Bill C-35 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (reverse onus in bail hearings for firearm-related offences)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide that the accused will be required to demonstrate, when charged with certain serious offences involving firearms or other regulated weapons, that pre-trial detention is not justified in their case and to introduce additional factors relating to firearm offences that the courts must take into account in deciding whether an accused should be released or detained pending trial.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

What we've provided for you is essentially the volume, the number of incidents that are specific to the Bill C-35 legislation. From that you can get a sense of the volume of these types of offences that were taking place in 2005.

[Craig Grimes]

It becomes a presentation issue, because I may have a case with four or five charges and I'm trying to present those in two dimensions.

We can describe the cases, as we've done in this deck, in terms of the most serious offence. One of the characteristics of the cases for this deck is a Bill C-35 offence, and we can describe whether or not the Bill C-35 offence also had a conviction. We can do those things, but it becomes a presentation issue in a deck like this.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

Just for clarification purposes, what you'll find on slides 2 and 3 are offences involving firearms that are covered under the Bill C-35 legislation—robbery with a firearm, discharge of a firearm with intent to cause bodily harm, and a series of weapons-trafficking offences covered under Bill C-35.

On page 2—that has national coverage—you can also see the number within those overall offences that were cleared by charge by the police.

In slide 3, this is a subset of police services, but these are offences involving firearms as listed in Bill C-35, for clarification purposes.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

What I can do from the point of view of Statistics Canada is provide you with information relevant for your consideration. I cannot speak beyond that point. I can tell you the number of incidents that occurred in 2005 for a Bill C-35-related offence. I can tell you the number of court cases that were disposed of in 2003-04 for a Bill C-35-related offence. I can tell you about conviction rates and I can tell you about remands. That's what I can tell you.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Chair, I want to express my complete astonishment. This is the second time that, as parliamentarians, we have been asked to vote on bills without being given convincing and conclusive data. This is not the fault of the people before us, although they could have provided us with more details. I do not understand how the government can submit a bill to members of Parliament when we do not know the real extent of the bail granted by the courts. I have to say that it is beyond me how we can ask people to do thorough work when we do not even have statistics. This proves that Bill C-35 is all about ideology, and that it is not based on any statistical reality in the administration of justice. I am disappointed because I have a high opinion of you, but we cannot work like this.

Nevertheless, let us try to see what kind of information we need. I am going to provide Mr. Petit with all kinds of fond memories, since he has appeared before the courts often. Subsection 515(6) of the Criminal Code states that the burden of proof is reversed for seven offences, including indictable offences, terrorism and violations of conditions, and that the judge will not grant bail. Otherwise, the person is released.

So I thought we were talking about release on bail.

I want to come back to some specific questions on the figures that you have prepared. When the burden of proof is reversed and there are grounds to believe that evidence will be destroyed, that the person is a security threat, or that he will not appear at his trial—it is all in subsection 515(10) of the Criminal Code—he must not be granted bail. This is the bill we are discussing. The government says that we are going to reverse the onus for seven other offences. The seven offences that it wants to add to subsection 515(6) are robbery, discharge of a firearm, weapons trafficking, kidnapping, attempted murder, extortion and sexual assault.

On pages 2 and 3, you list the seven offences that will be added to subsection 515(6). I suppose that the figure 3,505 indicates the number of charges that have been laid by the police or the Crown. Of the 3,505 counts of robbery, 1,117 have been by indictment, and therefore not by summary procedure.

Is that what these figures mean?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

So you're unable to say whether or not the end result would be different. If we had the statistics, it might show that 75% of people who are being accused with Bill C-35 types of offences right now are being refused bail. Nobody can say. I can go out in the public and say that and nobody could contradict me. The only thing you could say is, “We don't have the statistics to show whether what she's saying is true or not”, and people could choose to believe me. Someone else could go out and say, “Every single person charged with a firearm-related offence that comes under Bill C-35 gets bail”, and we would not be in a position to contradict them, except to say, “Well, we haven't seen any hard facts to back it up”.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Right. The bottom line is this. While you can tell us how many people, year by year, are being charged with at least one offence that is listed in Bill C-35, you're unable to tell us what percentage, year by year, of these individuals get bail, win their bail, are able to convince a judge that they can remain in the wider community while awaiting trial and not be a danger to the community. You're unable to provide us with that information. As a result of that, it then means that while we can safely assume that a minimum of 871 cases of Bill C-35 types of offences would exist as a result of Bill C-35, therefore, there would be a reverse onus on 871 individuals accused—because you're talking about cases in which there is at least one, so I'm assuming we're talking about approximately 800-and-something.

Let's just say “the accused”, because I see Ms. Barr-Telford shaking her head. So somebody might be up on several cases.

Is it time?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you.

Given the statements that you've just made, because of the way the court dockets are actually produced, you're unable to say what percentage of people, year by year, are brought up. You can tell us how many are brought up on Bill C-35 types of offences, but you're unable to tell us what percentage get bail before going to trial, or do not get bail but at some point before there's an actual judgment in their case are released into the community. Is that the reason, when one attempts to find scientific evidence, actual longitudinal studies about whether or not bail itself is effective, about whether or not it's an actual effective tool in the deterrence of crime, in effective justice, in effectively protecting communities, that we're unable to find any serious research, at least here in Canada, that has been done on that over the years? Is it because the statistics are not there? Statistics Canada doesn't have any. Is that it?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Sorry. If 100 people went to court today on a Bill C-35 offence, without this bill, how many would stay in custody until the trial and how many would get out?

[Craig Grimes]

Being a reverse onus offence under Bill C-35, we have 871 cases. Notwithstanding the possibility of having two cases for one individual, the number would be 871, less those who were able to prove that they should be allowed to have remand.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Let's not get into that. I don't want the technical details. Could you just tell me approximately, if you could guess or extrapolate, how many of those people today, if they went to court on a Bill C-35 offence, would get bail and how many wouldn't, or how many get out and how many wouldn't? I'd like just a rough estimate from all the statistics you have.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

If I understand your question correctly, we can tell you, for any given year that we have in the data in chart 8, the daily count, the average count of those who are in the non-sentenced custody. We can provide you information on those counts. What we can't tell you is the number of individuals or the number who are in remand for an offence that is particular to a Bill C-35 offence.

Craig can talk a bit about some of the difficulties we have in the data in terms of identifying, by the section and subsection of the Criminal Code, these particular offences.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

So you can't tell us the percentage. We're doing a bill that will put more people in prison while they're awaiting trial. We can't tell how many people are in custody, what percentage of people are in custody now on Bill C-35 offences, if it's 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40%.

We can assume, I guess, from that chart at the end, where it's going up, that even without this bill we're keeping more and more of them in prison before trial. But you can't tell us specific numbers, whether we're keeping 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, or 60% of persons who go, to see whether they'll get out before their trial or not.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

The next slide that you see documents the length of time served in remand following release from the remand facility. The footnote to the slide notes excluded jurisdictions. We've seen an increase in the length of time spent in remanded custody over the past decade, and this is an important factor in the changing composition of the provincial-territorial custodial population.

Between 1995-96 and 2004-05, the proportion of adults who served less than a week in remand decreased from 66% to 53%. The proportion of adults who spent between 30 days and three months in remand during the past decade increased from 10% to 15%. The proportion who served more than three months in remand nearly doubled, going from 4% to 7%.

To summarize, we see that robbery with a firearm makes up the large majority of Bill C-35 offences, and the rate of robbery with a firearm is down about 50% over the past decade. There were 871 cases disposed of in adult court in 2003-04, with a Bill C-35 offence identified, and robbery accounted for over 40% of these cases. The overall conviction rate for cases with a Bill C-35 offence was 40%, and 31% where the Bill C-35 charge was the most serious offence. Adults in non-sentenced custody represented more than half of the adults in provincial-territorial custody in 2004-05.

Thank you.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

Absolutely.

Let's repeat that for offences that resulted in a conviction, the rate of imprisonment was 85% and the average prison sentence was 1,554 days.

Also not included on the slide, but further information, the average case processing time for the cases where a Bill C-35 offence was the most serious offence was 227 days.

I'll ask the committee to turn to slide 8. This provides information on remand and other temporary detention coming from our Correctional Service program. We've seen a decline in the provincial-territorial sentence custody population, and it's coincided with an increase in the non-sentence custody remand population. This has dramatically shifted the composition of adults in custody in provincial-territorial jails.

In 1995-96, adults in non-sentence custody represented 28% of all those in provincial-territorial custody.