Bill C-5

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, repeal certain mandatory minimum penalties, allow for a greater use of conditional sentences and establish diversion measures for simple drug possession offences.

Criminal Code

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois is not necessarily closed to the NDP's proposal. We are saying that Quebec and the provinces will need some time to adjust. All these legislative changes have tremendous consequences for people on the ground who will have to deal with the repercussions of these decisions.

What the Bloc Québécois is saying today is that there needs to be better planning to prevent things from derailing. It will be much more difficult later for the people working directly on the ground to deal with the consequences of the legislative decisions we are making in the House.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order.

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, Public Safety; the hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington, Fisheries and Oceans; the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan, Health.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill.

By way of introduction, it is important to note that this bill was reintroduced from the 43rd Parliament. It is an almost identical copy, with no changes except for the omission of coordinating amendments, which made some changes to the Firearms Act and adjusted some penalties for firearms offences. The reason I point out that it has been reintroduced is that this shows how slowly sometimes very important legislation moves in this place. That is particularly regrettable when we see the profound impacts that this legislation has on communities and people in this country.

Bill C-5 is the result of the justice minister's 2021 mandate letter, in which he was instructed to “introduce legislation and make investments that take action to address systemic inequities in the criminal justice system, including to promote enhanced use of pre- and post-charge diversion and to better enable courts to impose sentences appropriate to the circumstances of individual cases.” This bill responds to that, in part, and it does so by proposing to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offences. It would also remove mandatory minimums for some tobacco and firearms offences. It is important to note that all of these mandatory minimums were added by the Conservatives in their Safe Streets and Communities Act, Bill C-10, in 2011. This bill would also make conditional sentencing orders more widely available by removing the prohibition of using them for more serious offences, and it would make it possible for police and prosecutors to divert more drug cases from the courts.

This bill raises fundamental questions of effective criminal justice in Canada. It is fair to say that all parliamentarians across party lines share a number of goals in this area. We all want to see reduced crime, and we all want to keep people safe. We all want to protect victims, and we recognize that there is much more work to do in that area. We all want to reduce recidivism and make sure that in our criminal justice system, when people transgress and are part of the system, they come out and hopefully do not reoffend. Finally, we all want to address the root causes of crime.

I will pause for a moment and speak about the root causes of crime.

I was part of the public safety committee back in 2009 and 2010, when it conducted a study of mental health and addictions in the federal corrections system. In conducting that study, we toured federal corrections facilities across the country and went into federal penitentiaries to meet a wide variety of stakeholders. Among other facilities, we went into the Kent, Mountain and Pacific institutions in British Columbia. We went into an aboriginal healing lodge in British Columbia, as well as Ferndale. We went to an aboriginal women's corrections facility in Saskatchewan called Okimaw Ohci. We went to Kingston, an infamous Canadian federal penitentiary that is now closed. We went to Dorchester in New Brunswick and Archambault in Quebec. We also, by the way, went to the U.K. and Norway and toured institutions in those countries as well, to get a comparative example.

We talked to everybody in these institutions. We talked to offenders, guards, wardens, nurses, chaplains, families, anybody who had anything whatsoever to do with working inside a federal institution. What is burned into my brain to this day is a shocking number, which is that across all institutions in Canada, the common number we heard was that 70% of offenders in federal institutions suffer from an addiction or a mental health issue. Probingly, we asked everybody, including the guards and wardens, what percentage of those people they thought would not be in prison but for their mental health issues or addictions. The answer we got, again reliably and consistently, was 70%. What that told us was that we are not, by and large, locking up criminals or bad people. We are locking up people with mental health issues and addictions, and most of their crimes are related to those two issues.

I think it is important to pause for a moment and talk about social determinants of crime, because there are highly correlated factors, like poverty, marginalization, childhood trauma and abuse, and others, that go into that prison population. By and large, I did not see a lot of white-collar millionaires in a single one of those institutions. What I saw were a lot of poor, indigenous, racialized, addicted and mentally ill Canadians.

The other thing I think we need to talk about, when we talk about root causes, is how well Canada's justice system and our federal corrections institutions respond to that. At that time, the answer was “not very well”, and worse. At that time, the Conservatives did something that I consider to be politically worthy of condemnation, which is that they politicized the issue of crime for political gain. They pursued a tough-on-crime agenda, because they thought that by preying on people's fears and sense of victimhood, they could gain political points, and they used prisoners and the prison system as pawns in that regard. By doing that, the very small number of rehabilitative services in Canada's correctional system at that time were closed by the Conservatives.

For instance, when I was visiting Kent, I walked into a huge, dark room, and when the lights were turned on, I saw it was full of equipment, such as band saws, Skilsaws and all sorts of construction equipment. There was a program where federal offenders were taught basic vocational skills, and they were making things like furniture, which was then purchased by the federal government at cost. Not only were we teaching marginalized people actual skills that they could use in the workplace when they got out, since more than 95% of offenders in federal institutions come back into society at some point, but the federal government was getting quality furniture at a below-market price. It was a win-win. However, that program was closed by the Conservatives.

When I visited the Kingston penitentiary, and also Dorchester, they had extraordinarily successful prison farm programs whereby the people inside were able to earn credit for good behaviour and gain privileges to work with agricultural projects and farm animals. By the way, there was a prize cow population at Kingston. The bloodlines were fantastic, and it was an absolutely outstanding herd. Members should have seen the impact that these programs had on the emotional and rehabilitative personalities of the people inside. However, those programs were closed by the Conservatives.

To this day, I say that we are doing a terrible job in Canada's correctional institutions of actually responding to the real needs of most offenders and ensuring that when they come out they do not repeat their offence. Here is the bottom line: I am not saying this out of a sense of compassion only; I am saying this because I do not want a single offender in Canada's correctional institutions to come back into society and reoffend, and that is exactly what they are going to do if we do not adjust and respond to their real needs.

I want to talk quickly about mandatory minimums. The bottom line is that I, and my party, oppose mandatory minimums, except for the most serious of crimes, where, of course, they are appropriate. Why? It is because they do not work; they do not have any deterrent effect. It is because they have a discriminatory effect. It is because they are largely unconstitutional. All we have to do is look to the United States, which is the pioneer of using such sentences, to see what effect they have on crime. The United States locks up the largest percentage of its population of any country on the planet.

I support Bill C-5. It is time that we start adopting progressive, rational, effective policies to keep Canadians safe. Punishing and keeping people in prison longer without access to the services they need does not work. It is cruel, and it does not keep Canadians safe. It is time to have policies that actually keep Canadians and victims safe in this country. Let us adopt the bill and take a first step towards that.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the passion that the member brought to his speech, especially with the experience from his riding, having seen programs that run well and those that have been stripped of funding.

As we have sat through many hours of debate on this issue, and even in question period, I have been hearing a lot of misinformation coming from the official opposition, the Conservative Party. I was wondering if the member could help address some of those issues, because I am sure that when people in the community are hearing this, they think this piece of legislation would put armed, dangerous criminals back out on the streets.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, of course, I guess this is a matter of perspective. If one believes that punishing people more harshly and putting addicts and people with mental illness in jail cells for longer will keep communities safe, then I suppose one will critique this bill, as the official opposition is doing.

However, we actually believe it is important to make an individualized assessment of what has happened, get to the root cause of the crime and address that as a better approach for that person, who has transgressed our laws. I do not want in any way to be taken to say that I am countenancing the violation of our laws. That is wrong, and we as parliamentarians need to do everything we can to stop that. The question is whether we adopt effective measures to do so. Between spreading misinformation or using crime as a political wedge issue and adopting evidence-based policy that works, I certainly prefer the latter approach, and I urge all of my colleagues to do the same.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have a two-part question for the member.

The first part is that I agree with him that we need to do more for mental health and addictions, especially within our criminal system, so I would just like the member to explain where in Bill C-5 the Liberals address the needed resources for mental health and addictions. Where in the bill does it state that?

The second part is that the member talks about these mandatory minimums being done by previous Conservative governments. When I look at the table of the 12 mandatory minimums that are being addressed in Bill C-5, there are only two of them that were brought in by Prime Minister Harper. One was brought in by Prime Minister Trudeau senior, and the other nine by Prime Minister Chrétien.

Could the member allude to how this is tied to the previous Conservative government, when in fact the vast majority of mandatory minimums that are being proposed to be dropped in this legislation were actually done by previous Liberal governments?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would answer that by approaching the latter part first.

I had both the privilege and the trauma of suffering through the Harper government the whole time. I have been in this House for 14 years, and it was a major political issue the entire time of the Harper Conservatives to adopt this tough-on-crime approach, where they did bring in mandatory minimums. In fact, those are the mandatory minimums that are being struck down by the courts as being unconstitutional, because the Conservatives did not care about the law and they did not care about the Constitution; they cared about trying to look like they were tough on crime to the public.

By the way, if those methods worked and were effective, I might support them, but they do not.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway, and I would like him to explain something. He said that minimum mandatory sentences do not deter people from committing crimes. Does he believe that softer sentences will be a greater deterrent?

I would also like him to comment on the issue of certain groups in our society, such as racialized people and indigenous people, being overrepresented in penitentiaries.

Should we not be proactively working with these groups to reduce inequality, poverty and the cost of housing and to ensure that we address the root causes of criminal behaviour?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, absolutely, we need to start addressing in a more meaningful way the social determinants of crime. That is part of it. Also, I think the bottom line is that we need to give our courts and judges the tools they need to make proper individualized assessments to find out what the root causes of the person and the circumstances are before them. Punishment is an aspect of our penal system, so that is part of it, but it has to have its proper perspective. We have to understand what the real cause of the crime before them is, and we have to address that. That is the only way we can keep Canadians safe.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation]

Madam Speaker, I am very glad to rise today to speak on Bill C-5, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Throughout the years, Canadians have witnessed the disproportionate representation of indigenous peoples, Black Canadians and members of marginalized communities in prisons across the country, including in my home province of Nova Scotia. Following the last federal election, our government promised to reintroduce the former bill, Bill C-22, during the first 100 days of our mandate, and that is exactly what the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada did in December 2021. Bill C-5, as it is now known, supports our government's efforts to eliminate the systemic racism in Canada's criminal justice system that has been reported on for years by commissions of inquiry.

The main objective of Bill C-5 is to ensure public safety while at the same time ensuring that the responses to criminal conduct are fairer and more effective. Importantly, the bill would help reduce the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples, Black Canadians and marginalized communities in prisons from coast to coast to coast, which we heard the member for Vancouver Kingsway describe.

Bill C-5 would also ensure that courts across the country can continue to impose severe sentences for serious and violent crimes. Canadians all around the country desire a fair and competent criminal justice system. They want their provinces and their cities and their neighbourhoods to be and to feel safe at all times. They want to have faith in their justice system. They want to believe that offenders will be held responsible for their crimes in a transparent, fair and consistent way that upholds our country's ideals. As members of Parliament, we must listen to these concerns and then work hard to act on them, and act on them we have.

Bill C-5 includes three categories of reforms. The first would repeal mandatory minimum penalties for all drug offences, some firearm offences and one tobacco-related offence. Second, it would allow for a greater use of conditional sentence orders, or CSOs, and I will come back to those shortly. The third reform would require police and prosecutors to consider other measures for simple possession of drugs, such as diversion to addiction treatment programs.

Bill C-5 would repeal mandatory minimum penalties for certain offences that are associated with the overrepresentation of the groups I have mentioned.

The numbers do not lie. In 1999-2000, indigenous people represented 2% of the Canadian adult population but accounted for approximately 17% of admissions to federal custody. Since then, those numbers have moved in the wrong direction, and significantly so: Recent data suggests that indigenous Canadians now account for 5% of the Canadian adult population but 30% of federally incarcerated individuals. It is just not right.

Black Canadians represent 3% of the Canadian adult population but 7% of federally incarcerated individuals. They too are overrepresented in terms of federally incarcerated individuals.

Data from the Correctional Service of Canada for 2007 to 2017 revealed that 39% of Black people and 20% of indigenous people incarcerated in a federal institution during those years were there for offences carrying a mandatory minimum penalty. Again, 39% of Black people and 20% of indigenous people were there because of mandatory minimums.

Further, during the same years, the proportion of indigenous offenders admitted to federal custody for an offence punishable by mandatory minimum penalties almost doubled, rising from 14% to 26%. Bill C-5 would reverse that trend and, in so doing, seek to make the criminal justice system fairer and more equitable for all.

When the Minister of Justice visited my riding of Halifax, he met with members of the African Nova Scotian community, including members of the African Nova Scotian Justice Institute, who, among many things, are committed to fighting racism in the criminal justice system. This group has been advocating impact of race and cultural assessments, something that originated in Nova Scotia, and I want to thank people like Robert Wright for their hard work and Brandon Rolle, who appeared at the justice committee on this legislation, for helping move this idea forward.

Our government is funding impact of race and cultural assessments across Canada by investing $6.64 million over five years, followed by $1.6 million of annual ongoing funding.

Alongside the changes contained in the bill, these are the kinds of important investments needed to make our justice system fairer for all.

If mandatory minimum sentences are repealed, as provided for in Bill C-5, individuals may still be sentenced to harsh penalties. However, the courts will be able to consider the unique circumstances of each offence and determine the most appropriate sentence, rather than having their hands tied by mandatory minimum sentences, which, as we just heard, are filling up the jails with people who do not need to be there. This will help ensure that a person found guilty of an offence receives a sentence that is proportionate to their degree of responsibility and to the seriousness of the offence, while taking into account individualized factors.

Canada is not alone in recognizing that the increased and indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum penalties has proven to be a costly, ineffective and unfair approach to reducing crime, as others have also moved to reform. For instance, while the United States has historically made great use of MMPs, or mandatory minimum penalties, in the last decade many states, including Republican states, have moved toward reducing or eliminating mandatory sentences, with a particular focus on non-violent and drug-related charges.

The lead that the opposition followed in the Harper years from the Republicans in the United States has been proven not to work, and those Republicans are now changing their approach. Also, evidence shows that approaches other than imprisonment, such as community-based sanctions, reduce reoffending because they enable more effective reintegration into the community and reduce the stigma associated with criminal justice system involvement.

I do want to emphasize that those who commit serious crimes should face serious consequences. This is why, alongside Bill C-5, our government has brought forward Bill C-21, which will increase maximum penalties for firearms crimes. This would create the flexibility needed for our judges to impose appropriate sentences based on individual situations, and it is baffling to me that the Conservatives do not support it.

Bill C-5 would also increase the availability of conditional sentence orders, known as CSOs, without compromising public safety, so that sentencing courts could impose community-based sentences of less than two years when the offender does not pose a risk to public safety. A CSO is a sentence of incarceration of less than two years that is served in the community under strict conditions, such as curfew, house arrest, treatment and/or restrictions on possessing, owning or carrying a weapon.

The evidence is clear: Allowing offenders who do not pose a risk to public safety to serve their sentences under strict conditions in their community can be more effective at reducing future criminality. Offenders can keep a job, maintain ties with their families and maintain ties with their community. These are the measures that bring back flexibility of sentencing by allowing judges to help people, not just jail them.

For example, a judge can impose a CSO for an offender to serve their sentence at home and receive appropriate mental health and rehabilitation supports that we have heard again and again are so important to rehabilitation. This will increase access to alternatives to incarceration for low-risk offenders while also furthering the sentencing goals of denunciation and deterrence.

We have heard some claims from the other side that dangerous offenders will be able to get CSOs. That is simply not the case. CSOs will not be available for some offences prosecuted by way of indictment, including advocating genocide, torture, attempted murder, terrorism and criminal organization offences, for which the maximum term of imprisonment is 10 years or more. CSOs will only be available for sentences of under two years for offenders who do not pose a risk to public safety.

This is an important step in reorienting our criminal justice system so that it is both fairer and more effective, while ensuring public safety at the same time. All in all, Bill C-5 represents an important step in our government's efforts to eliminate systemic racism in Canadian society. This bill would also ensure that all Canadians have a safer and more equitable future.

The measures outlined in this bill go hand in hand with a slew of additional investments announced in the 2020 fall economic statement and the 2021 budget, which provide funding to promote co-operation on an indigenous justice strategy and engagement with indigenous communities and groups on creating legislation and activities that address systemic barriers in the criminal justice system.

Further, the government provides funding to community groups and programs that aid at-risk adolescents, give alternatives to criminal charges when possible, and help fight injustices in the judicial system that affect Black Canadians, indigenous peoples and other racialized communities.

I urge all of my colleagues in this chamber to support Bill C-5 to ensure a more equitable and fairer future for all Canadians. Regardless of their race, ethnicity or socio-economic backgrounds, Canadians from coast to coast deserve to feel safe and accepted in our society.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague's speech. There is the perpetuation of a mischaracterization of this bill that is being done here, which is that somehow these are mandatory minimums that came from a previous Conservative government.

I want to quote someone. She was just named a Black Changemaker 2022. She is Marlene Jennings, a lawyer and former Liberal member of Parliament. She said:

It was a Liberal government that brought in mandatory minimum sentencing for firearm related crimes. There is a whole category of them where currently it is a minimum of one year. There is a second category of designated offences where currently it is four years. In committee...[we] attempted to increase the one year to two years and the four years to five years.

That is Marlene Jennings. Does the hon. member suggest that she has it wrong? Will he acknowledge that the mandatory minimums that the Liberals are trying to eliminate are in fact Liberal mandatory minimums?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague on one point, very much so, which is that there is a continuing perpetuation of a mis-framing of this bill. I could not agree more with that.

The existing sentencing policies that were enacted by the Conservatives focused on punishment through imprisonment. They disproportionately affect indigenous people as well as Black and marginalized Canadians. MMPs have also resulted in longer and more complex trials, consuming resources.

The bottom line in all of this is of course that MMPs do not work, particularly for these drug-related offences and others.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, removing mandatory minimums, as is included in this bill, instead of decriminalizing personal possession of substances creates a system through which people struggling with substance misuse will still end up in the criminal justice system instead of in the health care system, where they can get the support they need.

Why is the government only taking a half step with this bill and refusing to treat this toxic drug supply crisis like the emergency it is?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question very much. Of course, the great success that the federal government has had with the Province of British Columbia in addressing the legality and illegality of certain drugs is very promising. We plan to work closely with the other provinces to ensure that we can roll that out across the country appropriately, within the bounds of our constitutional jurisdiction, with provinces, as far as they are willing.

What is important about this bill is that not only would it allow the use of CSOs for drug-related offences, but it is also buttressed by important announcements in the fall economic statement and budget 2021 for wraparound services for people who are experiencing these hardships in their lives.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I certainly agree with the point that my hon. colleague from Halifax has made. There have been a number of allegations about Bill C-5 that I find disappointing, because the evidence is quite clear. As well, some of the evidence has not been raised by government members, which surprises me. Some of the evidence is about the cost to provinces, since the effect of mandatory minimums is to overcrowd prisons and to increase the demands on provincial governments to pay for the incarceration of prisoners who might have been able to have punishments that fitted the crime and not be incarcerated for as long.

I wonder if my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary, has any comments on the costs to the provinces of imposing mandatory minimums.