Good afternoon.
I'm Deputy Chief Constable Howard Chow of the Vancouver Police Department. I'm joined by Rachel Huntsman, Q.C., legal counsel with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.
Distinguished members of this committee, on behalf of Chief Constable Adam Palmer, president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, I'm pleased to be given the opportunity to speak before you today. I should clarify that because of scheduling conflicts last week, we're here to discuss issues with Bill C-75 that are broader than just the preliminary inquiries.
Overall, the CACP supports Bill C-75 and the clear intention by Parliament to modernize the criminal justice system and reduce court delays and judicial proceedings. In the interest of time, my comments will focus on amendments that the CACP views as having a direct impact on police powers and operations.
First, I'd like to discuss routine police evidence. This bill would amend the Criminal Code to allow police officers to provide evidence by way of affidavit, eliminating the necessity for them to attend court. While the CACP supports this amendment, our position is that the current definition is too broad and that a clarification of “routine police evidence” is required. The proposed amendment fails to delineate what type of police evidence would be acceptable, thereby potentially contributing to further inefficiencies through pretrial motions.
The next area of concern relates to the judicial referral hearings. While the CACP supports an option for police to divert an accused away from bail court for administrative justice offences, it is anticipated that the judicial referral hearing process will result in a lack of documentation of these same offences into CPIC. This lack of documentation means that police officers from other jurisdictions will be incapable of accessing the full criminal history of an offender. This is vital information for law enforcement when deciding whether to release a person and under what conditions.
As well, in 2008, the offence of failure to appear was added to the list of secondary designated offences. This information was provided to us by the National DNA Data Bank: They indicated they received upwards of 36,220 submissions under this section of the Criminal Code and that these submissions have yielded 1,157 matches to a DNA profile in a criminal index, including 55 homicides and 107 sexual assaults. The concern is that if an offender undergoes a judicial referral for a failure to appear instead of having a charge laid, there'll be no submission of the offender's DNA.
Next, the CACP supports the principle of restraint as it relates to indigenous and vulnerable populations. However, proposed section 493.2 places considerable onus on a police officer at the time of arrest to try to identify who falls within this classification of offender. A reality of policing is that arrests are often made in the middle of the night, with little known about the person's history and background. The CACP recommends amending the section to require that a police officer give particular attention to the circumstances of accused persons who appear to be indigenous and/or belong to a vulnerable population.
Further, the CACP recommends that a definition of “vulnerable population” be included in Bill C-75. Factors such as a person's ethnicity, economic status, drug dependency, age, mental health issues, or overall health are difficult to measure and assess out in the field. A clarification of what is defined as a “vulnerable person” would assist the police in meeting the requirements of this section.
I'd like now to address a significant concern for CACP, and that is the hybridization of indictable offences. This amendment will affect 85 Criminal Code offences, including a number of terrorism-related ones. Currently, these are classified as secondary offences under the Criminal Code. If the Crown proceeds by indictment and the offender is convicted of one of these offences, the Crown can request that the offender provide a DNA sample for submission to the National DNA Data Bank; however, if these 85 offences are hybridized and the Crown elects to proceed by summary conviction, the offence will no longer be deemed a secondary offence and a DNA order cannot be obtained.
The submission of DNA samples to the data bank is used by law enforcement to link crime scenes and match offenders to these crime scenes. Removing these indictable offences from potential inclusion into the data bank will have a direct and negative impact on police investigations.
Again, the numbers that follow were obtained by the data bank, and they demonstrate how submissions of these 85 indictable offences have assisted in matches to profiles for primary and secondary offences.
During the period between June 30, 2000, and February 21, 2018, during that 18-year period, the data bank received submissions for 52 of these 85 secondary offences, which resulted in 9,677 submissions to the NDDB. Of these 52 indictable offences, 22 led to 588 matches being made to a DNA profile in a criminal index, together with 221 matches to primary offences, which included 19 homicides and 24 sexual assaults.
We're proposing a solution to this, and that would be to list these 85 indictable offences as secondary or primary offences under section 487.04 of the Criminal Code, which will permit a DNA order to be made regardless of the Crown's election.
The final point I'd like to discuss is the Identification of Criminals Act, subsection 2(1). It provides that a person in lawful custody and charged with or convicted of an indictable offence may be fingerprinted or photographed. Under Bill C-75, the accused can still be compelled to appear under the terms of an appearance notice or undertaking for identification purposes. However, the case law has established that the appearance notice has to be confirmed by a judge or a justice before the person is considered to be formally charged with the offence.
A person who is under arrest and in lawful custody of the police cannot be fingerprinted or photographed until a charge is laid. The problem lies in the fact that once the Crown has elected to proceed by way of summary conviction, the offence is no longer deemed an indictable offence and the accused cannot be identified under the Identification of Criminals Act. This means that a significant number of charges will not be entered on CPIC, resulting in out-of-province police officers, Crowns, justices, and judges not knowing if the arrestee or accused has a pending case or a previous conviction.
The CACP is recommending that the Identification of Criminals Act be amended to allow for fingerprinting on arrest, with proper safeguards in place to protect the integrity of the process. CACP is also recommending that the ICA should be amended to allow fingerprinting for all Criminal Code offences, or at the very least to allow fingerprinting notwithstanding the Crown's election.
Finally, the CACP supports amendments that pertain to the leveraging of technology for the police community, while encouraging strong leadership and guidance in establishing appropriate standards related to the introduction and implementation of technology.
We are encouraged by the recommended amendments proposed by Bill C-75; however, we acknowledge that this will involve considerable training for front-line police officers.
Thank you for your time and work on this bill. We'd be happy to take any of your questions.
Thank you.