Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and esteemed members of the committee.
Thank you for inviting me here.
I am going to make a pitch that if this is going to be a first step in providing a cornerstone for victim rights in this country, it needs some additional help to what is already in the legislation. I'm particularly going to focus on funding, on the vital importance of a modern country actually evaluating how its legislation is implemented, and on not forgetting that the prevention of violence is absolutely critical to this.
I've provided members of the committee with a brief in both English and French, and I'm going to skip around in that brief.
The first point I want to make is that we are extraordinarily lucky in Canada to be leading the world by having a federal ombudsman for victims of crime. She needs to be congratulated for the work she's done to bring together expert organizations and victim groups such as those you've heard from today to try to propose what could be in a federal victims' rights bill, and—she has done it more carefully than I have—what could be done by the provinces. I fully endorse all the amendments that she has proposed, and I don't propose to revisit those.
I'm always inspired by Sharon Rosenfeldt, whom I've known for a long time. I would just like to mention that the way I got into the victim issue is that yes, I'm a member of the victim club, but I had the good fortune to be able to devote my professional life to trying to change the way we deal with victims in this country and others. I got recognition for the work I did for the UN declaration, which has already been mentioned, and I've been involved in bipartisan meetings in the U.S. Congress, which I think are a model for what we do here, and in many other activities, including writing a book for legislators on rights for victims of crime.
The main recommendations I want to leave with you have to do with, first, the fact that you can't get something for nothing. Passing a bill is nice, but if you actually want to see it not only enforceable, but also enforced, somebody has to put some money there. We live in a country where we have almost doubled the spending on criminal justice, particularly in the policing area, and we've given almost nothing to the victim area. I think there's a real need for some leadership here. I would like to see us actually set a target, and I would like to see it in the legislation as you would see in American legislation. I propose that over the next five years we get to a point where as much as 10% of what's spent federally on policing, corrections and justice goes into stirring and encouraging services, rights, and prevention.
I would also like to see an amendment to the RCMP Act, which, I think unfortunately, has been omitted from this bill, so that the RCMP can become a model for policing from coast to coast in providing information and referral to victims. You may or may not be aware that we have one of the lowest proportions of victims who report to the police in the affluent democratic world. It has dropped over the last 20 years from about 40%, which is the rate in the U.S. and in Quebec, by the way, to about 30%. This shows that victims generally do not have that much confidence in the criminal justice system. So a bill like this is necessary, but by simply requiring police to provide information and orientation, we can make a difference.
I was very impressed to hear the chief of police in Toronto in the aftermath of the Jian Ghomeshi affair say that the way we can get victims of sexual assault to come to the police is by referring them to agencies that can help them. This is a first in Canada, and I think it is important. Mr. McMurtry, when he looked at the Ontario bill of rights, specifically said that we should be changing action by police. This is not a high-cost item; it is an item that would make victims aware of services, of restitution, of compensation, of a number of things, through a relatively small amendment to the act.
I want to quote Chief McFee, probably Canada's best-known supercop, now the deputy minister of corrections and policing in Saskatchewan, who said quite simply that what gets measured gets done.
Unless Canada comes up to the plate and actually has a victimization survey every year instead of every five years, which is what we do at the moment, and unless we actually look at how this legislation is implemented, we are not going to learn from it. We're not going to be able to, in five years' time, say that yes, we passed that bill of rights, but look, victims are still being treated the way some of the witnesses have said. We need to get better at measuring. We need to ensure that Statistics Canada does an annual victimization survey and that they also do a special survey on intimate partner and sexual violence.
You're probably aware that when the U.S. Congress adopted its victim rights legislation in 2004—that's 2004—it required the general accounting office to look at how it was implemented. I think it's a very good model for us to look at here.
I also want to emphasize the importance of prevention. Most of us in this room think that crime is going down in this country because police reports are going down. Well, when you move from about 40% reporting to 30% reporting, it's not surprising that you get a 30% drop in what the police take on. If you look at those victimization surveys, even if they're only done every five years, you see that they remain very steady.
We need to begin to realize that one of the most important rights for victims is for government to take the right action in stopping violence. I'm very proud that in May our current government adopted at the World Health Assembly the violence prevention resolution, but I think we need to begin to see how that can be put into practice.
I want to take a few minutes to mention a few other items.
When you're looking at bills of rights, as I do in different countries—in the United States or in regard to the European directive, as has been mentioned—the number one criticism is that they make no difference because they're never implemented. The Americans with their 2004 act made sure that it was implemented and made sure that the policing changed, the prosecutors changed, and the judges changed. We need to be looking at that.
The European Union directive that was mentioned actually followed a framework in 2001 that had evaluation built into the legislation, as I would like to see. Because of the results of that evaluation, which were basically that victims were not getting their rights, particularly in the justice system, they came up with a new directive for 28 countries and in 25 languages. Surely, in this country with our 13 jurisdictions—or, if you count the federal one, 14 jurisdictions—and only two languages, we could actually do the same or better. I fully endorse the proposal by Sharon Rosenfeldt to ask the federal ombudsman to take this on, but she of course is going to need some funds to be able to take this on. I think it's an extraordinarily high priority.
If you look at individual states, you see that Oregon, for instance, has enforced its rights. There has been a Supreme Court decision in Oregon that reversed a sentencing decision because the victim was not given their rights. Arizona has done some of the same things.
I will just mention one other issue that relates to funding. Let's look at the United States. In 1984 it introduced what looked like our fine-surtax system. Today it raises over a billion dollars every year through fines on corporate offenders. They've actually raised $16 billion, which is used to encourage individual states to set up services that have been talked about, to set up compensation, and to help organizations like those at this table to actually be effective lobbyists. I think one way we could look at funding—I'm not proposing it as an amendment here—is to see what we can learn from the United States in positive terms in regard to getting the funding we need.
I think I've used my time. This is a plea to look at the implementation issue through funding, through measuring, and through prevention.
Thank you very much.