The committee has already agreed to an amendment to clause 43 of Bill C-23. Henceforth, when a young offender is serving a youth sentence and is also sentenced as an adult... At present, the method of calculating sentences for adults applies to the full sentence imposed on a young offender under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. We are proposing to amend clause 43 so that adult sentencing provisions would now apply only to the balance of the youth sentence, not to the entire sentence, which makes an important different in the calculation.
Take, for example, a young offender who receives a 24-month sentence and is then subsequently sentenced as an adult. If adult sentencing measures were applied in all cases, the offender would be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds, or 16 months, of the sentence. So, if the offender has served one year of his sentence, he would have four months left to serve before becoming eligible for parole. However, if only the balance of the sentence is considered in the calculation, two-thirds of the outstanding balance equals eight months. Therefore, instead of becoming eligible for parole in four months, under the amended clause 43, he would be eligible in only eight months. The regime as such clarifies the fact that combining the two sentences does not reduce the sentence handed down to the young offender in any unreasonable way.
This was an attempt to explain clause 43 to you. Two sentencing regimes apply to young offenders. Clause 43 amends a Criminal Code provision, but we also have subsection 6(7.1) of the Prisons and Reformatories Act which covers situations in which the adult sentencing regime will apply to all sentences. Therefore, this particular provision must also be amended if the Criminal Code amendment is to make any sense.