Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here.
The position of the John Howard Society of Canada is that Bill C-10 will not make streets or communities safer, despite the huge outlay of taxpayers' money. It will instead make communities less safe while eroding rights and principles of justice.
Given the time constraints, I will reaffirm comments the John Howard Societies have made on previous components of the bill that were before committee and focus my remarks on the new provisions and the cumulative impacts of the bill.
The merging of ideologically inconsistent bills into a single omnibus bill provides a philosophically incoherent response to serious social issues. Some of these problems include the following. Adult criminal justice principles are inappropriately applied in the youth justice system. Sentencing principles are incongruously applied to correctional management and parole decisions, resulting in a re-punishing of the offender rather than a scrupulous execution of the court-imposed sentence. Discretion is improperly limited for sentencing judges, preventing proportionate sentences, and augmented for ministers, crown attorneys, and officials dealing with numerous matters. Personal accountability and state paternalism are blended such that a 15-year-old is deemed too young to consent to sexual activity and yet is held criminally liable if he lacks the maturity of judgment to detect the absence of consent in another.
There are two specific provisions that have not been before the committee in terms of the youth justice amendments, both of which I think warrant some serious consideration because of their charter implications. The introduction of the criterion of the public's confidence in the administration of justice as grounds for the detention of youth prior to trial may violate rights to reasonable bail. And the removal of the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for young persons to receive an adult sentence is contrary to the Supreme Court decision in R. v. D.B. and thus may violate section 7 charter rights.
With respect to Bill C-39, which has not been before committee and therefore has not undergone a serious analysis, I endorse the comments that were made by Professor Jackson. We thoroughly endorse the response to the corrections road map made by Michael Jackson and Graham Stewart, called "A Flawed Compass”, and believe that the concerted and deliberate law reform process that led to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act some 20 years ago, and which is emulated and praised around the world, needs to have some serious consideration and attention before decisions and changes are made.
The reason this bill will not make communities safer....
Given the evidence that increased penalties do not deter crime and the omission of crime prevention programs from this bill, the only way it could achieve its policy objectives of making communities safer is through successful rehabilitation and community reintegration. But Bill C-10 actually impedes supervised and supported reintegration by limiting the transfer of Canadians back to Canada until after they've completed their sentences and are thus deported, limiting pardons, and reducing access to conditional sentences.
This bill will also exacerbate the current crisis of crowding in provincial, territorial, and federal custody by massively increasing the numbers in custody through, one, the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences; two, restrictions on community-based sentences; and three, further restrictions on release for those who are in custody. It is urgent to reduce rather than increase prison overcrowding in order to ensure the safety of inmates and corrections staff, as well as for effective corrections and rehabilitation.
If nothing is done and the courts find, as they already have in the United States, that our current levels of crowding amount to cruel and unusual punishment, offenders will be released or not sent to custody, and there is no guarantee it will be the less risky offenders who remain in the community. If this occurs, the ultimate impact of the bill will certainly be to make the streets and communities less safe.
We are heartened by Minister Toews' response to the committee that the National Parole Board could safeguard against overcrowding, and we look forward to the amendments to Bill C-10 that would achieve this objective, although further measures would be needed to address the crisis in provincial prisons.
In conclusion, we recommend that the bill not be passed in its present form, since the evidence shows it will not achieve its stated purpose. If the bill is passed, then given the current crisis of prison crowding in Canada, we urge that the bill not be proclaimed in force until provinces, territories, and the federal government can assure Parliament that the expected increase in offenders can be accommodated without exceeding 100% capacity of the prisons.
We hope the Minister of Justice will seriously consider his statutory obligation to ensure that all legislative proposals are charter-compliant before approving a bill that so seriously threatens to create a degree of prison overcrowding that would be cruel and unusual under section 12 of the charter.
Thank you very much.