It would be my pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you very much for inviting the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies to present to you. I'm happy to be here with a long-time colleague and friend, Sharon. We've known each other since Alberta days.
I also want to say that I come, as you know, representing an organization that works with marginalized, victimized, criminalized, and institutionalized women and girls.
I will cut right to the chase on this. We have two concerns with Bill C-37.
One is that we know women form the fastest-growing prison population. The majority of them are in prison for poverty-related offences: they have tried to negotiate poverty. Our significant concern is that Bill C-37 will only exacerbate that issue, particularly when you're talking about women who are single moms. The majority of the women in prison are single moms, and most were the sole supports for their children before they went to prison, women trying to support themselves and their children living in poverty.
The reality of having a mandatory surcharge also flies in the face of the Wu decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2003, which clearly said that it is certainly appropriate, in a situation in which a default of payment of a fine—and by extension a victim surcharge—occurs because someone chooses not to pay, to be looking then at the potential for a far more serious penalty, but that a genuine inability to pay a fine should not be a proper basis for imprisonment. By extension, the same argument would apply similarly to a victim surcharge.
So we would encourage you to reconsider this and to allow there to be judicial discretion to examine the ability to pay, rather than see us end up defaulting to a situation we have been in, and to which arguably we're heading with many women in the prison system, such that we end up with prison essentially being debtors' prison, where people are put because they cannot afford to pay the penalty, and not because of an unwillingness to pay the penalty or to pay a victim surcharge.
When we know that the majority of the women—91% of the indigenous women in prison, 82% of women overall—have histories of physical and/or sexual abuse, talking about a victim surcharge to assist victims, when these women end up in custody largely because of the lack of resources in such other parts of the community as social services and health care, particularly mental health care, seems highly.... I would suggest there will be some section 15 and some human rights challenges.
But also, it seems morally problematic to be talking about more individuals being in prison, largely because they can't pay, at a huge cost to the Canadian government. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that it costs $343,000 per year to keep one woman in federal custody, and provinces range, depending on the range of services and what is costed in, from a minimum of $30,000 of cost up to in excess of $200,000. When we're talking about those kinds of costs, to jail someone for non-payment of either a fine or a victim surcharge seems counterproductive at best.
We would respectfully urge you to look at either not passing the legislation or, in the alternative, amending it to ensure that the provision of failure to pay....
We would also urge that you seek an accounting from the provinces and territories as to how they're spending their victim surcharge moneys now. My understanding is, and the background legislative summary for this prepared by the Library of Parliament indicates, that it seems unclear which provinces and territories actually are requesting the money. It's certain that some are requesting increases in victim surcharges, but what is very unclear is how that money is currently being spent. It strikes me that it behooves all members to know where that money is going and how it's being spent before we start imposing more fines that will likely cost taxpayers even more money and arguably will not assist victims, if in fact these resources are not going to the sorts of supports that will prevent people from being victimized in the first place and not necessarily to providing direct services in the second place.
Thank you very much.