Bill C-35 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on April 25th, 2007

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I misspoke. I'm not really looking at the conviction rate; I'm looking at the volume of robbery charges and convictions, and they've dropped by more than half over the last fifteen years.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

The rate has dropped.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

The rate. Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Mr. Dykstra, then Mr. Patry, will have one question each. We want to finish about a quarter to five.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Just on a point of clarification. I thought we were meeting for an hour, but are we actually meeting for longer than an hour?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

I thought it was an hour and a half, and I'm going between an hour and an hour and a half because I thought an hour was—

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

One of the questions I had—Well, first I need to get a bit of clarification, based on Mr. Lee's comments.

My understanding of reverse onus simply means that it's up to the individual who's been charged to prove that they should not be remanded in custody but should actually be released. The way I interpreted his comments was that everyone, under reverse onus, is going to remain in jail until their hearing. I don't know whether I'm correct on that, but anyway, I wanted to clarify that.

The question I have relates specifically to—Your one chart indicates that robberies with a firearm continue to decline, which I accept in terms of what your statistics say. What I have a question about is how this relates to “Individuals in non-sentenced custody account for a growing proportion of all adults in custody”.

If I understand your stats correctly, yes indeed, robberies with a firearm are declining, but in fact most of those who are in a non-sentenced custody situation—or at least, according to the changes up to 2005, most of them—are actually remanded or are on some other form of detention versus actually having to remain in custody.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

If I followed your question, yes, the slide that talks about the changing, shifting composition does show the increasing proportion of the custodial population that's now made up of remands, whereas the slide that deals with the incidence—the rate—of robberies with a firearm, simply shows the difference in the change over time in that rate.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Just to clarify again, more people are actually out who are either remanded or in some other type of detention than back in 1995, when far more individuals actually stayed in custody prior to trial compared with today—or, I guess, 2005—and I suspect that the crossover in 2005 is just continuing to escalate.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

I can't speak to the crossover; I don't have any more recent data than that. But let me give you the precise number.

In 1995-96, there were 5,485 individuals who were in non-sentenced custody; and by 2004-05, that number was up to 9,916.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

It has almost doubled.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

It has certainly increased significantly and almost doubled. If you compare that to the “sentenced custody”, just to give you the context, you have 14,240; and then by 2004-05 you had 9,830. So the number of individuals in remand was 9,916 versus 9,830 in sentenced custody.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Wow. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

The last word goes to you, Mr. Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I have a very brief question.

First of all, thank you for coming. Even if your statistics are difficult to understand, they give me a good picture. I am going to tell you how, as a lawyer, I would act in certain situations, and then you tell me how you see these same statistics.

Someone commits a robbery, a home invasion, and kills someone. So we have three criminal acts covered by Bill C-35. In addition, the person commits a sexual assault before killing the other person. Four criminal acts now. He is charged with murder. When all is said and done, the only charge laid is murder. The other three crimes go unnoticed because they are of less importance. As a lawyer, I know that this is how things happen.

The person is charged with murder. A murder charge is issued, but the other three crimes are ignored because the charge relates only to the most serious. When the person is convicted, found guilty, or when he pleads guilty, he is guilty of the most serious offence. So there are three other offences that should be considered, but are not. For example, a robbery is committed with a firearm, but there are other offences covered by Bill C-35 that also ought to be considered.

Let us consider another case where a person is charged with a serious crime committed with a firearm. You negotiate the charge right off the bat, for example right when the person asks for his lawyer to be present at the police station. The lawyer negotiates with the police because in certain cases it is the police who are laying the charges. For us in Quebec, it is the prosecutor. So you negotiate the type of offence that the person will be charged with. For example, to be sure that the person gets a decent shot, you ask that he be charged with the robbery without adding the aggravated sexual assault with the intent of causing bodily harm. You reduce the burden, and you are already negotiating downwards. The person appears in court and he does not even have to ask for bail. He will be taken care of because the charge has been reduced.

Does this reflect what happens? That is a lawyer's job, it is what they do, it is what I do, and what is done in other provinces. It proves one thing: your figures are good, but in reality you should be increasing them, not lowering them, because you have no way of determining the number of real offences committed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Mr. Grimes.

[Craig Grimes]

What we can speak to are the number of cases. There are 871 cases, representing 1,633 charges. We are able to look at all of the charges in the case, and in order to present all of that information, we present the most serious, and the most serious are defined first by the decision. So in your example we can't speak to plea negotiation, but we do know that generally within the data set, 90% of convictions come with a guilty plea, and for these cases that contain one of the Bill C-35 offences, it's down to 84%. But some of those Bill C-35 offences also contain mandatory minimums.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you very much.

I just want to tell my colleagues that you all received from the clerk the status of all the witnesses you requested and whether they accepted or declined. I just want to let you know about this.

Is there anything else?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

On a point of order, I wonder, Mr. Turner, if you could get back to the committee with the question I asked about the breakdown of the armed robbery. You say they're decreasing, but I want to know if they're decreasing for both handguns and long guns.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you.

Madam Freeman.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

I would like to make a comment before we finish.

Thank you for coming. I have to say that this kind of presentation is not sufficiently clear for the work we have to do. The figures are not necessarily relevant. They are a little hard to understand, but, more than that, they are incomplete, and every time that we ask a question in order to shed light on the offences covered by Bill C-35, we do not get answers because you cannot give us the statistics.

The next time that people from Statistics Canada appear before us, I wonder if they can provide more complete data.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you, Ms. Freeman.

My comments concerning this are that I also have a problem in understanding all these issues because I'm not from Justice or a lawyer by profession. But maybe it will be good for this committee to pass a motion in the House of Commons to change the mandate of the statistics, that they could provide in the future more details about statistics co-working with the police departments all across the country. It could be good to have something like this. It will be great for all the members.

Merci beaucoup to all of you.

The meeting is adjourned.