Thank you for the invitation to present the Canadian Bar Association's views on Bill C-75. The CBA is the national association of 36,000 lawyers, students, notaries and academics. An important aspect of our mandate is seeking improvements in the law and the administration of justice. It's that aspect of our mandate that brings us to you today.
Our section's membership represents a balance of Crown and defence lawyers from all parts of the country. Personally, I predominantly practise in criminal defence in Vancouver. I have become particularly interested in issues affecting court delays after acting as counsel for Barrett Jordan at the Supreme Court of Canada. I am joined by Kathryn Pentz, a chief Crown attorney from Nova Scotia who also acts as vice-chair of the criminal justice section in our organization.
We have provided the committee with an executive summary of our comprehensive 40-page submission. It can be found by clicking on the hyperlink included in our executive summary. I commend this larger document to you. Its thorough analysis of the 300-plus pages in the bill could only be briefly summarized in the 10 pages of the executive summary. This larger document includes detailed references to source material, statistics and explanations for our 17 recommendations.
My opening statement will focus on two overall perspectives that have informed aspects of our position on Bill C-75. First, we say that evidence-based reforms are far preferable to hurried, or what some may even characterize as knee-jerk, criminal law policy. Second, omnibus bills like Bill C-75 hinder the ability of important bodies like this one to investigate and study each proposal. They also negatively impact the public's ability to understand and participate in this important debate.
Let me begin with evidence-based reforms. For any practitioner or experienced committee member, it becomes fairly clear fairly quickly, I would suggest, when a proposed amendment is evidence-based as opposed to hurried in response to a public outcry. As you will see from our submissions, we applaud the government for making meaningful reforms to several areas, including in particular the bail process and the administration of justice offences regime. These reforms are connected to empirical study, they are consistent with recent case law, and they are logical.
Other proposed reforms, however, such as nearly abolishing the preliminary inquiry and introducing police evidence by way of affidavit, are very different. They are different and largely indefensible because they are not evidence-based, they are inconsistent with case law, and they lack internal logic, in our respectful view. For example, watching the testimony of officials earlier this week, it struck me as rather remarkable that no meaningful data could be offered to justify the curtailing of preliminary inquiries. Similarly, no study or evidence could be cited to explain why or how the introduction of what has been suggested to be routine police evidence is causing delays currently. These sorts of reactions to Jordan, with respect, do not pass the smell test, and quite rightly have been criticized by various stakeholders who have come before you.
The second general point I will address concerns the omnibus nature of Bill C-75. As we did with the previous government, the CBA is critical of this government's use of omnibus legislation. The bill is quite large. In our brief we address no less than 14 different areas of the system affected by this bill. There are substantive and procedural changes to various topics, ranging from abolishing peremptory challenges—a subject that on its own is so important that you might expect a bill devoted to it alone—to simple changes related to technology in the courtroom. Some reforms are front and centre. Others are buried in the bill, such as the coming into force of a highly problematic rebuttable presumption in human trafficking cases.
The other problem we've identified with omnibus legislation is that it does not allow for incremental implementation and change, something that might be very useful in trying to reform court delays without unduly eroding protections afforded to the accused.
There are indeed great reforms in this bill, which, if correlated with ongoing efforts to resolve delay, may well alleviate the pressure on the system without having to cast aside important tools that have proven their worth over time and that, if cast aside, will only lead to further and new charter challenges and pretrial applications—in other words, more delay. There are smart, focused reforms available to address delay that do not require the wholesale removal of procedural protections.
We offer two such suggestions here in our submissions on Bill C-75 related to elections in murder cases and electronic appearances for non-contentious hearings.
We are happy to address other proposals the CBA has offered, most recently on the Senate study on delay, and we have brought with us our brochure or pamphlet of the top 10 ways to reduce delay that was offered to that committee. These included proposals related to reforming sentencing law, suggestions regarding whether Crown approval standards should be implemented nationwide and other practical solutions that can address the problem at hand.
With that general introduction, I now turn to my colleague to address some more specific concerns that we have identified with respect to Bill C-75.