Justice committee  We have rates of legal aid province by province. We have the remand rate. I don't know if someone has actually evaluated province by province if there's a correlation between legal aid and remand. As I indicated in the statistics that I did mention, where legal aid is present, court processing times are significantly delayed, which means that if a person is in remand as opposed to on bail, that would definitely have an impact in reducing remand custody time.

Justice committee  I don't have the numbers on hand. If you'd like them, Mr. Rankin, we can get those. There is anecdotal evidence that the number of unrepresented persons is increasing, not only in the criminal justice system but also in the civil system, in particular the family law system.

Justice committee  Well, that's part of it, yes.

Justice committee  No. I mentioned the stats earlier in my presentation. If you're not represented, the trial takes longer.

Justice committee  It means breach of a bail condition while you're out on bail or breach of a probation order.

Justice committee  Those are the two main ones. It's either up front or it's after the sentence and you breach a probation order. The conditions vary. With some police officers and some judges, there could be some 20 conditions on a bail order.

Justice committee  It's kind of boilerplate. The real question is that a number of judges are now talking about more fine-tuning of the conditions to the actual offender, less boilerplate and more custom conditions, which actually makes sense. It really makes no sense to impose a condition on alcoholics that they not drink.

Justice committee  The general crime rate has been going down over the years. Yes.

Justice committee  It would only be supposition on my part but there are a number of things. Mandatory minimum penalties have had the effect of moving people from provincial custody to federal institutions. Some of the sentences at the federal level may be longer. As indicated there has been an increase in the length of sentences as well.

Justice committee  I don't think you can say MMPs have a direct impact on the civil justice system. Clearly MMPs have an impact on the criminal justice system. As I said, people are going to fight the case more if there's a clearly set penalty that they know they have to try to avoid. That, then, of course, might increase trial length or the number of trials, and if people are in custody, then clearly there are charter issues that those people have priority to the trial systems and to court rooms and judges.

Justice committee  We have statistics. I don't have them at my fingertips, but if you'd like I can provide them to the committee. There were six drug courts funded by the federal government as a pilot project. Some cities such as Calgary have their own drug court, which they fund themselves. There's not a uniformity of funding.

Justice committee  We don't have statistics, but we have a lot of anecdotal evidence from individuals in the system, indicating that they feel there's a reticence to actually make bail decisions. Police officers are reluctant to release when they have the power to release, because they're afraid they'd be responsible if the person should offend while out on bail.

Justice committee  There's no one reason. There's likely a combination of reasons. If penalties go up of course they become more severe, and there's more of an inclination to want to fight the case. It's not so much the criminal penalties, it's more the provincial penalties that people want to fight because with the provincial penalties you lose your car.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I am pleased to be here today to talk to the committee about trends in the criminal justice system. I will start by discussing the federal, provincial and territorial partnership, as well as the pressure points within the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system is a partnership between the federal government and the provinces and territories, in which each partner works in its respective areas of jurisdiction.

Justice committee  I am not sure. It depends on whether you are the recipient or the giver, I guess.