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

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

The way in which the bill will be enacted and proceeded with is really not something we cover in particular data analysis. That's an analysis for how your legislation is crafted.

[Art Hanger, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

I know that, but that's the process. The lawyers on one side can pick it up from there. But this is the action the police will take, and Mr. Grimes speaks of the court cases themselves. So the court data is going to be another issue.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

That's correct. This is police-reported data, and we provided courts data and then Correctional Service data.

[Art Hanger, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

But I have to keep coming back to the same thing. Is it the bail magistrate who's going to decide on detention, or is it going to be the court?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

That's a question I can't answer.

[Art Hanger, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

You don't know.

Mr. Turner? You don't know.

Okay, that's fine. They're not talking about the process itself; they're talking about the statistics they've collected.

That's the extent of my questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Mr. Thompson.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I'll be fairly quick. I'll direct one question to the board, just to get it clear in my mind. I have to admit that when I look at these things, I don't really understand a lot of what they mean. Maybe I should apologize for that, but I'm not going to, because I looked at it and found it to be fairly confusing.

But there's one thing I do know, and I want to direct this to Mr. Ménard in relation to his comments. In my riding, a few years back when I was becoming an MP—this is under sexual assault—in a rural riding, a 27-year-old individual stopped at a home to get directions. The young lady who was the wife of the resident was there by herself and she gave him directions. About twenty minutes later he returned to the home with a gun, forced the woman to take her clothes off, and sexually assaulted her. He was arrested and was put in jail. About a week later he was out on bail. He returned to that home with a gun, shot the woman—miraculously, she survived—killed her husband, and then turned the gun on himself and killed himself.

At that point I said, there's one case of a guy who was let out on bail who should never have been out. Now we have two people dead and one seriously hurt, and that's all I need by way of stats. It creates an ideology in my mind such that when I get back to the House of Commons, I'm going to push all I can towards putting a stop to letting people out on bail who have committed a violent, serious offence—even without a gun.

I've had that in the private members' draw since 1994. I'm not lucky at lotteries. I haven't been drawn. But those are all the “statistics” I need.

But I will ask this question. Do you have no information on how many people were let out on bail and who committed a violent crime immediately following their bail?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

No, we can't provide you that information.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I rest my case. One is enough; in fact, it's too many.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Mr. Lee, you may have four to five minutes.

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

Thank you.

Do we know, Ms. Barr-Telford, what proportion—and I think the answer is no, but I'll ask it anyway—of current reverse onus offences result now in denial of pretrial release? Do we have any idea at all?

[Craig Grimes]

No, there's no information on that.

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

Nobody can take a stab at it? Okay.

That's really unfortunate, because if we don't have any data on it—and it's not your fault, of course—in terms of public policy we're rather flying blind here. This legislation is a bit of a shot in the dark. I have intended to support the legislation, but I regret that we don't have the data, and I just put that on the record.

Secondly, there are two notable statistics in the deck you provided, from my point of view. They should be noted as benchmarks. One is that only 40% of the Bill C-35 charges result in convictions. That's a 40% conviction rate.

Would I be correct in saying that if we increased the pretrial incarceration rate above 40%, we would probably be keeping innocent people in jail pending their trials?

Maybe you can't answer that.

[Craig Grimes]

I can't answer that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Mr. Lee, I don't think he can answer that. They are here for statistics; they don't give their opinions. They're not judges.

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

But I do have that right, do I not—that only 40% of the Bill C-35 offences result in convictions?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

Cases with at least one Bill C-35 charge had a 40% conviction rate. Where it was the most serious charge, it was a 31% conviction rate.

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

Only 31%? Well, that's even lower. That means 60% of the cases result in not guilty or dismissals or something. Is that a fair assumption? Or at least they're not proceeded with.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

They're not convicted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Do you have a question, Mr. Lee?

[An hon. member]

We don't know that; they can't tell us.

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

Well, it's the same as the last question, so I'm going to stick to this: once you go above the 30% threshold, you're potentially keeping innocent persons in jail.

The second thing is that your data shows that over the last fifteen years, the convictions for robbery with a firearm have dropped to less than half. Is that right?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

The data you're referring to in slide 4 show actually the rate of robbery with a firearm offences. It is police-reported data, thereby giving the incidents; it's not the conviction rate. I don't know that we have anything like that with us.

[Craig Grimes]

I don't have the conviction rate with me for robbery. The difficulty with robbery with a firearm is that the legislation only specifies robbery with a firearm going back to.