I have a number of thoughts on administration of justice charges.
We commend Parliament's efforts to try to come up with a solution to what really can only be called a bail “crisis” in Canada. However, it's our position that there is a broadening of police discretion here that already exists without the option of a referral hearing.
My colleagues have written about—and I think are here making submissions about—the risk-averse culture that pervades the bail process. This allows a police officer to defer the decision to release or to lay a charge to somebody else, and that feeds into what the heart of the problem is. The police have always had the discretion to not lay a charge and they should use that discretion—and in many cases, they do.
The concern here is that very same concern we have with existing police discretion, which is, who benefits most from the use of that discretion and who is hurt by it the most? That fundamentally doesn't change with Bill C-75 and the use of the referral hearing.