Thank you. I appreciate that.
The second issue is the implications of the summary conviction maximum penalty being raised to two years less a day. The concern that has been raised, I expect as an unintended consequence of that, according to professor and lawyer Emilie Taman, among others, is that currently the default maximum sentence for summary conviction offences is six months. However, in the case of more serious offences, the maximum penalty, even where the crown proceeds by way of summary conviction, is between six months and two years. For example, assault causing bodily harm is 18 months.
The concern is that agents like law students and paralegals currently can represent people accused of any offence where the maximum penalty is six months or less. In other words, paralegals and students can represent people for only the less serious summary conviction offences. I mentioned assault causing bodily harm.
The concern that has been expressed is that the proposal to raise the maximum penalty for summary convictions to two years less a day completely gets rid of the possibility of agent representation, which is going to cause delays in the system because many accused persons won't have any legal representation at all. We're talking about the poor, indigenous, marginalized, and the like, who can't afford legal aid in so many of our jurisdictions.
Lisa Cirillo, executive director of Downtown Legal Services at the University of Toronto, stated, “We feel there's such a huge access to justice issue in our country, we feel like they couldn't have meant to wipe out the ability of all of these clients to access legal assistance.”
Can you tell us if restricting agent representation in this way was in fact intended? If not, can you commit to amending the bill to avoid this unfortunate outcome that will cause only further delay and affect those who can least afford lawyers?