I thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, and honoured guests, for the opportunity to comment on this legislation.
The John Howard Society of Canada is driven by its mission statement, which calls for effective, just, and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime. Our 70 offices across Canada deliver evidence-based programs to released prisoners and their families, including preparation for release and a range of programs to more effectively ensure the successful reintegration of prisoners into their communities. We put great stock in the expert evidence.
The John Howard Society aspires to be smart on crime rather than tough. We advocate for evidence-based policies that actually work to reduce crime and recidivism.
I wish to make four points in this short submission. Number one, the preamble to Bill C-2 states, “whereas those laws should ensure that violent offenders are kept in prison...”. This clause announces a fundamental reorientation in Canada's philosophy and practice of incarceration, and to introduce it as the last of seven introductory clauses—making it seem thereby innocuous—is a demonstration of legislative overreach of a particularly egregious kind.
Nowhere does the CCRA warrant that offenders are to be kept in prison, or for that matter punished. In Canada, we send people to prison as punishment, not for punishment. This has been a long tradition in this country, a tradition grounded in the evidence-based finding that prison simply hardens people and renders them less suitable to live among us.
In fact, as CSC's experts will attest, evidence-based community centre programs are more cost-effective and work better to lower recidivism. Unlimited incapacitation offends the principles of the CCRA and the values of Canadian society, which endorses moderation and restraint in the application of our most draconian state-authorized sanction. This preamble announces the abandonment of the principle of restraint in the use of incarceration.
In fact, the theme running through Bill C-2 is that, the evidence notwithstanding, Canada is going to import from the United States the worst of what has not worked to lower crime rates and make communities safer. A philosophical change of this magnitude—which should properly be the object of sustained and expert deliberation—ought not be secreted into an act, which, taken as a whole, is likely to have far-reaching implications for the philosophy and practice of incarceration across Canada.
The implications of this preamble are numerous and significant, and I have neither time nor expertise to detail them for you. I only wish to go on the record with our profound concerns that Canadians ought to know that Bill C-2 is changing the foundations of our correctional principles without adequate or even expert deliberation.
Number two, I want to address the process of deliberation.
Although the components of Bill C-2 have been examined by this Parliament over the course of the prior session, there are important new features in this omnibus act. Speeding Bill C-2 to royal assent in the manner demonstrated in this committee process offends the fundamental principles of democratic practice in the Westminster system by cutting off deliberation and reflection. The least we owe to Canadians, if we're preparing to incarcerate more of them, is sustained deliberation on the consequences, coupled with a commitment to minimize the worst harms that will inevitably arise from a higher incarceration rate.
Although we have already submitted on aspects of prior bills, Bill C-2 is sufficiently complex and has enormous implications for—