Bill C-3 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Judges Act and the Criminal Code

This enactment amends the Judges Act to restrict eligibility for judicial appointment to persons who undertake to participate in continuing education on matters related to sexual assault law and social context. It also amends the Judges Act to provide that the Canadian Judicial Council should report on seminars offered for the continuing education of judges on matters related to sexual assault law and social context. Finally, it amends the Criminal Code to require that judges provide reasons for decisions in sexual assault proceedings.

Judges Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, to continue on from the member's last statement, would he not then agree that it would be advisable for the Conservative Party to use one of its days of opposition motions to continue the debate on the broader issue of the impact of sexual assault?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Madam Speaker, no. Obviously, the government has a lot of opportunity to talk about this and we are pleased to talk about this business. We thank the government for bringing it forward.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my privilege and honour to rise in my place to add my voice to this very important debate. It has been five years since I was elected, and in those five years I have worked a lot on issues regarding the court system, its handling of sexual assault and human trafficking cases and how to get justice for victims.

This bill is a substantial departure for the Liberals, so I thank them for bringing it forward. Typically, when the Liberals try to fix the justice system, they reduce sentencing. That has been their road map. We saw that with Bill C-75 in the last Parliament. Their solution to fixing backlogs in the court system was to reduce sentencing, and they have been unwilling to take on the justice system and say they get things wrong. On this side of the House, we have been ready to say a certain decision was wrong or was not good enough, or we brought in mandatory minimum sentences to try to fix many of the outrageous deficiencies in the justice system.

This bill is a departure for the Liberals, so I welcome it. They are acknowledging that there is an issue in the court system, a lack of appreciation for victims in the court system. This bill goes some of the way to help that along and fix some of the problems.

I would like to step back a bit. Statistics have been brought up several times. I have been in the House of Commons all morning listening to the speeches, and the stats on sexual assault continue to be brought up. We should be working to have a society in which sexual assault does not happen. If sexual assault did not happen, we would not be talking about conviction rates and that kind of thing. We could have a law on the books for sexual assault and it would not happen, and, therefore, whether judges were educated on this issue would be a moot point because they would not be dealing with those cases.

That said, the rate of sexual assault across the country is going up dramatically, and in other areas of my work in this place I put forward some ideas on why that is. Motion No. 47 was passed in the last Parliament. It addressed misogynistic and sexually explicit material online and how that was impacting Canadian society. There was some good work done at the committee, but the government has failed to capitalize on the committee report, the voices of people who have been victimized and the voices of academics working in this area. They show us that we are in the greatest social experiment in human history, given online sexually explicit content and the education our youth get through that regarding their sexuality. I hope the government is going to be pursuing that. An initiative I have been working on is meaningful age verification, and I hope the government is looking at that too.

There is another part of the debate here today: While the Liberals have brought forward a bill, it is basically a rehash of a private members' bill from my side of the House, though I salute them for that. It is now a government bill, and they had the opportunity to bring forward a bill that contained a whole suite of things they could do to fix the issue of sexual assault in our country. Judge education is an important one, but it is a bit downstream from the issues.

The Bible says that the law will not save us, and that is the case here as well. The best laws in the country will not save us. The law always comes into effect after the fact. It allows us to bring perpetrators to justice, but before that, it does not save us. That is important to recognize.

We should be cultivating in humanity and in the citizens of our country a culture where sexual assault is unthinkable, where individuals hold each other accountable, where there is a large sense of community and where messing with one of us means messing with all of us. In doing so, there would be strong relationships within our society that could prevent this kind of thing from happening. I hope that we can get back to that, as it is more upstream from where this bill is at. That said, I will be supporting this bill, for sure.

Over the past five years, I have been working hard to end human trafficking and specifically the sex trafficking that happens across the world. This is a large and growing issue in our country. The average sex-trafficking case is happening within 10 blocks of where we live, so let us keep our eyes peeled. If we see something, there is a national hotline we can call. It primarily targets women and girls. In Canada, it is estimated that 50% of people caught up in human trafficking and sex trafficking are indigenous. This is to our shame, and we need to be working very hard on this as well.

One interesting thing has happened, particularly with Bill C-75 from the last Parliament, regarding conviction rates and convictions in human trafficking cases. One thing we brought in during the Parliament prior to my getting here, through a bill by the Bloc and the NDP that passed in 2013, was consecutive sentencing for human traffickers. The Liberals sat on this for three years and finally passed it into Bill C-75, but they removed the part about consecutive sentencing and made it concurrent sentencing.

There have been some egregious court decisions that have come out since, and I will give some examples.

Imani Nakpangi was a human trafficker who sold two girls in the Toronto area. He trafficked these girls for almost two years. He ended up being the first person in Canada convicted under our new human trafficking laws. In one case, he received a three-year sentence for trafficking a girl for over two years, but spent only 13 months in prison. This gentleman had made $350,000 selling the body of a young girl and he spent less time in prison being rehabilitated than he spent trafficking this girl.

There was the case of Michael Mark. He received a two-year sentence. He victimized a 17-year-old girl for over two years and spent only a week in prison after his conviction.

These are some egregious examples where the justice system has, in my opinion, made mistakes. These are things we need to work to correct. While I commend the government for this bill today, it seems to be at odds with other things the government has done, particularly Bill C-75. We see the insignificant sentences that came from it.

We also see, over and over again, this place attempt to bring the judiciary to bear on these things by creating minimums, because we cannot let these guys out of jail after spending one week in prison for trafficking a girl for two years. We create a minimum for that, like a three-year or 10-year minimum sentence, but we see the courts strike those down, so there are, to some degree, some issues in the judiciary. This place has the ability, opportunity and mandate to direct that to some degree, so that is what we are doing.

I already talked about consecutive versus concurrent sentencing. It has been troublesome to get things going there. The bill from 2013 also had other tools for the police to use to help convict human traffickers, but the Liberals never brought that into force. They left it on the table for three years before they passed it in Bill C-75, while taking out the consecutive sentencing.

There are serious crimes that are being perpetrated in this country, and we need to ensure that judges get things right.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, in terms of the references the member made to Bill C-75, I submit that it is a good day for those of us who were behind Bill C-75. The Supreme Court just upheld the provisions in that legislation that deal with eliminating peremptory challenges when selecting jurors. This ensures we will not have a tragedy of justice like what we saw with the trial of Gerald Stanley.

I appreciate the member's comments, and in his five years in the House I have always thought of him as a thoughtful member. I note that he has done a lot of work on the issue of human trafficking, which he mentioned today. Addressing human trafficking and, more broadly speaking, the issue of sexual violence requires a judiciary that is sensitized to these issues, that is fully up to speed on the current state of the law, that is transparent in providing reasons, etc.

Given that background and his commitment to this pressing issue, which is very closely connected to what the bill is about, he said that he supports the bill. Would that support translate into getting the bill efficaciously and expeditiously to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where any amendments that might be needed could be moved and debated?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I agree that we should get this to committee as soon as possible. However, I point out that the committee is not constituted at this point, so whether the bill passes today, tomorrow or next week, there is no committee for it yet. It is important to let us have this debate and get these issues on the record.

The other thing I will say is that the bill could have been broader. I would have liked to see a discussion of special courts. I know there are special courts for a whole host of issues. In Alberta, we have some really cool special courts for family law and child abuse. I would have liked to see some of that in the bill.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, since we began our discussions this morning, I have noticed that some hon. members would rather that we not debate this type of topic. That amazes me because so far the testimonies have been heartfelt. I am very pleased to take part in this debate and to hear my hon. colleagues from all parties in the House on these very specific subjects.

I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his speech. I have the following question for him. In addition to Bill C-3, what do you think the government should do to ensure that we live in a society with a justice system that is fair for everyone?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, as I alluded to in my reply to the last question, one area that we could look at is special courts. In Ontario, we have seen drug courts, and they have had very good success in getting prosecutors and judges who are versed in a particular area of law to not only bring justice to a situation, but also bring renewal and rehabilitation through the justice system. I would like to see us pursue that model more. In Alberta, we have child advocacy centres, which allow a child witness to be videotaped. This can be used over and over again, rather than revictimizing them over and over again. These are the kinds of things I would have like to see in the bill.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member has been discussing a subject near and dear to my heart, and that is human trafficking. With the bill and with some of the other things that the government has done, he pointed out that the government has removed the emphasis on consecutive sentencing and has instead put in concurrent sentencing.

I am wondering if he could expand on his thoughts about why the government would favour volume discounts for multiple crimes.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for her mentorship in this place. As she has announced, she is retiring. She is one of the first MPs I met when I came here, and I have always appreciated her opinions and advice. She even has a little book called Book of Commons Sense. It is a great little book. I use it often, and I often share the tips she put in it with new members.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, we are here today to again debate the Judges Act and the Criminal Code.

Bill C-3 amends the Judges Act to restrict eligibility for judicial appointment to persons who undertake to participate in continuing education on matters related to sexual assault law and social context. It also amends the Judges Act to require that the Canadian Judicial Council report on seminars dealing with matters related to sexual assault law. The purpose of these seminars is to ensure that this theme is addressed in the continuing education of judges. Finally, the bill amends the Criminal Code to require that judges provide reasons for decisions in sexual assault proceedings.

This bill would have been passed two months ago if not for the prorogation by the Prime Minister, which was totally useless given the empty throne speech and Prime Minister's address to the nation. This has delayed our work and obviously upended our schedule and parliamentary agenda. We have lost two months because the government wanted to flee Parliament and politics in general to avoid the ire of the opposition over yet another Liberal scandal. How cynical, some might say.

We were elected as legislators to provide solutions and make the changes expected and desired by Quebeckers. There needs to be more co-operation and less partisanship, less squabbling and more collaborating. That is what everyone says they want, but every day we often see that is not the case despite the good will of some.

Sexual assault trials resonate strongly with ordinary people. In fact, they obviously have a serious impact on the reputation and life of those involved and they also revictimize the survivors of sexual assault. Unfortunately, this type of trial sometimes gives rise to problematic interpretations of the law. It is in this spirit that the bill proposes that candidates seeking to be appointed as judges must agree to participate in ongoing training on matters related to sexual assault law and social context.

In almost all these cases, a judge must assess the credibility of the witnesses, the victim and the accused. The judge's assessment can be influenced by preconceived notions that do not stem from malice, but from their lived experience, perceptions and culture.

The topic of training is something I relate to. I was a school principal for more than 20 years, and this was a topic and a problem that I had to work on and deal with almost every day. We had to work hard to get past the mindset that once someone got a degree they had mastered the subject. Times have changed, obviously, and we have come a long way. We have paid the price in recent years for that whole period of time when there was no continuing education. Now, graduating from university means the beginning of continuing education, which continues right up until retirement, for any field you can imagine.

It is all well and good for a teacher in the school system to have gotten a good education, but young people change and the way they learn changes. Boys need a different kind of stimulation than girls do, the curriculum changes at lightning speed and evaluation systems also go through drastic changes. A teacher cannot teach the same way today that they taught five, 10 or 15 years ago.

It goes without saying that we need to adapt our approach to the current context. Nevertheless, many people think that changes to training often fail to keep pace with society's needs, and I completely agree.

Ongoing training is top priority in every sector. There is an old saying: Adapt or die. In this case, with this bill, we might say, “Adapt or lose your credibility”.

People in our riding who know that we are debating this bill tell us this is fundamental. It just makes sense. I am hearing the same thing in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles as other MPs are elsewhere. Constituents are asking us to move forward, to stop stalling and to pass this bill quickly.

Making sure that judges get adequate ongoing sexual assault training will enable them to dig into cases differently, to ask questions the right way and to better understand witnesses' reality. Let us not forget that witnesses must testify in front of their attackers. Training will undoubtedly improve their rulings too. This bill will also make rulings more consistent, give our judges more credibility, and, most importantly, boost our justice system's credibility with respect to victims of sexual assault.

I am the father of a beautiful and amazing grown-up 30-year-old daughter. I protected her, coddled her and taught her as best I could. However, I often felt like I had to fight to protect her against a rather macho world, a world of men who all too often tend to denigrate women. These old tendencies remain in our society. I tried to shelter my daughter from the mean-spirited influence of certain uniquely male perspectives, certain stereotypes, myths and prejudices. At the very least, I take comfort in the fact that my daughter did not have to go through the court system. That would have been very painful for both her and for me.

This bill is a step forward. It is a start, a beginning. It is high time we took action to restore women's confidence in the justice system. Obviously, any action we take must respect the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces. Making sure that judges are informed, in touch with the evolution of our society and more understanding of complainants' circumstances can only have a positive impact on our Quebec society.

What we want is for judges to be more transparent and more accountable when rendering decisions in sexual assault cases. We want these decisions to be reasoned and justified.

That is why the Bloc Québécois will be pleased to vote in favour of this bill. We will vote in favour of victims, all victims. I encourage the House to pass this bill quickly as a sign of respect for all victims of sexual assault, whether they be male or female.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, what is really encouraging is the fact that we have before us a piece of legislation that appears to have the support of virtually all members of the House.

This is not new to the House. It has come in different forms. It started with Rona Ambrose, the former interim leader of the Conservative Party, in the form of a private member's bill. The idea was shared with the Prime Minister, the government and all members, and then brought in as a government piece of legislation, which was ultimately passed through first reading, second reading, committee stage and third reading, and went to the Senate. Unfortunately, due to the election, it never did receive the necessary royal assent. Today, we have it before us once again.

I am wondering if the member could reinforce his thoughts in regard to how encouraging it is when members of the House come together, virtually unanimously, to support positive legislation such as this.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

We can argue back and forth across the House. The government decided to prorogue Parliament. As for the Conservatives, they unfortunately delayed the passage of the bill.

This is the third time we are debating this bill, and we all hope it will be the last. The idea is to vote in favour of this bill as soon as possible.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles for his remarks. I would like to address the issue of sexual violence. As we all know, the problem disproportionately affects indigenous communities and indigenous women.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls addresses this issue. We must not forget what happened to Joyce Echaquan in a hospital in Quebec. Of course the member across the aisle is well aware of that situation.

Considering the systemic discrimination and sexual violence indigenous people suffer in all kinds of institutions, is it not important to quickly pass such a bill in this Parliament?

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. I very much believe in taking things one step at a time.

There is nothing grandiose about this bill. It is important, essential, and will bring us up to date with the times. It is clear that a lot of other changes could be made when it comes to training judges. It is clear that indigenous peoples suffer immeasurable prejudice. It is clear that someone with addictions will not necessarily be judged the same way because of how some might perceive that group of people.

I hope this bill will pass quickly so that we can move on to something else. I am all for taking things one step at a time provided those steps are taken quickly.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to rise to talk about Bill C-3, a bill that is going to make a small difference in what is really a larger system failure in dealing with sexual violence and sexual assault in Canada. It is certainly important. As members of Parliament we come to the House with very different experiences and exposures to violence or assault in our professional and personal lives. This really frames our understanding of the issue. It also is important in terms of the debate that is happening.

In reflecting about the bill today and about the broader issues, I went into my memory banks and thought about things that have happened throughout my life. I thought I would share some examples, first of all, to look at the larger systemic issues that are not addressed and then to look at the issue of the bill in particular.

I want to first talk about the emergency responses by our police officers. I can remember, as a young nurse with very limited experience, working in a small first nations community. One day I arrived at the little clinic office. Across the road from it was a baseball field. When I arrived at the clinic at about seven o'clock in the morning, there was a woman in the baseball field. She was completely nude and had a number of bruises. Obviously, she was a victim of a sexual assault and an assault in general. No one else was around so we covered her up. She was intoxicated. We called emergency services to transport her to something more than what we had available, and we also called the RCMP. I remember, again as someone who was young and new to this business, that they made it about her being drunk and “Who knows what happened?” They were very dismissive of that horrific crisis.

There was some work done by Robyn Doolittle in 2015 that was called “Unfounded”. What she said was that police would find the complaints as baseless and there would often be no investigation, so the example I just gave certainly fits into my initial experience. The numbers in 2015 were quite incredible, where 25,000 incidents were reported to the police with only 1,400 convictions. Clearly, we have an issue with the emergency response system.

The next experience I would like to share is my move from the small community to a larger health centre that had an emergency room and an emergency response. It was still rural. Typically there was a nurse and doctor who were available during that time. Nurses in rural communities have to respond to everything that comes through the door. It might be a three-person motor vehicle accident, the delivery of a baby or a victim of rape.

One night we were called in. There was a very shaken woman who indicated that she had been very violently sexually assaulted. We had to do an examination. If anyone is not aware of what those examinations are like, it is very, very intrusive in terms of taking swabs and plucking samples from the pubic area. It is very detailed and very intrusive. I had never used a rape kit before. I had never been trained in using a rape kit. We had to read the instructions. We tried to hopefully be compassionate and kind, but we certainly were not proficient in what we needed to do to put this case together.

I talked about the police response and now I am talking about the health care response in a rural community and the ability of nurses and doctors to have the expertise that is needed.

The next experience is not a professional one, but an experience within the judicial system. It is the only time I have ever been close to the court system in my entire life. I had never been in a court. I was a support system for two young girls who had been sexually assaulted, and my support role was to be in the courtroom to listen.

I remember the morning of the trial. This is going back in my memory, but this is what stands out. There was an overworked Crown counsel who went to these young girls and asked them if they could get hold of the witnesses from when the preliminary interviews were done and bring them to the court. I was stunned that the Crown counsel did not have the witnesses planned out in terms of the people who would corroborate the stories of these two young women. These two very young women gave compelling and heartbreaking testimony. There was no question in my mind that it was very real testimony. The person who was accused, his only response was that it did not happen. He denied it.

I looked at the bravery of these two girls who had decided to pursue this case in spite of all the challenges to get to that point. They had to hear the person they knew had done exactly what they said he had done deny it, and then the Crown counsel, without an appropriate case ready to present, talked about their bruises. It was absolutely awful. The result that came out of that particular court case was a finding of not guilty. The judge at that time said that, although the testimony of the girls was very compelling, they did not feel there was enough proof so they found the person not guilty.

That is the experience we have. We have system failures throughout. I talked about the rape kits. We did learn a little bit more over time, but I was never called to be a witness for the Crown in terms of the mental state or in terms of what happened. Other than the rape kits, the notes we kept were never brought into the court system when dealing with it. We have so many flaws, more than what are in this bill, that are still happening today. We still have so much to do.

As many people have indicated, this bill has a history. The history starts with the passion of our former leader, Rona Ambrose, who introduced it as a private member's bill. We all know it is very difficult for private member's bills to meet the finish line. There are many people in here who probably have never had an opportunity to even introduce a private member's bill. She did get it fairly far along the system, which took four years. As I said, there are very few private member's bills that make it to the finish line, and I know she was very delighted when the government decided to take up the bill, as it appears were most members in the House.

It speaks also to the process, which becomes important, because there were amendments that had been suggested to the private member's bill, which have now been incorporated into the version we see in front of us. We talk about this as maybe a simple bill that we could skip all the process with, and I know that two weeks ago we spent $50 billion without having a committee process. However, what it shows is that, even with the simplest of bills that seem like they should just receive unanimous consent and move through the process, Parliament is there for a reason. It is there to scrutinize. It is there to make things better. The fact that we have some process for these measures, and of course I still profoundly—