Thank you.
First off, the Criminal Lawyers' Association welcomes the opportunity to appear before this committee on what we believe are fundamentally important issues that are raised in Bill C-36.
The Criminal Lawyers' Association, as some of you may know, is a non-profit organization that was founded on November 1, 1971. Our organization represents approximately 1,000 criminal defence lawyers across the province of Ontario. The objectives of the organization are to educate, promote, and represent the membership on issues relating to criminal and constitutional law.
While the Criminal Lawyers' Association supports the proposition that offenders who have committed murder should only be released if they do not pose an undue risk to reoffend, we believe the amendments to the faint hope clause as contemplated by Bill C-36 do not advance this goal. In particular, the following in our submission should be noted:
Number one: All of the government's new crime legislation is designed to bring public accountability to the criminal justice system and restore public confidence. The faint hope provisions are about public confidence. It is the public—that is to say, the jury—who hears the evidence and is in the best position to make a decision.
Number two: There's been much said about the re-victimization that is caused by the current faint hope provisions. We must remember that by definition the convictions are at least 15 years old, the convictions themselves are not in dispute, and the finding of guilt is there. This is a prime opportunity for victims of violence to see what progress the offender has made.
Number three: The provisions provide much-needed incentive for convicted persons to fully utilize various rehabilitation and programming that's available or should be available while in custody. The fact of the matter is that eventually most offenders will be released. It is in our interests that they remain motivated to rehabilitate themselves.
Number four: As of this past April 13, 991 lifers were eligible to apply for judicial review and there have only been 174 court decisions made, resulting in the reduction of sentences in 144 cases. So it would appear it is only those offenders who have the best chance of success who are applying for reduction of parole ineligibility. In a sense they are vetting the process for themselves.
Point five: The National Parole Board has granted release with respect to the judicial review in 131 cases, although there is no information as to how many hearings after the reduction in parole ineligibility it took for the offender to achieve some sort of interim release. And it should be noted that a release doesn't mean that the offender has his sentence terminated. They are on parole for life—that's what life means. It also doesn't mean that the first initial grant will be a full-parole grant; it doesn't even mean that the first initial grant will be a day-parole grant. The reality of lifers in the correctional service is that, in order to gain a release, they have to build credibility through a series of incremental release stages whereby they gather trust from the decision-makers. So often the procedure would be that the initial release would be an escorted temporary absence; eventually you move up, if things go well, to unescorted temporary absence; from that point on—again assuming things go well and the person does not present an undue risk to reoffend—you go to a day-parole release; and then only finally at that point do you gain full parole, all things being equal and risk again being manageable. It's a very, very slow and, quite frankly, difficult process for the offender to be released even after a successful judicial review.
Point number six: From the statistics, it appears that of the seven offenders who had their full parole revoked—these are people who were released by the parole board, gained full parole, and in seven of those cases their parole was revoked, which means they were brought back into custody and their release cancelled—two were revoked for breach of conditions, three were revoked for a new, non-violent offence, and two were revoked for a new violent offence. Thus the overwhelming majority of lifers who are released do not reoffend and certainly do not reoffend in a violent manner.
Finally, in terms of that points I wanted to address in my opening statement, the current vetting procedure encaptured in section 745.61 of the Criminal Code—a vetting process by a judge before a case can get to a jury—is sufficient, in our view, to ensure that the applications deemed to be frivolous do not make it before a jury, and thus are cut off, if you will, at the beginning.
I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you very much.