Evidence of meeting #3 for Bill C-35 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was offences.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
So you can't tell us the percentage. We're doing a bill that will put more people in prison while they're awaiting trial. We can't tell how many people are in custody, what percentage of people are in custody now on Bill C-35 offences, if it's 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40%.
We can assume, I guess, from that chart at the end, where it's going up, that even without this bill we're keeping more and more of them in prison before trial. But you can't tell us specific numbers, whether we're keeping 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, or 60% of persons who go, to see whether they'll get out before their trial or not.
Director, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
If I understand your question correctly, we can tell you, for any given year that we have in the data in chart 8, the daily count, the average count of those who are in the non-sentenced custody. We can provide you information on those counts. What we can't tell you is the number of individuals or the number who are in remand for an offence that is particular to a Bill C-35 offence.
Craig can talk a bit about some of the difficulties we have in the data in terms of identifying, by the section and subsection of the Criminal Code, these particular offences.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Let's not get into that. I don't want the technical details. Could you just tell me approximately, if you could guess or extrapolate, how many of those people today, if they went to court on a Bill C-35 offence, would get bail and how many wouldn't, or how many get out and how many wouldn't? I'd like just a rough estimate from all the statistics you have.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
Being a reverse onus offence under Bill C-35, we have 871 cases. Notwithstanding the possibility of having two cases for one individual, the number would be 871, less those who were able to prove that they should be allowed to have remand.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Sorry. If 100 people went to court today on a Bill C-35 offence, without this bill, how many would stay in custody until the trial and how many would get out?
Project Manager, Courts Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
It's not possible to do that with the court data set, in and of itself.
We know that this is an issue, and what we're working towards for later this year is to have a project to link the courts and the corrections files so that we can add more information to the courts' records to determine who is actually in remand and when they went in remand. So that's a project for later this year.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
But I guess it's safe to assume that there are fewer people being let out before their trial, because the red line is going up.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
We know remand is growing.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
On your firearm-related offences, do you happen to have the breakdown? You say robberies are going down; robberies with guns are going down. Is it the same for both long guns and handguns, or is there any difference? Are they both going down?
John Turner Chief, Policing Services Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
We don't have the information here today to tell you that. We just have whether it's a firearm.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you.
I'd like to make one last comment.
The stuff you provide us on our bills is probably the top stuff we need, but it's not a qualification of intelligence to be a member of Parliament, and you have to make it simple so we understand.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
It would be very helpful in future. You work with this all the time, so you assume it. But it's great stuff.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you.
Given the statements that you've just made, because of the way the court dockets are actually produced, you're unable to say what percentage of people, year by year, are brought up. You can tell us how many are brought up on Bill C-35 types of offences, but you're unable to tell us what percentage get bail before going to trial, or do not get bail but at some point before there's an actual judgment in their case are released into the community. Is that the reason, when one attempts to find scientific evidence, actual longitudinal studies about whether or not bail itself is effective, about whether or not it's an actual effective tool in the deterrence of crime, in effective justice, in effectively protecting communities, that we're unable to find any serious research, at least here in Canada, that has been done on that over the years? Is it because the statistics are not there? Statistics Canada doesn't have any. Is that it?
Project Manager, Courts Program, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada
It's more than simply just the docket system. It's the docket system in addition to the way we collect and process the information.
Bail first came up as an issue for me, in my professional career, about 10 years ago. We've been working on trying to get a handle on how many people are granted bail and whether or not individuals commit offences while on bail for that period of time, if not longer.
The issue is, as I've indicated earlier, not knowing within that court system whether or not the individual is in custody when they first show up in court. There's also the possibility of getting information when they show up in court, whether or not they're released or remanded in custody. The data we currently have collects both the appearance type and the appearance result in the same field.
I can go into the details. Now that we have a micro-data correction survey and we have micro-data, which is detailed data from courts, we're going to link those two files so that we can, for the first time, answer some of these questions on individuals on bail and on whether or not they commit more offences.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Right. The bottom line is this. While you can tell us how many people, year by year, are being charged with at least one offence that is listed in Bill C-35, you're unable to tell us what percentage, year by year, of these individuals get bail, win their bail, are able to convince a judge that they can remain in the wider community while awaiting trial and not be a danger to the community. You're unable to provide us with that information. As a result of that, it then means that while we can safely assume that a minimum of 871 cases of Bill C-35 types of offences would exist as a result of Bill C-35, therefore, there would be a reverse onus on 871 individuals accused—because you're talking about cases in which there is at least one, so I'm assuming we're talking about approximately 800-and-something.
Let's just say “the accused”, because I see Ms. Barr-Telford shaking her head. So somebody might be up on several cases.
Is it time?
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
So you're unable to say whether or not the end result would be different. If we had the statistics, it might show that 75% of people who are being accused with Bill C-35 types of offences right now are being refused bail. Nobody can say. I can go out in the public and say that and nobody could contradict me. The only thing you could say is, “We don't have the statistics to show whether what she's saying is true or not”, and people could choose to believe me. Someone else could go out and say, “Every single person charged with a firearm-related offence that comes under Bill C-35 gets bail”, and we would not be in a position to contradict them, except to say, “Well, we haven't seen any hard facts to back it up”.
Liberal
Liberal
