Justice Committee on Feb. 4th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We have quorum so I'm going to call this meeting to order. This is meeting number 60 of the Standing Committee on Justice and and Human Rights.

Today, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, November 24, 2014, we are dealing with Bill C-26, an act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the high risk child sex offender database act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Just so my colleagues and our guests know, there is a half-hour discussion and there will be a bell at 3:55. When that bell starts ringing, we will adjourn this first meeting. We have time to hear our witnesses and have maybe a really quick round of questions of a couple of minutes each from the three parties. The vote will take place at 4:25. We have another panel coming, so here's my recommendation. The vote should take about eight minutes, so we should be back here in our seats at about a quarter to five. Then we'll have their five-minute presentations and another quick round of discussions with the second panel.

With that, for our first panel, we have with us, from the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance, Mr. Butt, their legal counsel. Mr. Gillespie has phoned in to say he cannot make it.

By video conference from Winnipeg, Manitoba, we have Monique St. Germain from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Can you hear me okay?

[Monique St. Germain, General Counsel, Canadian Centre for Child Protection]

I can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you.

Also by video conference, from Newmarket, Ontario, we have Ellen Campbell, the chief executive officer of the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness.

Can you hear me?

[Ellen Campbell, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness]

Yes, I can. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We'll start with five-minute presentations.

Mr. Butt, from the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance, we'll start with you.

[David Butt, Legal Counsel, Kids' Internet Safety Alliance]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address this committee.

I'm legal counsel to the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance, which is a Canadian-based charity that operates globally to rescue children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. We recently expanded into the cyberbullying space as well. In my non-volunteer capacity, I am a former crown prosecutor who specialized in child exploitation cases for 13 years, and then I was in private practice for 13 years, as a criminal lawyer. My largest client groups are victims of sexual assault and police officers, so I have a bit of a 360-degree view of the justice system from the front lines.

I've reviewed the bill, and I'd like to take a couple of minutes to speak about a couple of things that flow from both my experience working with the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance and as a front-line prosecutor and victims advocate.

The first point I'd like to address is the issue of mandatory minimums and the proposed mandatory minimums in this bill. Obviously this is a return to mandatory minimums in this area, so we now have a body of experience with mandatory minimums since they were introduced. I'll say that from the perspective of a lawyer on the front lines, the sky has not fallen. Mandatory minimums were perhaps controversial when they were introduced; they certainly generated a lot of discussion. But as I said, the sky has not fallen, in the sense that we still have responsible sentences; we still have a realistic opportunity to present in a sentencing hearing where the appropriate sentence should fall in the range. This is not eviscerated judicial discretion; it has simply moved the floor.

We have to ask ourselves whether it is appropriate to move the floor. I would be the first one to say that in some crimes, it is not; it simply is not, and I'll give you a very easy example to make my point. Somebody who steals a loaf of bread because they're hungry should not face a mandatory minimum sentence. The reason for that—I'll unpack this a bit—is that there is a real moral debate about the culpability of that person. However, when we're talking about the intentional infliction of sexual violation on a child, there is no responsible moral debate about the culpability of the person who is proven to have done that. As long as that minimum appropriately reflects the minimum level of moral culpability, then the floor is not a problem.

I look at the numbers that are proposed in the table that's been released with the discussion of the bill, and I ask whether those numbers are so high that they overvalue the moral culpability of a child sex offender. I think the answer to the reasonable observer is, no, they don't. That floor, in my submission, is quite appropriate because it recognizes the inherent minimum level of moral opprobrium associated with sexually abusing a child.

It's the same thing with the maximums. Are they out of line with maximums that we see elsewhere? No, they're not. Are they consistent with our sentencing traditions? Yes, they are.

The second problem is that mandatory minimums can take away judicial discretion. I say they don't take it away; they simply adjust it. The judge is not left to be a trained monkey, rubber-stamping the minimum; the judges retain their entire panoply of discretionary judicial powers, but they start at a different place. It's appropriate that we value the sanctity and sexual integrity of children sufficiently that we say to judges, “You still have discretion; just start here instead of there.”

The mandatory minimums as proposed don't go too far; they recognize an appropriate level of moral opprobrium for the offence and they preserve judicial discretion.

For all those reasons I'm a supporter, and as I said, there are other circumstances where I would not support mandatory minimums. I want to make that very clear.

I'll move—

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

You have 30 seconds.

[David Butt]

Okay.

On the publicly available registry, complaints about release of private information, the way I read the bill—correct me if I'm reading it wrong—is information that the police, in the exercise of their discretion on the ground, have already decided is so important it needs to be released, so this is not making public. This is simply consolidating already public information in a helpful way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much, sir, for that presentation.

Our next presenter is from Winnipeg, from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Ms. St. Germain, the floor is yours.

[Monique St. Germain]

Mr. Chairperson and distinguished members of this committee, thank you very much for giving our agency the opportunity to provide a presentation on Bill C-26.

My name is Monique St. Germain, and I am representing the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a registered charity providing national programs and services related to the personal safety of all children.

I am here today to provide support for Bill C-26. My testimony today is based on our role in operating our many programs and services aimed at reducing the sexual exploitation of children.

Our agency was founded in 1985 as Child Find Manitoba, and for the last 30 years we have been actively engaged in efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse. We operate MissingKids.ca, a national missing children's program. We also have two important prevention programs: Kids in the Know, which is an interactive safety education program delivered in schools, and Commit to Kids, a program to help organizations prevent sexual abuse before it occurs.

We also operate Cybertip.ca, Canada's tip line for reporting online sexual exploitation of children. Since launching nationally in 2004, we have received over 125,000 reports from the public, the majority of which pertain to online images that depict children being sexually abused. In the 2013-14 fiscal year alone our child protection analysts assessed and categorized over 6,000 images of child pornography. Of the images so categorized, 69% depicted children under the age of 12.

Through the operation of our programs and services, we have daily interactions with child welfare workers, educators, and child-serving organizations. We also regularly consult with experts on child development and offender behaviour and we pay very close attention to media reports related to court cases involving the sexual abuse of children. As well, over the last few years we have been monitoring reported case law involving child pornography offences.

We do all of this to help ensure that our public education, awareness, and prevention materials reflect current risks and trends, and also help us to better understand the criminal justice system as it relates to the protection of children.

Through our operations we have a unique lens into understanding the distinctiveness of child sexual abuse. We are acutely aware that the vast majority of victims do not disclose abuse and that abuse can go on for years without being detected. It is well established that children are most often sexually abused by those closest to them and that abuse occurs in secrecy.

Even if the abuse is disclosed by a child or uncovered by an adult, it may not be reported to police. We know that not all abuse that is reported results in charges, and that not all charges lead to prosecution, and a prosecution may not result in conviction.

For these reasons, we support Bill C-26. I would like to highlight and speak to some key components of the bill.

First, we believe that sentences need to reflect the seriousness of the offence and the severity of the conduct. They must be meaningful, not only to prevent the person from committing additional offences but also to address the risk that an offender poses to children, and to deter others from offending. We support sentences that more accurately reflect the trauma that is experienced by each individual child victim and that properly account for the culpability of the offender for each offence that has been committed.

A concurrent sentence tends to diminish the overall effect of the sentence, making it seem as though the experience of each victim is not relevant. Individualizing the sentencing analysis by victim and by offence will greatly increase the precedential value of individual cases since subsequent courts will more readily know what portion of the sentence applies to what offence.

Second, changes to the reporting requirements for sex offenders are targeted toward better protecting children in other countries from being exploited and abused by Canadians, an objective we support. We also believe that these provisions will strengthen the protection of Canadian children as they will assist in enabling authorities to more readily identify problematic travel and investigate breaches under the act.

Third, the creation of a publicly available high-risk sex offender database is an initiative that we support. The provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia already perform public notifications in high-risk cases. It is our view that providing such information to the public can be of great assistance to families and communities that wish to better protect children.

In conclusion, our agency supports the changes being brought forward through Bill C-26. The crimes addressed by this bill are extremely serious and are perpetrated against society's most vulnerable people, our children.

It is our view that this bill helps to rebalance the scorecard and sends a clear message about the seriousness of sexual offences against children.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Our next presenter, from Newmarket, is the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness.

Ms. Campbell, the floor is yours.

[Ellen Campbell]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and distinguished members.

While I'm the founder of the CCAA, I'm also a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Like many survivors, I ended up in the psych ward and was suicidal, so I can speak not only as a victim but as someone who works with victims.

I founded the agency 22 years ago. We service over 200,000 men, women, and children a year. We work with the first nations seniors. We work with the police with human trafficking. We have anti-bullying awareness and education. So I feel like I can really speak to this as a victim and as someone who works closely with them.

We did a report back in November 2004. We received funding from the Office for Victims of Crime in Ontario. We did a report called “Martin's Hope”, which I hold up here. I'm happy to provide it to the clerk for everyone.

There were 60 recommendations in that report. Thirty-nine of them are federal. We did round table discussions throughout Ontario with all the front-line workers: police, crown attorneys, Children's Aid, victims groups, and the public.

Actually the age of consent, which was passed a few years ago, is almost word for word from our report. We worked very closely with your policy advisers.

The two recommendations here for consecutive sentencing for crimes against children and the legislation around child pornography are totally in line with our report. As I say, these are the views of the public and of the front-line workers.

As has been said several times, crimes against children are going up more and more. They are becoming more violent. The children are younger. While I appreciate that this committee has to take time to go through this, I urge you that the sooner the better, because even as we're speaking, children are being abused. I'm glad you're treating this as a priority.

The other point I would like to make, and I've heard it mentioned several times and it's really important, is that these child advocacy centres are amazing. I understand there are 21 of them now in Canada, and they are very important, but I also would like to speak to the fact that there is very little available for adult victims.

I get calls, especially more and more from men now who have been victimized as children. There's very little help available for them so I would like to see more.

Every time I'm before this committee I bring it to your attention that we desperately need support for adult survivors.

I do workshops in prisons, and I know it was discussed that there's help for the pedophiles in prison or the perpetrators, which I think is important, but there's nothing for the victims.

Over 90% of the men in prison have been sexually abused as children, and in the women's prison they say it's over 85%. So there's quite a relationship between childhood sexual abuse and crime. As I say, I'm once again going to bat for the adults.

I think it's also critical for the victims who are watching this. They are so appreciative that the government is moving forward with tougher sentencing. They feel now they are being heard. I think it's very encouraging that once again we're going to increase the sentencing both for minimum and maximum.

I agree with David Butt that the judges now are not giving out the maximum sentences that we already have before them. Probably because we're moving it up higher, then maybe it will encourage the judge to perhaps go to a little tougher sentencing. While they may not go to the maximum, they at least will move it up a little bit.

The one last thing, which isn't in this report but it's in our recommendations and I hope one day we can consider it, is electronic monitoring. I also feel that's a wonderful way to help monitor the perpetrators when they are out of jail. I know it costs about $150,000 a year, I believe, to keep someone in jail so I think there's a way we could justify the cost of electronic monitoring.

I think my time's up. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Ms. Campbell, for that presentation.

We'll now go to rounds of questions. Based on what I think is going to happen if they are on time at the House, these rounds will be three minutes each, and we'll go until we're done.

Madam Péclet, from the New Democratic Party, you're first. Please indicate who you would like to answer your question.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Yes, of course.

Thank you very much, everybody, for being here today. I'm so sorry we have to cut this short, but as you know, life on the Hill is always unpredictable.

My first question is for Mr. Butt.

One part of the bill deals with consecutive sentences. From now on, the court should consider directing consecutive sentences if the offences stem from different events. The bill amends subsection 718.3(4) of the Criminal Code and refers to consecutive sentences. In fact, the bill amends only the wording of that subsection. I'm asking you because you have a legal background.

The Criminal Code states that:

(4) The court … may direct that the terms of imprisonment … be served consecutively, when (c) the accused is found guilty … of more than one offence, …

The bill states that:

(4) The court that sentences an accused shall consider directing: (a) that the term of imprisonment that it imposes be served consecutively to a sentence of imprisonment to which the accused is subject …

In the context of your practice, have you seen problems related to the wording of the current Criminal Code section? Did it need to be changed? What is the difference between these two wordings? What justifies the amendment to the Criminal Code if the court can already consider directing consecutive sentences? Why is it necessary to change this section? What are the problems? Perhaps you have heard your colleagues discussing it already.

[David Butt]

I will say this about the consecutive versus concurrent dilemma. For example, when we're talking about multiple child victims, I think it's appropriate for Parliament to send a strong message that there should be consecutive sentences, because it sends a strong message that every child matters and that one child's victimization is going to add to the punishment just as much as another child's victimization.

When I read the draft bill, I did look at this very carefully, because as lawyers, we always have to be concerned about the totality principle. If you go out on a joyride, take a baseball bat, drive past 200 mailboxes in a rural community, and whack down every one of them, you've committed 200 separate offences. If you have a minimum sentence of six months for each one, you have a 100-year sentence for one night of mischief. This is the problem that the totality principle presents.

I support preserving the totality principle in the legislation, and as I read it, it is, but short of that, I do support the language that I see encouraging the judges to be more vigilant to impose consecutives because every child matters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much for that question and answer.

The next questioner is Mr. Dechert, from the Conservative Party.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you to each of our guests for joining us today.

Mr. Butt, I'd like to start with you. Through you, I'd like to thank the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance for the tremendous work they do. You should know that you have a great advocate in the city of Mississauga by the name of Michael Ras, who is one of the supporters of the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance. He's told me a lot about what KINSA does.

In particular, I know that you're very involved with international cases of child assault and child pornography and that you do work with Interpol. As you know, this bill contains provisions dealing with the notification by registered sex offenders of their intention to go abroad. I'd like to hear your general views on that portion of the bill. Also, can you can tell us how your organization works with Interpol and whether or not you think these amendments would have implications with respect to Canada's responsibilities to cooperate with international organizations such as Interpol?

[David Butt]

Yes. Thank you very much for your kind comments.

To get directly to the answers, in terms of the travel tightening, KINSA supports it.

In addition to work with KINSA, I spent five years on the board of ECPAT, which is based out of Thailand and is the largest NGO dealing with the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism—CST is the acronym we used—is a very serious problem.

As we tighten our laws here and as we become increasingly vigilant here, those who are predisposed to abuse children will look for other places to go. The corollary of us tightening up at home is that we create greater risks from our travellers abroad, and these restrictions on travel, the information requirements on travel, are actually a necessary corollary so that we don't actually just clean up our backyard by dumping our problems somewhere else. That's why I support it.

Yes, it will enhance our ability to work productively with Interpol and other international and national law enforcement agencies in other countries, because information about movement—and I know there are people here on the committee with police experience—gives us information. That's intelligence, and it can productively assist us in preventing and apprehending. Those are crucial pieces of the puzzle as well.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Do—

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

That's it, my friend. Thank you very much.

Our next questioner is Mr. Casey, from the Liberal Party.

If the bells haven't rung, your slot is next.

I'll come back to you, okay, Bob?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thanks to the witnesses.

I'm going to ask one question and if we have time, get each of you to respond.

Three years ago, the government introduced some increased penalties for child sexual offences and other sexual offences. In this bill, they are increasing those penalties again. In the intervening period, there was apparently an increase in the incidence of these types of crimes.

Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Can any of you indicate to me why we should expect that there will be fewer victims as a result of harsher penalties when these penalties are simply an increase that we saw three years ago...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Who would you like to start that conversation?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Perhaps we can start with Ms. St. Germain, since Mr. Butt has had a few answers here.