Justice Committee on Sept. 26th, 2006

[Jean-François Cusson]

When we were talking about identifying certain misdemeanours or offences, we said that the current bill is not consistent with the way in which additional sentencing has been presented. If minimum sentences, for example, had been proposed, then we would have seen some consistency. That does not mean that we would have agreed, but we would have seen a consistency with what already existed.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I'll just follow that up. I think you made the point in your brief about the dangerousness as opposed to severity. Do you want to outline that?

[Patrick Altimas]

That's why we like multifactorial systems, because reality is not simple. Reality includes all sorts of factors, and dangerousness is not defined by just one factor; that is, the offence. Dangerousness is defined by all sorts of other factors that have to be taken into account and have to be evaluated by lawyers, crown prosecutors, judges, professionals, police officers, and what not. That's where we have to take exception to an approach where you rely only on one factor and one factor alone.

Also, the Criminal Code says you can't release somebody on conditional release if he or she is dangerous. Therefore, the judge does specifically have des balises, as we say in French, before he hands out a conditional release. So those protections are already in the code.

Now, do we pretend that the judges are not doing their jobs? I don't know. I have no hard facts on that. That's where we say, if we had hard facts, we could be talking about facts, not impressions, not perceptions.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Okay, maybe I'll go to Mr. Cannavino.

The old approach, in Bill C-70, had a way by which the sitting judge was told, for instance, you can't do a serious personal injury offence. But there was another clause that said, if there were exceptional circumstances and you provided written reasons to those exceptional circumstances.....

Here, we are put in a closed box. That's the current system. If you're in this catchment area, there's supposedly never any situation where you should be a little bit outside--you know, that unusual situation. That approach did give that, but the presumption was, here's where you're supposed to go unless you can prove that you're in an exceptional circumstance.

I'd like to hear your input on that, because frankly that's what we're going to be up against, and if you think there are some situations where that could happen.

Maybe Mr. Griffin could reply as well.

[Tony Cannavino]

Thank you. In 1996, parliamentarians had the best of intentions. We agreed with those intentions. Why not leave it up to the judges to decide whether or not to hand down conditional sentences and community sentences instead of imprisonment? However, the problem that we have seen emerging over the months and over the years is that that possibility has become the rule. Rather than only applying to people who do not really deserve a sentence of imprisonment, the rule has come to apply to all offenders. From our perspective, we have had to justify why these people had to go before the court. Coincidentally, all kinds of other economic and other constraints have also been added.

Mr. Altimas made a good point when he answered the question you asked him. He spoke about dangerousness and parole. Parole—

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

But you still haven't answered my question. Do you ever see that situation occurring in one of these cases?

[David Griffin]

As we've discussed ourselves this morning, the problem with exceptions is that over time they become the rule. And we've seen that time and time again.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

So you wouldn't want that happening?

[Witnesses]

No.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Okay, that's fine. That's what I wanted to get down.

[Tony Cannavino]

I'd like to give an example, if I may.

Before parole is granted, the level of dangerousness of individuals must be assessed in order to determine whether or not they should remain in prison and serve their whole sentence. Parole has become almost automatic. We have seen several cases where people were sentenced to imprisonment for sexual assault and murder and were granted parole. I could give you several examples of cases, for example that of Brassard, who was granted parole and then committed aggravated sexual assault and killed his victim. He went back to prison and was released again. This happened three times. There are many cases like that. Why? Because the exception ends up becoming the rule over time. It is then incumbent upon us to emphasize the exceptional nature of this rule and to attempt through all possible means to keep these people inside. That is our problem, our burden.

We agree with the principle of Bill C-9. We would simply like to add other cases.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Ms. Barnes.

Mr. Lemay, go ahead, please.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I think Mr. Elliott wanted to say something.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Did you have something that you wanted to say, Mr. Elliott?

[Richard Elliott]

Thank you.

I simply wanted to make the point that it sounds as though there is some agreement that the problem is with the application of the concept of conditional sentencing and not necessarily with the concept itself. But it seems to me that the remedy that is being proposed, perhaps without the benefit of adequate data—as has been pointed out elsewhere—is both underinclusive and overinclusive. Perhaps something a little more nuanced is needed here, rather than trying to crack the walnut with a sledgehammer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Mr. Lemay, go ahead, please.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I would have liked to hear—and I was sure or almost sure that I would—some of you provide us with statistics, and answers to our questions. I will not repeat what my colleague Mr. Ménard said a few moments ago, but I would like to clear one thing up immediately: the Canadian Police Association has to understand that it is not the legislators who have broadened the scope of conditional sentencing. If you do not understand that, then we will explain it to you.

I think that you should ask your lawyers to read the Supreme Court's Proulx decision from the year 2000. If you had read it, you would have understood that it is the Supreme Court that explained, in a decision that cannot be appealed, the scope of conditional sentences.

As legislators, we want to know whether or not conditional sentencing has met the expectations that the public had in 1996. I look at the Canadian Police Association's statistics and I see some very good and very interesting examples. From what I found, there were 257,127 convictions. If, like myself, you know how to count, then you will note that there were only 13,267 conditional sentences in 2003. I have right in front of me the figures for that pivotal year, so do not try to make me believe that the justice system has become a revolving door through which you enter and exit. You will never succeed in making me believe that.

We are here to amend the Criminal Code. I agree that we need to respect the victims, but in this case we are dealing with the criminals. I want to be shown—and up to date I have not been—that conditional sentencing is useless and inappropriate and that it has not contributed at all to reducing crime levels in Canada.

My question is for Mr. Altimas. Through the Association des services de réhabilitation sociale du Québec, could you, over the next few weeks, obtain statistics on the number of people who were given a conditional sentence of imprisonment? I was a lawyer, up until only 20 months ago. Given the number of CRCs that you have, I think that you could obtain those statistics, even if you had to write them out by hand.

I also have a question for the Canadian Police Association. Could you honestly get us statistics on failures? You have police officers on the ground. I cannot believe that you would not be able to obtain statistics on those failures. We will deal with the successes; what we want are statistics related to cases where conditional sentencing failed, where files were reopened.

It is a yes or a no. Can you get those figures over the next few weeks? My question is for Mr. Altimas and Mr. Cannavino.

[Jean-François Cusson]

As far as we are concerned, the answer is yes with respect to the number of people receiving conditional sentences. However, once a sentence has been served, we have no access to data on recidivism. These are not data that we have.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

But you could get statistics on conditional sentencees.

[Jean-François Cusson]

That would be the number of conditional sentencees who are being monitored by our network. Our workers are not the only ones to do this.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Cannavino.

[Tony Cannavino]

First, you seem intent on choosing the figures which you like. You take, for instance, 257,127. On the conditional sentence side there are 13,267 of them. Have you also looked at probation, charges?

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I'm sorry but probation has absolutely nothing to do with that, you know that full well.

[Tony Cannavino]

You asked me a question, and I'd like to be able to respond. I intend to do that in full. First, I am also disappointed to know that your role in the House of Commons is not as significant as your constituents would believe. I think you are here to get legislation passed, and as you say, to crack down on criminals. I hope you will do that, indeed, because when you did that in Quebec City, in the case of biker gangs, and you enforced harsher laws, it delivered, despite what some people may have had to say.

I would like to see this issue fleshed out. You have different statistics on the types of crimes that are committed. You have some on homicides, some on armed robberies and sexual assaults. Perhaps I will not be able to convince you that the legal system is a revolving door. However if you come with me and travel throughout Canada, you will meet citizens and see that that is actually what they think of the system. They are generally not mistaken.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Cannavino, my question is clear: Can you provide us with statistics on police failure? I can't imagine the answer to that would be no.