I am Professor Doob, from the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.
For today's presentation I considered simply listing the many instances in which empirical evidence was apparently ignored in developing this bill. Instead, though, the main point I would like to make is that the process the government has chosen for examining Bill C-10 does not allow sufficient opportunity for Parliament to consider adequately ways to improve the bill.
I will give two illustrations. The first is carried over without change from the Penalties for Organized Drug Crime Act from the last Parliament.
To understand proposed subsection 41.(1) of this bill, one has to start with the definition of trafficking in drugs. Trafficking is much more than just selling. To traffic in drugs includes selling, administering, giving drugs, or offering to do any of these things. To be clear, sharing or even offering to share marijuana with a friend is trafficking. This is what the law now says.
To stop organized crime from renting homes and setting up marijuana grow-ops Bill C-10 would impose a nine-month minimum sentence on a student living in a rented apartment who grows a single marijuana plant so she can share marijuana with her boyfriend. If she owned the apartment, she would not face a mandatory minimum prison sentence as long as she grew no more than five plants. If she had six to 200 plants in a dwelling she owned, she'd be facing only a six-month mandatory minimum prison sentence.
Some might argue that no self-respecting prosecutor would prosecute a case in which a conviction for running a marijuana grow-op with one plant would automatically result in a minimum prison sentence of nine months. This argument is specious. If you were to pass this bill without change, you, the Parliament of Canada, would be saying that one or two marijuana plants grown in a rented apartment for sharing with one's friends was serious enough to warrant, automatically, a mandatory minimum prison sentence of nine months.
I find it hard to believe that in a sentencing system based on proportionality Parliament really wants to say this.
The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act states that the one purpose of any sentence in this act is “to contribute to the respect for the law and the maintenance of a just, peaceful and safe society while encouraging rehabilitation, and treatment in appropriate circumstances, of offenders and acknowledging the harm done to victims and to the community”. Anyone who looks carefully at many of Bill C-10's mandatory minimum sentencing provisions would have a hard time defending their appropriateness. A law purposefully made incoherent does not deserve respect.
A second example comes from a different part of the bill—the proposed changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act. I should point out that in my view some of the provisions of that bill might be improvements—but even they need work.
However, proposed subsection 75.(1) of the bill could use some attention and debate. It would allow a judge to order the publication of the name of a youth found guilty of any violent offence. I find no valid purpose or need for this proposal, in part because publishing the name of a young offender is likely to increase the likelihood of future offending.
The provision applies to “violent' offences”, and the bill expands the meaning of “violence” far beyond what it is now, and far beyond what the word normally means.
If—in the face of the absence of evidence that supports the need for this change and in the face of evidence that it will increase crime—you still want to open up the issue of the publication of names of youths who have committed minor offences, then the test of when this can be done should explicitly make reference to the provisions allowing more limited sharing of information about the identity of the offender with specific people, which currently exists in the YCJA. Surely it should be necessary for the Attorney General to demonstrate that the existing opportunity for targeted disclosure would not be sufficient.
But there is one important point that needs to be made. Proposed subsection 75.(4) indicates that for the purposes of an appeal, the provision allowing the publication of the identity of the youth is part of the sentence.
This is a cruel and dishonest joke on the part of the government. The name will be published before the appeal can be filed. Experience in the past eight years has demonstrated that the government is either naive or dishonest in suggesting, as it does here, that this can be appealed.
The Youth Criminal Justice Act allows the publication of names of youths who are given adult sentences. The imposition of an adult sentence can be appealed but the names of those receiving adult sentences are typically published immediately after the sentence has been imposed and before any appeal can be filed. In other words, the safeguard to a youth of an appeal is already eliminated.
The remedy is simple. If you are going to include this provision, then the section must be changed such that the publication cannot take place until all appeals have taken place or the period for filing the appeal has passed.
This bill deals with a number of important issues. There is no need to rush to judgment on these matters. I would urge you to reconsider your course of action and allow a serious examination of each of the separate issues contained in Bill C-10.
Thank you.