First of all, thanks very much for having me. It is good to be back and good to address the group here on this piece of legislation.
I commend the government and this group for moving forward on legislation of this type, though in my view, it's not necessarily what this specific piece of legislation does so much as what it stands for. As a victim of child sexual assault, I sit here and put a smile on my face any time I see the government working to improve the lot of those who have been assaulted, to improve society's take on this, and to help edify society with respect to the need to focus on deterring child sexual assault on a go-forward basis.
The unfortunate reality is that no amount of drafting of legislation at this time can make the problem go away, nor can it make the problem go away in the legal-result setting, not the justice-system setting, because we don't have a justice system in the setting of legal results.
Here's a bit about me. I was abused by Graham James for over three years. The story is familiar to the group. I watched the system play out as the Criminal Code was then drafted. When I look at this draft legislation, I guess I am left saying that I love the fact that the government is taking steps. I applaud the government for taking steps to move forward in this area. I have so much sympathy for the government taking steps, because any time the government moves, it is with great difficulty in terms of being seen as being tough on crime. At the end of the day, I'm left looking at the legislation and seeing very little functionally improving that would have functionally improved my lot in life. But again, Rome wasn't built in a day, and you have to take these small steps to get to where you want to end up.
I say this from experience. Increasing the penalties is a wonderful approach, but as long as the principle of totality exists in the Criminal Code, as applied by judges who apply the law, nothing is really going to change. At the end of the day, you do a simple mathematical calculation, and you have a judge who sits back and looks at the other provisions with respect to sentencing in section 718, and you're left with the unfortunate reality of a judge who looks down at paragraph 718.2(c), which says, “where consecutive sentences are imposed, the combined sentence should not be unduly long or harsh”.
As a victim of sexual assault—hundreds of incidents of sexual assault—“unduly long or harsh” is a phrase that makes me want to throw up. When I saw what the judges in Manitoba did, first at the lower court level and then in the Court of Appeal, it quite seriously made me want to throw up, and it made me want to do much more than that. We don't have to get into the impact the failure of the justice system has on victims in any detail at this time. Suffice it to say that whatever is put forward in this draft legislation wouldn't have changed anything with respect to what Graham James ended up with in his sentencing.
The starting point for sentencing on child sexual assault is four to five years. That phrase shows up in the decision and in the Court of Appeal decision. It makes you want to shake your head. It makes you want to get up and say, “No, something has to change here”. For the government to keep implementing mandatory minimums of one year.... I have an interesting take on mandatory minimums: I think you need them only when you don't need them. You have a bigger problem going on, and you're playing at the margin on the downside. So if you're dealing with a judge who doesn't see fit to convict to a year, you're probably dealing with a very special case in which a judge should be exercising his or her discretion. We're not dealing with mandatory minimums here, but this bill could have revisited the issue.
Increasing the penalties is wonderful, but nothing was done to totality. I could go through with other comments and the nitty-gritty of this, but as a victim, I cannot tell you how important a positive step forward is to us, how much it means to us, and how much we appreciate the effort, as small as it may be.