Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon.
The organization I am representing today is the Fondation Katherine Beaulieu. Our primary mission is to provide awareness and education to people about the consequences of driving while impaired by alcohol or other drugs.
We provide lectures and information kiosks as well as booths to measure blood alcohol concentration. In the near future, we would like to further develop our support for families. It was therefore important for us to be able to make a presentation here so that we can highlight some important amendments in Bill C-32.
According to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, victims of criminal acts should also have rights, but just which rights are they? The Charter speaks of life, liberty and security of the person. Clearly, to no insignificant extent, a number of victims lose these rights entirely after a criminal act in which they were unfortunately involved.
Under the Canada Evidence Act, the spouse of a person charged is not obliged, in common law, to testify against that person. How is it that, still today, we are subject to that shameful kind of law, based on very old decisions that set so-called precedents? Is it not high time to see that justice is done in all fairness, to level the playing field and, most of all, to show respect to all the victims who are constantly experiencing the repercussions of the crimes that have been committed?
To clarify the situation, you should know that the spouse of an accused person cannot currently be compelled by a prosecutor to testify in a criminal trial involving that spouse's husband or wife. This is the case even if the testimony is crucial to the prosecution of serious charges, such as murder or impaired driving causing death or bodily harm. Of course, there are certain exceptions to that rule.
Our organization agrees with the amendments proposed in Bill C-43, which obliges spouses to testify in all cases. These amendments reflect a systematic trend towards providing crown prosecutors with access to all relevant evidence. Of course, we would not be the only country to adopt this new rule because other countries, such as Australia, have already done so.
Let us not be taken in. We all know that offenders, assisted by their lawyers, of course, use all possible means to try to make a mockery of justice. That does not include all the occasions on which they perjure themselves during their testimony in order to improve their chances of a discharge or to reduce the penalty to be imposed on them. The reality is that horror stories are heard in courtrooms each and every day. Victims are too often relegated to the background in the administration of justice.
With the excuse that offenders have rights, victims are kept in the dark about the circumstances of the crime; a number of them will never know the truth. With the excuse that criminals have rights, all possible evidence is never submitted to the court in its entirety. Let us no longer let criminals use their spouse as a free pass that allows them to stay ahead of their victims.
When a crime is committed, do not forget that the most odious act is not the act itself; it is in not recognizing that we committed it, that we, and only we, are responsible and that nothing, no one, can take responsibility for, or try to conceal, our errors.
Above all, let us not remain silent in the face of the moral and financial repercussions that victims must face day in, day out. For the most part, they have always been decent, fair and law-abiding. After each day in court, they return home bruised even more because, once again, the system has given them nothing.
There will be those who tell us that each Canadian citizen has the right to be tried in a just and fair way, whatever the cost. The reality is that everyone's weekly salary is chopped up in order to pay the costs that the guilty incur. Moreover, each victim has to absorb a part of the financial imbalance caused by the crime they suffered.
Did you know that a study published in 2011 estimated the real costs of crime at about $99.6 billion, of which 83% is assumed by victims?
Our judges rarely order financial restitution to be paid to victims, except in the cases of material loss or theft: they consider that offenders are not able to take on such a requirement because they lack the means to do so. However, our correctional system always leans towards rehabilitating criminals. The talk is to successfully reintegrate them into society so that they can become law-abiding citizens once again.
The reality is that criminals have always had the benefit of much more support from our system than victims receive. They are supported until the very end of their sentences in order to improve as much as possible their chances of regaining their independence. With those optimal conditions, the offenders' ability to obtain credit should improve with time so that they would be able to compensate their victims.
With Bill C-32, An Act to enact the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and to amend certain Acts, victims might have the right to ask the court to study the possibility of ordering restitution and, if the restitution is not paid, to have the order considered a civil court judgment. Would it not be appropriate for offenders to be required to periodically deposit amounts of money for the benefit of their victims?
Would that not be a good way to institute a form of restorative justice for everyone's benefit, for the benefit of our society? The financial assistance from the offender could allow him at the same time to take some responsibility for the mistake he made. I myself suffered the loss of my child in a traffic accident, so you will understand that my suffering will never be reckoned in dollars.
However, the reality is that, since that fateful day, I have had to rebuild my life in terms of the financial losses I have suffered since. Going back, going back to a comfortable life, is impossible because, too often, life breaks us for ever and leaves us only with the bare minimum we need to keep going. Often, that takes the form of several years of hard labour, days of sacrifice that amount to nothing, because someone somewhere made the decision to flout a basic rule of life, to respect others.
Thank you.