Evidence of meeting #33 for Justice and Human Rights in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was slide.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
There will be economists who will be answering some of your questions, I trust, in the very near future here.
Mr. Bagnell.
November 22nd, 2006 / 4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you.
Thank you for coming again. I appreciate your input on the other law, too.
I also agree with the people who spoke before me.
I think in your presentations the next time around it would be helpful for us if you would put right on each chart a longer written description of what it means to us and where it applies.
I wonder if you've done any stats on the 70% for whom it was their first-time offence when they were convicted of this gun crime and therefore got a mandatory four-year or more sentence. Before that mandatory was put in place, what happened to those people? On average, how long did they serve?
4:35 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
There are two points here. First, we didn't analyze the 70% to see if there were other prior convictions, so I can't say clearly that they were first-time offenders. They were first-time for those firearms offences, but they could have had other convictions on other matters.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
I'm talking about the first-time offenders on this before the mandatory minimum laws came in. What was happening to those people? How long were they being sentenced for?
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
There's no way for us to break out the firearms relation prior to the enforcement date of the mandatory minimums because it wasn't identified in the code. The information we have coming from the courts is based on the statute, section, subsection, and paragraph. Unless “firearms” is specifically identified, it's not possible to do so.
Prior to the enactment of the mandatory minimums for robbery, for example, the chargeable offence and the punishment section for that offence looked very much the same. There were no provisions for, (a), a firearm, and (b), in all other cases; it was all robbery offences.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
It's not to say that there weren't any, it's to say that I can't determine how many there were from the data I have available.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
But it wasn't an offence before, in the Criminal Code, to do a robbery with a firearm?
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
It was specifically in the Criminal Code for robbery prior to January 1, 1996.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
But it would be possible to take from court case records a select number of cases where people used a gun in a first-time offence and to check out what their offence was?
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I'm sorry, in...?
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
In the court cases across Canada, these 400,000 court cases, it would be easy to find 10 or 20 where someone committed a robbery with a gun, going back to before 1996?
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
So that would involve going to court registries and opening up files and finding those cases.
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Yes, it is possible. That information would be available somewhere within a court registry, but not as part of the administrative record that these data are based on.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
The reason I'm asking this is that it would be useful for us to know what happened before these minimums happened. For instance, did they have other sentences? From your previous statistics, I assume that most of them probably had, or could have had, much longer treatments, but perhaps other types of treatments than incarceration.
It's a little frightening when the minimums are catching all these first-time offenders, where there's a lot of hope; this is as opposed to some of the things, as the RCMP mentioned at our last meeting, the offenders learn in prison. So it's a question of how to fine-tune there.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
Yes, just a quick one.
You probably can't answer this either, but for the average offence, for the same type of offence, what would the average sentence have been before the mandatory minimums were put in?
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
I don't have that information with me, but I could provide it.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Sure. I can show you the averages for robbery, criminal negligence, and all of those offences over a period going back to and including 1994-95. It would span the enactment of the mandatory minimums on January 1, 1996.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT
That would be great. Then we could compare what happened before minimums were put into place, since we're talking about increasing minimums.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
Thank you, Mr. Bagnell.
With regard to Mr. Bagnell's question on mandatory minimums, I worked as a robbery investigator for a number of years in the 1980s and the 1990s. There was a section called armed robbery, robbery with a firearm. It drew an automatic sentence, depending on whether it was a street robbery or whether it was a bank robbery. Those are the distinctions the court made. One invited a year extra. The other one invited a minimum of two, up to four.
4:45 p.m.
Project Manager, Courts Program, Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
The offences I've seen in the data set I can go back to in 1994 under Roc85 have a difficulty around robbery as an offence between 1994, 1995, and January 1, 1996, and robbery with those sentencing provisions afterwards. If there was a distinction prior to that date for bank robbery with a firearm, for example, I'm not aware of that.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
There was. I'm surprised it isn't incorporated in the data. It doesn't give an accurate picture.
The other thing I haven't heard anybody speak about--although Mr. Lemay came close to it--is the issue of what they call global sentencing. Did your staff take into account global sentencing?
A man may be convicted or responsible for 20 armed robberies, and he may even plead guilty to 20 robberies, but make only one guilty plea on the use of a firearm. Does it take into account that he committed 20 armed robberies?