Bill S-251 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (independence of the judiciary) and to make related amendments

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to give a court the discretion to vary the punishment to be imposed in respect of an offence for which the punishment or different degrees or kinds of punishment is prescribed in an enactment.
It allows a court to decide to not make a mandatory prohibition order provided for under a provision of that Act, or to add conditions or vary any of the conditions set out in that provision, if the court considers it just and reasonable to do so. It requires the court to provide its reasons for making such a decision.
It requires a court to consider all available options prior to imposing a minimum punishment of imprisonment or period of parole ineligibility under a provision of that Act, and to provide written reasons for imposing a minimum punishment of imprisonment or period of parole ineligibility.
It gives a court discretion in the treatment or counselling program that a person who has been found guilty of an offence may attend and removes the requirement for the Attorney General to give his or her consent in order to delay sentencing under subsection 720(2) of that Act.
It further provides that a court may order the payment of a victim surcharge in an amount lower than that set out in subsection 737(2) of that Act or order that no victim surcharge be imposed if the court considers it appropriate in the circumstances and is satisfied that the amount set out in that subsection cannot be paid. It requires the court to provide its reasons for making such an order.
It provides that a judge is to take into consideration the recommendation of the jury in setting the period of parole ineligibility of a person who has been found guilty of first or second degree murder.
Lastly, it makes related amendments.

Criminal Code

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, when I made my speech on Bill C-75 at second reading, I mentioned that we were eager to work with the government to improve the bill. I am disappointed to report not enough was done to enable us to support this legislation. The government's stated goal was to reduce court delays in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision in Jordan and to continue with trial fairness imperatives. I am afraid the bill comes up short on both counts.

This was a 302-page bill so I will not be able to address in my short time the questions I wanted to. However, I would like to speak on four themes very briefly. First, the failure to address mandatory minimum penalties; second, the hybridization issues we have heard about; third, restrictions on preliminary inquiries; and fourth, the patchwork approach to agent representation. These are among the many issues we heard testimony on at the justice committee.

We heard testimony that the measures proposed would, in fact, make matters worse in many cases. I will elaborate. Most of the action in criminal justice in Canada takes place in the provincial courts, and hybridizing offences and pushing more cases onto to those courts is hardly a solution that is going to make things better.

However, I commend the government for a number of things. I commend it for deleting the routine police evidence provision that was agreed to be problematic at the committee. I am pleased we, at the committee, persuaded the government to change that odious provision. I am also pleased to have moved, along with my colleague, the hon. member for Edmonton Centre, a provision that would repeal the bawdy house provisions and vagrancy sections of the Criminal Code that have been used so often to criminalize consensual sexual activities, particularly among the LGBTQ2 community.

However, there were hundreds of amendments brought to the committee and a number of them were not accepted. For example, the New Democratic Party brought 17 amendments to committee designed to help vulnerable people impacted by our justice system. None of them were accepted by the government.

Every day there are real people who are self-represented. They cannot afford lawyers and there is not enough legal aid in this world to represent them. Who are these people? They are primarily indigenous, poor and marginalized. It is our submission that this bill simply does not do enough to address their realities.

Many of the stakeholders we consulted have told us that the key reforms in Bill C-75 are not evidenced-based at all. The stated objective of this bill is to respond to the Jordan judgment, with its mandatory time limits, yet there is considerable doubt the changes proposed would speed up the criminal justice system. Arguably, they would have the opposite effect.

The Liberals claim that this is somehow bold criminal justice reform, yet the elephant in the room is that they failed entirely to address former prime minister Harper's regime of mandatory minimum sentences, despite their political promises and public commitments to do so. Defence lawyers and legal academics agree the reversal of this practice would have been a huge step to unclogging the delays in the system, yet the Liberals failed utterly to even address the topic at all. We believe we need to deal with the root causes of the delays, things like addiction and poverty issues, which are really the root of the crime we are dealing with.

Let me start with mandatory minimums. This is one thing that would have increased compliance with Jordan and alleviated court burden from multiple charter challenges, and it is unfathomable why the Liberals ducked this issue. So many people came to our committee and talked about it. I do not have time to list them all but they included, from Barreau du Québec, Dr. Marie-Eve Sylvestre, who is a professor at the University of Ottawa, and Jonathan Rudin of Aboriginal Legal Services. I could go on and on. All of these people have spoken out about the failure to address mandatory minimums.

There are so many quotes I do not have time to address, but Jonathan Rudin, who is the program director for Aboriginal Legal Services reminded us that even the justice minister herself acknowledged the issues with mandatory minimum sentencing, saying, “This government knows that mandatory minimum sentences do not work.” She spoke eloquently on this issue on September 29, 2017, almost a year ago.

The justice minister said:

There is absolutely no doubt that MMPs have a disproportionate effect on Indigenous people, as well as other vulnerable populations. The data are clear. The increased use of MMPs over the past decade has contributed to the overrepresentation in our prison system of Indigenous people, racialized communities and female offenders. Judges are well-equipped to assess the offender before them and ensure that the punishment fits the crime.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in this bill to address that issue.

I am pleased that Senator Kim Pate has introduced Bill S-251, sponsored by my colleague, the member for Saskatoon West, which provides for judicial discretion to depart from the mandatory sentence when it would be just to do so. Then the opportunities for plea bargaining when judges have the discretion that they used to have, as all the experts have said, would go a great deal of distance to solve the issue of delays.

I do not have time to do much with the issue of hybridization. I think there has been enough said about that, and in the interests of time I will skip that.

I will say that Emilie Taman, one of the witnesses, a prominent lawyer in Ottawa, said this:

Indeed, of the 136 indictable offences that are to be reclassified as hybrid by virtue of Bill C-75, 95 are offences punishable by five or ten years. Consequently, this Bill now gives the Crown, rather than the accused, control over whether trial by jury is on the table for these 95 offences. This is problematic because the Crown’s exercise of discretion is done without transparency and is only reviewable on the very high standard of abuse of process.

In other words, we are giving the Crown counsel of the land the ability to make up their minds about which way to go in the privacy of their offices. Contrast that with judicial discretion, where in open court judges decide whether the penalty fits the crime. How different. How far we have come and how far away we are from justice. The potential for bias is real.

I believe that time will not allow me to do much more, but I am so enticed by what the hon. parliamentary secretary said about preliminary inquires that, in the interest of time, I want to address that issue head-on.

The government appears to believe that restricting preliminaries will save court time and protect vulnerable witnesses. The Canadian Bar Association, the Criminal Lawyers' Association, the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, and the Alberta Crown Attorneys' Association are among the witnesses that utterly disagree with the parliamentary secretary.

We heard considerable testimony about preliminaries actually reducing court delay. We heard extensive, compelling testimony that preliminary inquiries are a necessary tool to preserve trial fairness.

The Criminal Lawyers' Association of Ontario said:

Eliminating preliminary inquiries for all cases other than those for which a maximum period of imprisonment of life is available will not further the interests of justice or assist with the orderly and efficient administration of criminal justice. The Committee should recommend that these changes not be made.

I had a dozen quotes to give on this, but I think my favourite witness was Professor Lisa Silver of the University of Calgary's faculty of law. She said that we have to protect people from having a trial where none is necessary and that the “preliminary inquiry, at its core, exists as the legislative 'shield' between the accused and the Crown.”

She gave an example, a story which members may well remember, that of Susan Nelles, a nurse at the cardiac ward at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, who was accused of murdering children. During the preliminary inquiry, they found a complete lack of evidence. The result was the charges were dropped. The result, in Professor Silver's view, was that preliminary inquiries are a vital step in ensuring due process and fair trials.

The other issue I want to talk about involves restricting agent representation. Upping the penalty for summary offences to two years less a day is going to have an adverse effect for agent representation across our country. I am talking about law students, paralegals and other agents that currently represent a large “gap population”, as they are called, in our country. There are many individuals who simply do not qualify for legal aid and are too poor to afford a lawyer.

The government has decided it is up to the provinces and territories to regulate what type of agent can represent what crime. This is not co-operative federalism; this is creating a patchwork effect to justice across Canada. Access to appropriate counsel should not depend on where people live, but now it will. We have student legal aid services, people such as Lisa Cirillo, Suzanne Johnson and Doug Ferguson, who asked the government to reverse the measure that would limit agent representation, and yet nothing appears to have been done on that point.

Let me be clear. An unrepresented accused will absolutely increase court delay and deprive that person of his or her right to a proper trial. It often forces the Crown and judges into an uncomfortable position where they must occasionally advise, assist and support the self-represented accused when this is contrary to their official role in the process.

We proposed a number of changes to increase jury representativeness. They were rejected. Professor Kent Roach talked about the shameful situation of juries, such as the failure to have any indigenous jurors on the Gerald Stanley case, and suggested, as did the Criminal Lawyers' Association that we have the ability to look at the jury and the judge given the discretion to decide whether it was representative or indeed embarrassing. That was rejected by my colleagues.

I am sorry I do not have time to say much more, but I will say this. There is a real opportunity lost. We do not do comprehensive criminal justice reform very often in our country. The Liberals brought in a 302-page bill. Some of the key issues I have addressed will only exacerbate the problem before us, making less justice and further delays. There are some things in this bill we like, but on balance we have to say, sadly, we cannot support it.

[Joel Hechter, Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Thanks for inviting me to make these submissions.

These days, it can sometimes feel a bit like the world's going to hell in a handbasket and there's nothing you can do about it. I suspect each of you ran for office because you wanted to do something about it. You want to make things better for your families, just like I do. I'd be a terrible politician, but as a lawyer and a father, I'm here to try to help so that the Canada my son grows up in has the best possible system of criminal justice.

Because I have only a few minutes to address you in these opening submissions, please forgive my bluntness. There are a few good measures in Bill C-75, but much of it, from where I sit, appears arbitrary. I'm very concerned that if it passes in anything close to its current form, it will do far more harm than good, which is really too bad.

In respect of the consultation that's taken place, I have been looking at some of the evidence you guys have already heard, and I've read some of the briefs that have been submitted to the committee. Had this been the process before the bill was tabled, I suspect it would have come out quite differently. The government would have had the benefit of thoughtful submissions from criminal lawyers who spend every day dealing with these issues. Now that it has passed second reading, however, the government has poured a lot of political capital into it, and I worry that despite your commitment to do what is right, what I'm about to say may fall on deaf ears.

My principal recommendation is this: Don't rush this.

When you step back and take a look at this bill from a distance, a pattern emerges. Bill C-75 gives greater discretion to police officers and Crown prosecutors, restricts the discretion available to accused persons and their representatives, and fails to restore the discretion that was taken away from judges by the Harper mandatory minimums.

On that last point, we all know that Senator Kim Pate managed to draft what I think is a fairly simple fix to the mandatory minimums several months ago in Bill S-251. You take out the preamble and the explanatory notes, and that bill's three pages long, including both official languages. It's simple, elegant, drafted to stand the test of time. As you know, a week later, your colleague Sheri Benson, NDP member for Saskatoon West, proposed a similar solution with Bill C-407.

I was really disappointed to see that after nearly three years of studying this issue the government has not tabled anything in this bill to deal with those mandatory minimums. I say this with a bit of sadness, but also with respect. I submit that the government's actions may speak louder than the words they're using to describe this bill. What does this action, this Bill C-75, say? It says that a lot of trust is being reposed in police officers and Crowns, which in certain circumstances is perfectly reasonable.

But let's look at what that actually means. If the bill passes in its current form, officers will have a lot more discretion for dealing with breaches, for example. Permitting officers to give evidence in writing, which Mr. Sewell was just talking about, maybe without even being cross-examined is a breathtaking expression of trust. For their part, Crowns are going to be entrusted to decide what procedural protections are available to accused persons in a much wider scope of cases.

I'm not pulling this trust thing out of thin air. As parliamentary secretary, Mr. Mendicino, who is no longer part of this committee but was until recently, made it clear in the House that Bill C-75 is meant to increase the Crown's ability to exercise informed discretion on a case-by-case basis. That's one big reason why the government is hybridizing so many more offences.

He said this shortly after suggesting in the House of Commons on the same day—and this was June 5, 2018, in response to a question from Elizabeth May about routine police evidence—that defence counsels suffer from bad judgment and quibble over immaterial things.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Crown discretion is a bad thing. We know that Crown discretion is a key part of a properly functioning judicial system, of a criminal justice system. But as the Supreme Court made clear in a case called Bain back in 1992, basic rights cannot depend on the continuous exemplary conduct of the Crown. That case, interestingly enough, was about peremptory challenges and stand-asides. At the time, the Crown had significantly more opportunities to affect jury composition than the defence. The Supreme Court said that this was inconsistent with subsection 11(d) of the charter.

By contrast to all that additional discretion granted to agents of the state, Bill C-75 takes away from my colleagues and me basic tools that we use to ensure that justice is done fairly. Our role as a check against abuse is significantly constrained. To be clear, abuse does sometimes happen. That's why in my brief, which I know you all got this morning and so you may not have had a chance to read it, I recommend enacting a criminal provision prohibiting non-disclosure.

The justifications for this bill that I see in Hansard don't make a lot of sense in a free and democratic society. Take this idea of sparing witnesses from having to testify twice. If you take that to its logical conclusion, complainants would be spared even more if we moved straight from arrest to conviction without the need for a trial. We'd also save a lot of time and a lot of money, but that's not what a fair system of criminal justice does.

If we look south of the border, the United States Supreme Court talked about the need to ensure the integrity of the fact-finding process through things like appropriate cross-examination. This is from a case, Coy v. Iowa, from 1988 in the Supreme Court. It said that while the process “may, unfortunately, upset the truthful rape victim or abused child...by the same token it may [also] confound and undo the false accuser, or reveal the child coached by a malevolent adult.” The court concludes that passage by saying, “It is a truism that constitutional protections have costs.”

Our system of criminal justice is not exactly the same as the Americans', nor should it be, but that case says something universal. We don't have trials because they're convenient. They're not. Nor are they generally much fun for the people involved. They can be expensive and in rare cases they can take a long time.

I can assure you, despite what you may have heard, that the defence bar is not complacent about that. The overwhelming majority of accused persons want the whole process over as quickly as possible, but not at the cost of injustice.

While cases with a preliminary inquiry often do take longer than those without, that's no reason to abolish most preliminary inquiries. It's simply a reflection of the fact that more complex cases tend to be the ones that require prelims to ensure that the subsequent trial is fair. Every Canadian accused of a crime, not just those facing a life sentence, rightly expects to have a fair trial.

Perfection is always going to be unattainable, but procedures that support fair trials are critical to preventing wrongful convictions. In many Canadian criminal cases, a well-conducted prelim is what makes the subsequent trial fair. Cross-examination as a right is a cornerstone of fairness in free and democratic societies around the world, so I urge you to carefully consider the consequences of passing Bill C-75 as is. It will take years of expensive litigation to undo the damage, during which time a number of innocent people will almost certainly lose liberty as a direct result of the bill. Fix it now and you can prevent that.

Thank you.

[Paul-Matthieu Grondin]

I will be presenting in French, for those who might need to use an earpiece.

Mr. Chair, Vice-Chairs, distinguished members of the committee, my name is Paul-Matthieu Grondin and I am the Batônnier du Québec.

As the Chair has said, I am accompanied by Pascal Lévesque, who is the president of our Criminal Law Committee, an advisory committee, and Nicolas Le Grand Alary, who is a lawyer in the Secretariat of the Order and Legal Affairs.

We thank you for the invitation.

The Barreau du Québec is testifying before you today on Bill C-75 with great interest.

As a professional order, the Barreau du Québec's mission is to ensure the protection of the public. The Barreau is impelled to demonstrate this mission because of the significant amendments, both to criminal procedure and the administration of criminal justice in Canada.

With that said, we are grateful to you for inviting the Barreau to share with you its position on the subjects that follow.

First, the Barreau reiterates its opposition to minimum terms of imprisonment, except for the most serious cases, such as murder. Minimum sentences remove the flexibility in properly applying the principle of proportional sentencing from those in the front line, meaning prosecutors, defence counsel and trial judges. Consequently, the Barreau would have liked to see measures on mandatory minimum prison sentences in this bill.

Imposing minimum punishments may, in the short term, provide some sense of security for the public. In the long term, however, these measures are counterproductive for the justice system. Prosecutors lose an incentive to bring an accused to plead guilty when the circumstances surrounding the commission of an offence justify a punishment that would be under the mandatory minimum. Conversely, when the prosecution asks for a sentence in cases where it would be justified to impose slightly more than the minimum sentence, the courts tend, in those cases, to keep to the minimum sentence.

The bill would have been a good opportunity to abandon those types of punishments, which do not promote an efficient and flexible administration of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, we acknowledge that we will have to wait for next time.

The Barreau du Québec believes that it is urgent for the government to amend the Criminal Code to give courts the residual discretionary power to not impose a mandatory minimum punishment.

But we note the introduction of two bills that seek to give this discretion to the courts. These are Bill S-251, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (independence of the judiciary) and to make related amendments and Bill C-407, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing). The measures in these bills could be included in Bill C-75 to address the issue of mandatory minimum punishments.

Persons before the court have the right to this constitutional protection. In addition, each accused or each party would no longer have to bear the heavy burden of a constitutional challenge right up to the Supreme Court.

Mandatory minimum punishments can be profoundly unfair in some cases. This is because the only possible penalty is imprisonment, while sometimes other solutions may encourage rehabilitation and thus reduce the risk of reoffending. Judges must be trusted to apply the law in a fair and equitable manner, ensuring that sentences are proportionate to the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

Our second subject is the removal of the preliminary inquiry. The bill proposes to restrict preliminary inquiries to offences punishable by life imprisonment. It also strengthens the power of justices to limit the issues explored to specific matters and restrict the number of witnesses who may be heard.

The Barreau du Québec opposes this amendment. By limiting the use of preliminary inquiries, some argue that we can speed up the judicial process and thus reduce delays. We believe that limiting preliminary inquiries in this way would be ineffective or even counterproductive.

It is important to realize that, according to Statistics Canada, only 3% of eligible cases were the subject of a preliminary inquiry. Of the cases that caused delays beyond the thresholds established by the Cody and Jordan decisions, only 7% included a preliminary inquiry. Apart from anecdotal events, there is no evidence to conclude that preliminary inquiries create undue delays in the justice system, or the need to amend the current rules.

It is also important to mention that, in some cases, preliminary inquiries can test the strength of each party's position. This encourages the settlement of cases, thus avoiding trials on the merits and contributing to the reduction of delays. For example, evidence of an offence may be based on proof by testimony. A preliminary inquiry may be of benefit to both the accused and the prosecution, as they may be able to assess the credibility of those witnesses. This may encourage one or other of the parties to want to settle the matter by pleading guilty or by withdrawing the charges.

We are aware that some may abuse this step and thus unduly lengthen procedures. However, the Barreau du Québec wishes to point out that judges already have many powers of case management. The Supreme Court has invited them to use those powers time and time again. They must be used to define the scope of the inquiry and prevent abuse. Otherwise, we risk abandoning a stage of the criminal proceeding that remains relevant to the search for more efficient justice.

In addition, the Barreau du Québec is proposing an additional measure. It is all well and good to point out problems, but sometimes, we must also talk about solutions. This additional measure involves adding to the Criminal Code the possibility, with the consent of the accused, of replacing preliminary inquiries with our-of-court questioning. Pilot projects in this area have been set up in several judicial districts in Quebec and have proven their worth. This means not having to deal with the cumbersome legal system. Codifying these practices will allow them to extend across Canada, help to reduce delays in criminal practice and improve the efficiency of the justice system.

I will now deal with the elimination of peremptory challenges in jury selection.

The bill abolishes the peremptory challenging of jurors. This measure appears to be inspired by a highly publicized trial in Saskatchewan, where the jury selected did not reflect the diversity of the community where the trail was being held.

The Barreau du Québec considers that the measure proposes in the bill misses the mark. Of course, we find it deplorable that—as sometimes occurs—some lawyers use peremptory requests as a tactic to systematically disqualify prospective jurors for discriminatory reasons such as race or ethnicity.

However, we consider that simply abolishing peremptory challenges is not the answer. Peremptory challenges are always useful for litigants who are familiar with jury trials. Here is why. Lawyers can perceive, through the appearance, the words and the non-verbal language of prospective jurors, that they will not have the capacity to listen sufficiently objectively to the evidence to be presented and to make an impartial judgment on that evidence. They also ensure that the accused accepts the legitimacy of the jury and, by extension, the verdict and the sentence that will be pronounced. It is also important to mention that peremptory challenges are often made with the consent of both parties. That is important to keep in mind.

The Barreau de Québec agrees, however, that the composition of jurors must reflect the diversity of Canadian society. We therefore propose that the Criminal Code be amended so that one party or the other may request the judge to steer the composition of the jury when one party appears to be making peremptory challenges in bad faith, or when the jury, for other reasons, is not representative of the community. By holding a hearing to that effect, could appoint jurors to ensure that some members come from diverse backgrounds. Once again, I feel that it is important to mention that, when peremptory challenges are used, the vast majority of lawyers use them in good faith.

I will now talk about the impacts of the amendments to the Superior Court of Appeal.

The Barreau du Québec is afraid that significantly increasing the number of hybrid cases and imposing a one-year limitation period on summary conviction offences may have potential impacts on appeals in Superior Court.

We therefore want to make sure that there will be more resources for superior courts so that they will be able to handle the increased volume of cases without increasing the delays that we actually want to reduce. But I feel that it is important to emphasize that we are in general agreement with increasing the number of hybrid cases. That is a very good thing.

As for replacing some of the terms in the constitutive provisions of offences, we note that, for a number of offences, the adverb “wilfully” or the expression “with intent to” have been replaced by “knowingly”. We question the scope of these changes.

Is this a simple exercise in semantics, as in R. v. Sault Ste. Marie, which uses “wilfully” and “knowingly” as synonyms? Or is rather a desire to change these offences so that they go from specific intent offences to general offences?

The change in wording suggests that the intent is to change the applicable criteria, since, as the Supreme Court has stated, “the legislator does not speak for nothing.” The amendments are therefore likely to cause both difficulties in interpretation and disputes.

I will now address the proposal to permit only prosecutors from filing charges.

In addition to what is provided for in the bill, the Barreau du Québec recommends that charges for Criminal Code offences should be filed only by prosecutors. It is often the case that charges are dropped for lack of evidence or because of exculpatory evidence brought to the attention of the authorities. In addition, charges may be laid despite their technical or unimportant nature, despite the fact that it may not be appropriate to do so in the interests of justice. To reduce this risk, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Quebec have chosen to grant the power to lay charges to prosecutors only.

In Quebec, this measure is all the more effective because prosecutors have discretionary power, when circumstances warrant, to apply an alternative, such as to handle the case non-judicially, or with alternative measures, when a person admits responsibility.

So pre-charge screening by prosecutors reduces delays by unclogging the system of some of the cases that can be handled alternatively without harming the public interest, or that would likely would not have been successful at trial. As the Supreme Court of Canada stated in R. v. Sciascia, this practice assists the extremely overburdened justice system.

With the agreement of the provinces and territories, since we are dealing with the administration of justice, this rule should be enshrined in legislation to standardize the practice across Canada. At very least, it should encourage the use of pre-charge screening, as does subsection 23(1) of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, that is an overview of the principal issues that the Barreau du Québec wanted to discuss with you as part of the consultations on Bill C-75. The brief we have submitted to you contains more detailed explanations of the various issues we have just presented. The brief is also available on the Barreau's website. We hope that our presentation will provide you with food for thought.

In our reflections, we have deliberately highlighted the parts of the bill that we would like to be amended. But I would still like to point out that the bill contains a lot of good things. However, to channel the discussion and to use our time effectively, we have focused our thoughts on the places where we believe that amendments should be made.

We are now able to answer your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you, Minister, and thanks to your officials as well for being with us today. It won't surprise you that I'm going to ask about something that has been called the elephant in the room in your criminal justice reforms, namely, the failure to address mandatory minimum penalties.

As you know, call to action number 32 in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report called on you to “amend the Criminal Code to allow trial judges, upon giving reasons, to depart from mandatory minimum sentences and restrictions on the use of conditional sentences”. It pointed out that this would assist in particularly addressing the specific needs of indigenous offenders.

Indeed, to my astonishment, the correctional investigator of Canada last year stated that although the first nation population of Canada is about 5%, fully over one-quarter of prisoners are indigenous, and in respect of indigenous women, over one-third of our incarcerated Canadians are indigenous. It was suggested that to address mandatory minimums would have a very positive effect on what I call the crisis of overrepresentation.

Today I had a press conference with my colleague, member of Parliament Sheri Benson, who tabled a private member's bill, Bill C-407, which is similar, by the way, to Senator Kim Pate's recently tabled Bill S-251. I should add that bill was prompted by high school students from Saskatoon, who chose this important measure as their primary suggested change in Canadian law. In the audience today, I recognize Brody Beuker and Camilo Silva, who drafted that bill, who helped in drafting that important measure.

Last, Minister, it was reported that fully over two-thirds of all charter challenges in the courts—256 charter challenges in the courts—are mandatory minimum sentence challenges. Imagine how much time and money it's taking to address that issue alone.

Minister, you came to office almost two years ago, and in a Globe and Mail article in November, you promised that new legislation on mandatory minimums was coming soon, “certainly in the early part of next year”. That was in the early part of last year.

My question for you is, will you be moving forward in a timely way with your commitment to address this crisis in over-incarceration of indigenous Canadians by way of fixing the mandatory minimums? Also, will you commit today to adopt the bills that I referenced earlier—the private member's bill, Bill C-407 , and the Senate bill, Bill S-251—or perhaps include them in Bill C-75 so we can address this important issue?