in a sense, graduates of the program. The personal impact it had on them turned them around to lead in their own communities.

That's the work that AJS does. We have more information. Don can talk more about the actual impact that the program has had if we have a minute or two.

[Donald Piragoff, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy Sector, Department of Justice]

This is a cost-shared program with the provinces and it serves 275 aboriginal programs in over 800 communities across Canada. The program has been very successful in reducing recidivism: 89% of clients who go into the program successfully complete the aboriginal justice system program. Those who complete the program have significantly lower rates of recidivism. The program has also been very good, as Mr. Pentney said, in terms of diversion. Some of this diversion has been associated with jobs skills training so that these people have actually been diverted into the labour market as opposed to the criminal market. Of course, it also helps in these communities to ensure that they have more functional lives than the lives that they had before they got into the program.

It also saves the criminal justice system significant funds. It's estimated that in 2008-09, it resulted in about $8 million in cost savings to the criminal justice system because it diverted people out of the system as opposed to having to go to trial, expensive trials, etc.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you for those questions and answers.

The next questioner from the Liberal party is Mr. Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Facing this panel of witnesses, I was counting to see if it's the same number of justices on the Supreme Court. With so much legal expertise here in the front of the room, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

My first question is about the Supreme Court.

Mr. Pentney, you may want to refer this to the people from the Supreme Court, but I'll leave that up to you. It's with respect to the Nadon reference. Have the costs associated with the reference been tabulated, and can anyone share them with us?

[William F. Pentney]

I guess I'm not sure what would be included in the cost of the reference, but I will defer to Monsieur Bilodeau, if he knows whether the costs of the.... There would be some costs in terms of Department of Justice counsel time, but that's part of our ongoing operations.

[Captain Kevin Obermeyer, Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Pilotage Authority Canada]

Well, it would possibly depend on which type of expense you're referring to.