Public Safety committee  Thank you. I have been practising law for some 38 years. I practise in the “Kingston of the west”, Abbotsford, surrounded by federal and provincial prisons, so part of my practice is not simply representing people charged with offences; it also involves a considerable amount of

Public Safety committee  One last little point then. You should know that many of these other countries don't take the same approach to imprisonment that we do. In the United States, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 abolished rehabilitation as a factor. You don't send people to prison for rehabilitati

Public Safety committee  I understand that the U.S. has complained about Canada's failure to approve people under this treaty, this agreement that we entered into with them some 30 years ago. If you're going to do this, why don't you just abolish the act? Why don't you repeal the International Transfer o

Public Safety committee  It's a mystery to me, because in order to override a constitutional right such as the section 6 right to enter, or your section 7 right to have your liberty affected in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, it usually requires some pressing and substantial govern

Public Safety committee  I'll just add that the minimum requirement under section 7 of the charter is something called “procedural fairness”, where you know you have to tell the person the case against them so they have a fair opportunity to respond. In this section it says whatever “the Minister consi

Public Safety committee  I haven't had a case in which the evidence has supported the denial of a transfer. All of the investigations by the Correctional Service of Canada have usually supported the transfer. They have said that the intelligence information determines that this person is not a threat to

Public Safety committee  No. Usually what I see in the material is that they say, “Oh, it's the U.S. The U.S. is a first world country and therefore its prison system wouldn't threaten the security of people.” That, of course, is completely false. They just closed down California City because of all the

Public Safety committee  We need to have the act, though, or something, simply to determine, first of all, whether the person is a Canadian citizen, so we don't have non-Canadian citizens trying to come to Canada. Secondly, we have to make sure it's an offence in both countries. Obviously if somebody is

Public Safety committee  You should know that the statutory release for the transferred offender is different from what it is for a Canadian offender. Generally, if a person is sentenced in Canada—let's take nine years as a sentence—at three years he or she would be eligible for full parole. It would be

Public Safety committee  Yes, I was counselling that.

Public Safety committee  Yes, and you use—

Public Safety committee  The delay between the time the file has reached the minister's office and then a decision was made in some cases has taken two to three years. There was a huge backlog. I understand the current minister has tried to catch up on the backlog. The people at International Transfers w

Public Safety committee  Well, it isn't all caught up. I have 50 cases in my office and I have at least 15 that are still in the process.

Public Safety committee  Yes. If you're telling me the minister is caught up, I'm very pleased to hear that. I have at least 10 new cases filed, and I'm sure some of them came from those decisions.

Public Safety committee  What if the victim is in the other country where the offence occurred?