Justice committee  It is. It is our view that racialized accused can use the peremptory challenge to create a more representative jury. We appreciate the position that has been taken on the other side of things, but I do want to mention one thing. This debate, quite rightly, has focused on the over

Justice committee  I appreciate the concern that you've identified. That being said, almost every summary conviction offence will now have two years less a day, so that number is somewhat misleading in that sense. We've offered a second recommendation in respect to sentencing. I think this is one t

Justice committee  Inflationary sentences, immigration consequences, and U.S. border....

Justice committee  Summary conviction offences can only take place in provincial court. Of course, 99% of all criminal cases already take place in provincial court. With the elimination of preliminary inquiries, you can expect more judge-alone trials in provincial court. There's a stacking of probl

Justice committee  We support the hybridization of offences because it offers greater discretion to Crown counsel, and also widens the scope of particular sentences that may be available with certain offences. The conditional sentence order, in particular, is an important example of that. Conditi

Justice committee  With respect to bail, we oppose the reverse onus predominantly for two reasons, but we don't disagree with the evidence you've heard, and there was testimony from earlier witnesses about the fact that this may encourage under-reporting, which is a troubling feature that we obviou

Justice committee  From my personal perspective, money allocated to victim support services is never wasted. As much as we become a bit desensitized to acting in criminal courts and cross-examining and seeing these tragic stories, we can't lose sight of the fact that victims are often going through

Justice committee  Yes. These can be found at page 18 and forward in our brief. We have recommended two changes. One is about the provision that has been put in to suggest that reasons should be offered by the judge to decide not to use technology. We think this is unhelpful because it provides a c

Justice committee  With respect to the choking, what we understand Bill C-75 will accomplish is to create a third route of liability for assault causing bodily harm and/or assault with a weapon—that's the way it's defined—and sexual assault. Instead of proving bodily harm and/or assault with a weap

Justice committee  With respect to supermax offences, it's a similar problem. Choking someone, domestic violence, and multiple convictions are already considered aggravating factors on sentencing, and will be taken into account on sentencing. There is no need to create a supermax penalty regime.

Justice committee  We made submissions in 2014, regarding the first incarnation of this, which was Bill C-452. You will see that some parts of that brief are reproduced in our brief here. The rebuttable presumption is vulnerable under paragraph 11(d) and section 7 of the charter, as a violation of

Justice committee  This point is in response to this secondary discretionary feature that's been built into the regime, whereby administration of justice offences are stacking up and creating a large fine. There is specific discretion to reduce the fine in light of that stacking, but there exists n

Justice committee  If I can just add one thing to that discussion, on page 14 of our main submission, we do cite a study that was conducted of legal aid cases in Manitoba. It showed about a 75% clearance rate after a preliminary inquiry.

Justice committee  Yes, you're right. We do applaud the government for introducing a measure to divert these sorts of cases. As we cite in our main brief, there are about 78,000 such cases every year. Not all of those are related to bail and failure to appear, but many are. Essentially the way we

Justice committee  Economic loss, yes, thank you. What we propose is eliminating all except the physical harm, because there are other ways you can address those other issues, should they be so significant that they do not warrant this sort of response. We can't lose sight of the fact that this is