No doubt they are.
Evidence of meeting #36 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 minimums.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #36 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 minimums.
A recording is available from Parliament.
General Counsel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association
There's no causal relationship.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
No, there is no cause-and-effect relationship.
Everyone has difficult periods in their lives.
President, Church Council on Justice and Corrections
They were under [Editor's Note: Inaudible].
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
No, my colleague Mr. Petit made a statement I do not agree with, and I wanted to talk to you about it before putting my questions.
It concerns the statistics in the brief by the John Howard Society of Canada, regarding the correlation between unemployment and robberies committed between 1962 and 2000, the figures you reported. The statistics should be examined more closely before that correlation can be assumed. Nineteen eighty to 1983, as it happens, were the years in which the number of robberies was highest and in which the unemployment rate was also very high. Unless we were living on another planet, we all know what happened in Canada during that time. The number of robberies was also high between 1989 and 1992, and 1993, and perhaps in 1994 as well.
We also had to be living on another planet to claim that unemployment insurance is the only factor at play here. You are quite right in saying that when the economy is doing well, crime rates drop. However, the economy is only one of the factors that need to be taken into account.
I am putting this question to any of you who might wish to answer. I have not heard much about the impact Bill C-10 might have on the increase—and I am choosing that word carefully—in racial prejudice we find in our prisons.
I am talking about penitentiaries, because it is penitentiaries I know about. In fact, I even met with you at the Leclerc detention centre.
President, Church Council on Justice and Corrections
You met with me as a lawyer.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
As a lawyer, obviously. I had some important meetings there.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
No, I did not bring anyone with me. Mr. Champagne was there. Mr. Ménard, I did not meet you there.
Nonetheless, I would like to hear what you have to say about the current situation in Toronto: there are very strong ethnic groups, Blacks, Jamaicans, and so on, but that's not the point. I do not want to discuss street gangs; I want to stay away from that topic. With this bill, aboriginals might well invade our prisons. I do not really like the term "invade", but I use it anyway.
Do you agree with me? Do you think that this bill might have a serious impact on the ethnic fabric of Canada as a country and Quebec as a nation?
President, Church Council on Justice and Corrections
That you belong to.
Bloc
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
That we belong to, in a united Canada.
I hope I did not confuse you too much, as some have done during these past three days.
I put this question to Mr. Stewart or to Mr. Champagne. Thank you.
Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada
I have a couple of comments about that.
It seems clear from other jurisdictions where they've used mandatory minimums that minorities are largely overrepresented in the group that gets captured. The very nature of mandatory minimums is that it doesn't set the sentence, it just sets the minimum sentence. Very serious cases would get those penalties regardless. The only people who are affected by mandatory minimums are those who have extenuating circumstances that mitigate in the offence. The reasonable person thinks technically this is a very serious crime, but a lot of factors go on here that make this severe penalty unworkable.
Often the factors that can contribute are the circumstances of a person's life and the environment they're living in. If they're living in very difficult circumstances the potential is there, and the potential for there to be some mitigating factors is there as well, so those people are going to be captured. It's the cases we often can't even think of that have these mitigating factors that end up being subject to the effect of the bill, not the most serious ones.
At the same time, it's worth looking at other jurisdictions, and particularly Australia, and what studies there found. Australia repealed some of their mandatory minimums because the impact was so disproportionate it really shocked the conscience of the country. Both data and logic tell us that when you take the thinking out of the process, when you ignore the person, when you sentence the crime rather than the offender, you will end up with disproportionate sentencing according to particular minority groups.
President, Church Council on Justice and Corrections
In fact, I concur with Mr. Stewart. In Canada, we know that 19% of inmates are aboriginals persons. This is a worrisome situation because the aboriginal community does not even account for 19% of the population.
This means that they have a much higher imprisonment rate, and we can be sure that a bill like C-10 will make things worse. Moreover, it will have a tremendous influence on the repression of street gangs in large urban centres like Montreal. We will have to build many more penitentiaries all over Canada if we want to jail all these people. It would be so simple—too simple, perhaps—if we stopped crime at its source through preventive measures. We should invest more in such measures. Often, this is under provincial jurisdiction and there are disputes among regions.
President, Church Council on Justice and Corrections
Among nations, excuse me.
Conservative
Daryl Kramp Conservative Prince Edward—Hastings, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This issue was previously dealt with in a different form with a private member's bill, which I initiated, on minimum mandatory sentencing for criminal offences for serious indictable offences. I would recommend that the minutes of that committee hearing be brought forward to this committee for evaluation, because there were some wonderful arguments put forward by folks such as yourselves and the other side. And some amendments were put forward that to me made a balanced argument.
What I'm hearing today really dismays me, because it's one side of the coin. Nowhere here today have I heard the word “victim”. Yes, there was an occasion when, good sir, you said there were some victims who wanted to meet the offender. I can assure you that there are many occasions when victims do not want to meet the offender, when victims have been absolutely victimized. And we have an obligation as well.... Our major obligation as parliamentarians is for the health and safety and protection of Canadian society. Somewhere in here, that has to strike a chord.
And I do agree with Mr. Borovoy in a number of areas, when he's suggesting this is not the sole solution. I agree, minimum mandatory sentences are not the sole solution.
Our rehabilitation, Mr. Champagne, I agree is a shambles; it's a disgrace in our institutions. We do not have proper rehabilitation procedures and/or focus or emphasis. We could do so many more things with prevention, with social demand, with addressing poverty, whatever. But we also have to realize that there is a form of penalty that can be an effective deterrent.
Mr. Borovoy, I'm going to go to the point you mentioned that is crucial to this argument. Minimum mandatory sentences have worked on many occasions, and I can document many jurisdictions that have not been brought forward here today and provide such documentation to this committee. But they only have worked when the public is aware, when there has been a massive public relations exercise, so the criminal is aware that there will be repercussions. Without that, Mr. Stewart has mentioned, no one really gives a hoot, and they don't really know, because that's not a concern of theirs.
Where there has been a massive public relations exercise along with the other measures, such as the minimum mandatory sentence, there have been demonstrable results. And I offer for your perusal...our clerk brought forward one study as well, regarding Detroit, where there was a 10% per month reduction. Project Exile in Virginia was mentioned. I was there. My kids were in university in Virginia when Project Exile came in. In two years, there was a 40% drop in murders. That is significant. That is not one or two or three or four or five. You're talking 500 and 600 people per year, where that had a demonstrated effect. You have the 10-20-life law in Florida, where there was a 28% drop.
You're talking about your figures before and after, and by the time you merged them it was already on a slide and on a grade. There's a difference between a drop of one percent, two percent, three percent all of a sudden after a “minimum mandatory” coming in, and dropping 23% and 24% and 25%. So I think that argument, quite honestly, is bogus. If you take a look at those figures, then I'd love to see your sliding scale. Because I offer documentary evidence to this committee, criminal statistics. From the Florida department of corrections, I offer information before, after, and during the dates that these were imposed, that are compelling.
We have an obligation. You're suggesting that minimum mandatory sentences seem to have no effect. Yet we have demonstrated proof in a number of regions where they have, where it's been done effectively, properly, such as Virginia, such as Florida, such as Detroit, such as Pennsylvania, where it's documented.
We've had evidence before this committee previously from the Association of Chiefs of Police of Canada and the professional police association of Canada, representing 74,000 men and women across the country; they unanimously endorse the demanding need for this type of activity. Are they all wrong?
Conservative
Daryl Kramp Conservative Prince Edward—Hastings, ON
They are all wrong--every police officer in Canada. I can assure you, sir--have you ever looked down the barrel of a gun from the wrong way?
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Derek Lee
Mr. Kramp, you've asked a series of questions, including whether the witness has ever looked down a gun barrel the wrong way. Could you leave that all as a question, or would you care to put the question now?
Conservative
Daryl Kramp Conservative Prince Edward—Hastings, ON
Maybe I'll just give you the one question.
Are all these other witnesses here wrong, including Tony War, the deputy police chief for the municipality of the GTA, who provided his statistics verifying and supporting all of this information? All these police chiefs, all these police members, all of these people who documented, all the witnesses who appeared before the committee--are they all wrong, 100% wrong? That's what you're saying.
Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada
Clearly the statistics can be very confusing. You note that in Virginia there was a decrease in crime after a particular law was brought in place in a particular set of years. We also had the same reduction of crime in Canada. It wasn't because of what happened in Virginia.
Conservative
Daryl Kramp Conservative Prince Edward—Hastings, ON
Did we have a 40% reduction in murders in Canada? We did not, sir. You are wrong.