Justice Committee on Feb. 18th, 2015

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Chair, we are studying Bill C-26, which is a government bill and is quite important. With that in mind, I would like to repeat something so that we at least consider it in the future. When we know that this is being studied, I think we should be able to inform our colleagues on the committee so that we can increase the time for witnesses as required to be able to ask them questions.

Otherwise, we feel that we come after the fact. That bothers me. I am not saying that the content is bad, but I don't feel that we have done an in-depth study.

I keep saying that it won't be easy to meet the criteria of clause 29 for someone who commits an offence outside Canada. I wonder whether this won't be a complete waste of time.

I have no idea how the poor RCMP commissioner will enforce all that. No one gave me a specific example of an offence abroad or of how it would be handled here and how it would correspond to this wording. It is because this issue has not been studied in depth.

We would have liked to be advised earlier. The government might miss something and then we would have something to talk about, which would be better than rushing to pass the provision as fast as we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you.

Here's my undertaking as chair of the committee. I will write, in this case to both ministers, indicating that with future legislation generated by the government, if there are amendments that are known in advance, it might be an opportunity for them to let the committee know so we can ask questions of witnesses based on those amendments, technical or not.

I will write something along those lines, and we'll send it off.

Is there anything further on G-2?

(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings]

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

That brings us to the same clause 29 and the first NDP amendment.

Madam Boivin, the floor is yours.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you.

Do I introduce both amendments together since they are dealing with the same clause or do I present them separately?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

We'll do them one at a time.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I will present them separately, then.

The first amendment reads as follows:

That Bill C-26, in Clause 29, be amended by adding after line 36 on page 14 the following:

“(2) Under no circumstances must the information referred to in subsection (1) be used to identify the victims.”

That follows on the evidence we have heard this week about the much touted database. We know that, in approximately 90% of cases, offenders are related to the victim. I was careful to read all the information about the description of offences. Everything that is written there could lead to that.

There should be an additional test to make sure that publishing the information will not disclose anything about the victim. I think that goes without saying. It is just additional protection. It is important to keep this criterion in mind when the information is published.

We can easily imagine a case of incest or sexual assault against a child, where we know that the offender assaulted an eight-year-old child based on the description of the offences committed if we start describing what happened on such and such a date. People could count the years and think of a girl of that age. That may well cause problems, which I don't think is the government's intent.

I think this amendment is reasonable. In fact, it changes nothing to the way the database is set up. It simply seeks to protect victims.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Dechert.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank Madam Boivin for proposing this amendment.

Unfortunately, the government does not support this amendment primarily because we do not believe it is necessary. I'll explain that.

Under clause 29, the RCMP would be required to only include information in the new public database that had previously been made public by a police service or other public authority. That would have already abided by any court orders that were in place to protect the victim's identity. Madam Boivin will know that in most of these cases those kinds of court orders are specifically in place to protect the identity of a victim in the circumstances that she outlined.

Also, we believe that it's overly broad. She may not have fully appreciated that this could provide a blanket prohibition that would restrain the RCMP in providing information that could be essential in advising the public of specific risks of an offender to the community. For example, that could be a description of the circumstances of the offence that would put the community on notice of the type of danger that the high risk child sex offender database is designed to protect the community against.

If I could, I'd like to ask Mr. Churney to add an explanation from a more technical and legal perspective.

[Daryl Churney]

Yes, certainly.

Building on what Mr. Dechert has already articulated, probably the key point to remember is that with respect to the database, the RCMP will not be adding to any information that has already been made public by one of the provincial-territorial jurisdictions in their public notification. The RCMP is merely collating those existing notifications.

Each province and territory will have its own policies and procedures for ensuring that victim information is not compromised or released publicly. That initial round of vetting will have already been done by the local jurisdiction. As a consequence, the RCMP will not be adding anything new that will go beyond what the provinces and territories have already done.

I would invite my RCMP colleagues to add to that if they have anything else they wish to add.

[Assistant Commissioner Joe Oliver, Assistant Commissioner, Technical Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I would add only that I think that's a proper interpretation of how the RCMP would exercise its obligations, which is to only.... The act is very clear: it must contain only information that has previously been disclosed.

The consequence of the amendment might actually create operational challenges for the RCMP to operationalize the bill. Are we now going to have a requirement to assess, before we publish anything, whether an individual whom we have no control over is actually going to try to use this information to identify victims? Also, what consequence does that impose on the commissioner's obligations? Additionally, if there's non-compliance with this provision, I guess the question is, what is the accountability mechanism if there is non-compliance?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Madam Boivin.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I am not sure I follow you.

Mr. Churney, are we creating a new database or are we simply saying that the current sex offender database is public and accessible to everyone?

I will stand corrected if I am wrong, but my understanding was that the database includes individuals convicted of sexual offences who are at high risk of committing crimes of a sexual nature. It is not the same thing as the existing database that the RCMP and other police forces are used to working with and that includes all sex offenders.

A new database with information is being created. Section 5 of the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act refers to the database in section 4. In that light, I am not sure I can follow your reasoning that the information is already published. We are going around in circles.

In my view, before making the information public, we should make sure that the information mentioned in section 5 will not make it possible to identify a victim. I don't think anyone would want Bill C-26 to help identify victims.

You are talking about a database, but I would like that to be clear. Are you referring to the existing database? I don't think so, because there would be no point in what you are doing right now.

[Daryl Churney]

No, I think we're on the same page. I apologize if I was not clear. There is no current database in respect of this issue. The current national sex offender registry is not changing. It is not becoming public. That will remain limited to law enforcement purposes.

What's being created, the database that we're looking at here, is essentially a compilation of existing public notifications done by PT jurisdictions. Right now, all provinces and territories have the authority to advise the public about the release of a high-risk offender in the public. During the course of those notifications, there are certain characteristics about that offender and the offences that are made public, and that's determined by the police force.

In each jurisdiction, they have their own protocols for the way in which those notifications are done and the kind of information that is made public, but that notification is limited to that jurisdiction and that province. What this database seeks to achieve is to essentially widen the access to all of those local notifications on a national scale, so that if the notification is made in Newfoundland, someone in British Columbia, for example, would be able to know of that notification. That's the database I'm referring to.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

That's the database that I was referring to as well.

So it's brand new, and it's a power we're giving, through the bill, to the RCMP commissioner to create it, because it says so:

4.(1) The Commissioner must establish and administer a publicly accessible database

There is also a disposition in clause 29 later on, in proposed section 11, that says the Governor in Council may make regulations concerning the criteria.

Wouldn't we be more prudent to give a bit of the guideline, at least? I mean, I thought I was soft. Guys, come on. I was protecting the victims. I could have gone way overboard and said that you don't do this, you don't do that, but let's at least make sure....

Mr. Oliver, when you said that you already do that, no; maybe you do that through a de facto type of security in certain communities, but this is a law, a piece of legislation, that states that it's a database that includes all this information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Oliver, would you like to respond?

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

I think to simplify things, essentially what the RCMP will be mandated to do here by Parliament is create the national infrastructure to allow for consistent publication of previously published high-risk offenders.

With respect to the specific amendment, the difficulty is that the RCMP would not have any control over, if we published based on the criteria here, any individual using the Internet to try to identify victims. Do you understand the operational implication?

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Yes.

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

The imposition is not on the commissioner to say that you will not publish the name of the victim. It says that under no circumstance must the information in the database be used to identify a victim. So anybody in the public can take the information here, go on the Internet, and try to do media searches and so forth. From an operational perspective—

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Okay, again, it's the difference between the two. I wrote it in French, and in French it's “permit” to identify, not “be used” to identify.

I think it made more sense

in French, because it said “ne doivent en aucun cas permettre d'identifier les victimes”. It was not supposed to say

“be used” to identify...because I understand your point. I find that in English, it's not what I had in mind. What I had in mind, and I thought was solid, was just that it shouldn't permit identifying. It's not to be used; anybody can try, and go on the Internet and say, “When was he in court? Did I see a certain person?” You're not in charge of that. Okay, I get the point, and I get the position, but that being said, you're already doing it with some, I guess, very serious cases, where you notify certain collectivities.

[A/Commr Joe Oliver]

If I could correct you there, the RCMP is not doing it as a national federal entity. We're doing it as the police of jurisdiction in those areas, based on where we might be the police of jurisdiction.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I get that.

Again, Mr. Churney, why not put the criteria in the bill ? Why leave it so wishy-washy? For me, that is why I think this bill will not be really of any use.

We cannot be against virtue, but I wish the commissioner good luck in his attempt to implement this type of measure.

Just remember the firearms registry and all that. Would it not have been useful to know the criteria being used to establish the database, given that this is already being done in some communities, where the police officers ask the public to be careful about certain sexual predators? Would it not have been appropriate to give more specific directives to police officers rather than to send them to do who knows what?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Churney, would you like to answer?

[Daryl Churney]

I understand the concern you've identified, but I think the issue for us really is that the database will be a partnership between the federal government and the provinces and territories. Because we have to account for the fact that there are gradations and variations of the policies and practices across the country right now among the jurisdictions in the way in which they approach notifications, we have to allow for some flexibility in terms of consulting with them going forward as to what would be the acceptable standards applicable to everyone going forward. There are negotiations or discussions commencing, beginning with our PT colleagues, with respect to developing that criteria and coming to a uniform consensus.

I understand that there are—

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

So there are no specific dates for the

implementation of the bill, which means that it could take up time in your consultations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you.

(Amendment negatived)

We'll move to amendment NDP-2.

Madam Boivin, the floor is yours.