Justice Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2006

[Craig Grimes]

Not from these court data; the court data reflect the sentence imposed. The time served in custody is an issue we would have to get from the corrections file. Whether or not we're going to develop the total time in relation to the time imposed would be a function of linking those two data sets and developing statistics on that.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Right.

Just as an observation, it seems to me as we're going through this—and again, this is the first time that I've sat in on this committee—that there could be a lot more helpful statistics than I'm seeing in the package, a lot more relevant to the situations we're looking at here. As an observation, some of the stuff seems totally irrelevant, and some information I would have expected to be in here that would be more relevant to this isn't. That's an observation.

There's one point of clarification I want to have made on slide 11, and I came in late, so it may have been explained. When you say “and equals 133 persons convicted in 2003-04”, are you saying there were only 133 people in the eight provinces and territories, I guess it looks like—this is on the bottom—who were convicted of these firearm offences?

[Craig Grimes]

There were a total of 137 case convictions, from which we were able to identify 133 unique people, whom we could then use as the base for going back and checking prior history. So, yes, it was 133 people in 2003-04.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Can you just remind me what the offences are? Are there ten offences? Is that what it is?

[Craig Grimes]

Right. There are ten offences with mandatory minimum sentences of four years. I have those offences here. They are: causing death by criminal negligence, section 220; manslaughter, section 236—and the mandatory minimum provisions are contained within those code sections; attempt to commit murder, section 239; causing bodily harm with intent, firearms, section 244, so that entire section is a firearms-related section; sexual assault with a weapon, section 272; aggravated sexual assault, section 273; kidnapping, section 279; hostage taking, section 279.1; robbery, section 344; and extortion, section 346.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

To clarify, homicide is not one of those crimes.

[Craig Grimes]

No, because homicide has a mandatory minimum of life.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

But it does affect the data, then—obviously, when you're looking at that. As I looked at this, I assumed that of course there would be certain crimes that would be included in it. It seems as though it would be relevant to have something that would be “four-year mandatory minimums or more”. Isn't that right?

Okay, I see what you are saying.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

There is one final point I would like to ask, and then I will bring the meeting to a close. You gave a statistic regarding the total homicide rate. Was that the total homicide rate in Canada, or was that the total homicide rate just among the cities named here in slide 7?

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

The homicide rate we have presented in slide 4 is the national homicide rate, and slide 7 refers to the specific homicide rates within those particular cities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Okay. So the 658 homicides incorporate everything in Canada.

[Lynn Barr-Telford]

That's correct.