Evidence of meeting #107 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inquiries.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Tony Clement  Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC
Arif Virani  Parkdale—High Park, Lib.
Laurelly Dale  Criminal Defense Counsel, Dale Law Professional Corporation, As an Individual
Michael Spratt  Criminal Lawyer, Abergel Goldstein and Partners, As an Individual
Rosellen Sullivan  Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers
Richard Fowler  Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers
Lisa Silver  Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Daniel Brown  Lawyer, Daniel Brown Law, As an Individual
Howard Chow  Deputy Chief Constable, Vancouver Police Department, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police
Rachel Huntsman  Legal Counsel, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police
Daisy Kler  Transition House Worker, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter
Kathryn Smithen  Barrister and Solicitor, Child and Family Advocacy Services, Smithen Law, As an Individual
Elizabeth Sheehy  Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Joy Smith  Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.
Maria Mourani  Criminologist and Sociologist, President of Mouranie-Criminologie, As an Individual
Marie-Eve Sylvestre  Full Professor, Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Megan Walker  Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

8 p.m.

Criminologist and Sociologist, President of Mouranie-Criminologie, As an Individual

Maria Mourani

Very well. I will conclude.

My last point is about the need for sentences to be made stricter by introducing consecutive sentences. That is the objective of the amendments to the Criminal Code contained in Bill C-452. However, those amendments must be given effect by order in council, and the government is the entity that must do that. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time left to explain the saga that followed, but I am sure that in answering your questions, I will be able to set out my arguments.

Thank you very much.

8 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you.

I now yield the floor to Ms. Sylvestre.

8 p.m.

Full Professor, Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Marie-Eve Sylvestre

Good evening.

Thank you for your invitation. My remarks will be exclusively concerned with interim release.

Allow me to begin by telling you the story of Martine.

At the time when our research team met her in 2014, Martine was a homeless young woman in her mid-thirties. She was undergoing treatment to curtail her addiction to opioids, and living with HIV.

In April 2008, Martine was arrested for the first time for having communicated with people for the purposes of prostitution, an offence under paragraph 213(1)(c) of the Criminal Code, the functional equivalent of current paragraph 213(1.1) of the Criminal Code which criminalizes sex work.

Because of her priors, Martine was detained by a police officer and appeared in court the next day. The Crown opposed her release and Martine was remanded until her judicial release hearing, held three days later.

Martine spent four days in a pretrial detention centre. That is a typical scenario in Quebec. In Ontario, the period is longer. This centre is overcrowded and people are detained there who often have not been convicted of any crime. Moreover, Martine had not consumed any drugs for four days. She was suffering greatly as a consequence and experiencing several withdrawal symptoms.

It was under these conditions, and attempting to merely survive, that she accepted the release conditions imposed by the prosecutor and approved by the judge. Those conditions included not consuming alcohol or drugs and not being in a area covering all of the Centre-Sud district of Montreal and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, an area of about 12 square kilometres. That is equivalent to the distance between Parliament Hill and the Rideau River, or from Bronson Avenue to Elgin Street.

Martine was not in a position to challenge the conditions of her release, among other reasons because it is impossible for her to stop taking drugs from one day to the next; she often resides in a motel on Saint-Hubert Street and goes to get groceries at the Fondation d'aide directe-SIDA Montréal, and also goes to Méta d'Âme, an organization that helps people who are addicted to opioids, where she receives treatment for HIV and accesses social services. All of these places were located in the perimeter she could no longer be found in.

She agreed to anything because she wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

Her trial was scheduled for the month of July. Since she does not keep an agenda on the street, Martine did not appear in court. She was accused of failing to appear and a warrant was issued.

A few months later, she was arrested and immediately detained. After having spent 48 hours in a detention centre, she appeared and pleaded guilty to the communication offence, to breaching her release conditions and to failure to appear. She was sentenced to 30 days of imprisonment, which was followed by a probation period of one year with the same conditions.

Two months later, Martine was caught in her prohibited perimeter in a state of intoxication and in the process of communicating with someone. This was a new offence and she was once again accused of breaching her release conditions. This time, Martine was excluded from the entire Island of Montreal. She was forced to take therapy in a suburb, a condition she will not respect, once again.

From one instance of non-compliance to another, from failure to appear to failure to appear, Martine over two years accumulated seven administration of justice offences for two predicate offences. During all of that period, she felt constantly watched. She experienced a lot of stress. She played a game of cat and mouse with the police. She consumed more drugs than before. She lost her apartment. In the suburbs, she told us, she was starving to death.

During the period she was banished from Montreal, she could no longer receive her HIV treatments, which were not available outside the city. Finally, she was allowed to go to her medical appointments on condition she find a means of transportation that would deliver her to the door of the medical centre. Asked to comment on her situation, Martine was very direct: “They are about to ask me to walk on my hands”, she said.

Martine's case is not exceptional in our justice system. I told you her story to illustrate the following facts.

First of all, our prisons are full of people like Martine who are detained pretrial for extremely minor offences—shoplifting, obstructing the work of police officers, misdemeanours, drug possession, common assault, and countless instances of failure to respect conditions. These people are detained longer before their court appearance than they would have been if they had been sentenced immediately. Moreover, the reversal of the burden of proof when charged with failure to respect conditions only increases their likelihood of being detained.

Although people sometimes think that the justice system really deals with serious crimes, we see that in reality administration of justice offences make up more than 25% of all cases heard by the courts every year. Forty per cent of the cases heard contain at least one of those offences.

These figures are even higher among indigenous persons, and more indigenous persons are in prison.

Our justice system produces repeat offenders, but they are not criminals. They are people who are unable to comply with unrealistic and arbitrary conditions.

The most common offence against the administration of justice is non-compliance with release conditions, or breach of release conditions. When people are released, judges impose conditions in 95 to 100% of cases. The conditions that are most often violated are those related to abstinence or not being at a certain place.

Bill C-75 is a step in the right direction, especially the planned addition to sections 493.1 and 492.2 of the Criminal Code. The bill does not go far enough in addressing these problems, however, to make sure that our prisons and courts are not primarily places that manage misery and poverty, to make our justice system address what is essential, and to uphold the rights of marginalized persons, especially women and often indigenous persons.

I propose a series of amendments, most of which are in my brief.

First, the term “vulnerable populations“ in the new clause 493.2 must be defined. Otherwise it would be incumbent on the person appearing to prove that they are disadvantaged.

Further, police officers must be required to issue unconditional notices to appear for persons who do not pose a real and imminent threat to the safety of victims and witnesses.

The new subclause 501(3), which pertains to the reasons for which police officers can impose conditions, must be amended to require them to consider the seriousness of the alleged offence, in particular as to the need to ensure attendance in court.

The grounds for detention set out in subclause 515(10) must absolutely be amended to prevent justices of the peace from detaining a person and imposing conditions on them to ensure their attendance in court when required by the seriousness of the offence and when the person presents a real, serious, and imminent threat to the safety of a witness or victim.

A provision must also be added to prevent the detention of a person if it is unlikely that they will be sentenced to prison.

All reversals of the burden of proof must also be eliminated, specifically as provided in paragraph 515(6)c) in the event of breach of conditions.

Additional precautions must also be taken for two types of conditions: those pertaining to abstinence and geographic conditions. For conditions pertaining to alcohol and drugs, the police officer and judge must consider the person's degree of dependence to see whether the condition imposed is realistic under the circumstances. Further, a harm reduction approach must be taken in all cases. On October 17, cannabis will be decriminalized in Canada, but there is a risk that it could be criminalized again by the back door if it is included in release conditions.

The power of police officers to impose geographic conditions must also be eliminated unless the safety of a person or victim is at risk.

Finally, the parallel procedure in clause 523 pertaining to minor breaches must be eliminated; in my view, it is not a good idea. People will continue to appear before judges and overload the courts. That is already the case in provinces such as British Columbia, where defendants appear before judges, are given a warning, leave, but keep appearing before the courts again. The way the procedure is structured could increase the number of individuals who previously had no charges against them. Finally, activities related to drugs, and not just cannabis, and sex work, must be decriminalized so that the life and safety of persons is not endangered.

This is the first time in 50 years that Parliament has had the opportunity to amend statutory provisions regarding release. Every effort must be made to reduce the pretrial detention of persons who are not dangerous and eliminate the pointless conditions that discriminate against marginalized persons. In its present form, Bill C-75 does not go far enough.

8:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much.

We're going to go to Ms. Walker.

8:10 p.m.

Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

Megan Walker

Thank you so much for having me here today. It's lovely to see you and lovely to have London North Centre MP Peter Fragiskatos with us at the table today.

The London Abused Women's Shelter provides advocacy, support, and counselling to women and girls over the age of 12 who experience male violence in their intimate relationships, by their pimps and/or sex purchasers, and in the workplace.

We are a very small organization with 11 staff and a mandate to ensure that all women have immediate access to service. Last year, our small office served 6,045 women and girls. During the last three years, our prostitution and trafficking-specific programs have been attended by 1,664 trafficked, prostituted, sexually exploited, and at-risk women and girls. That is probably more than anywhere else in the country. Our programs are very popular, and we are grateful that we can provide them.

We also support families from across the country. Last year, we supported 140 family members, who sometimes just flew in from other provinces, or sometimes even from the territories, looking for their daughters who have gone missing into this horrible world of trafficking.

Two-thirds of all trafficking in Canada originates in the province of Ontario. Girls are recruited into trafficking for the purpose of prostitution and pornography. They're recruited at bars, at universities, in high schools, and in their workplaces.

London, as Peter will attest, is a hub of trafficking activity. Girls and women are recruited both from and to London. The lead with our London Police Service human trafficking unit recently said that trafficking is an epidemic in society.

The trafficking unit provided service to many girls between the ages of 11 and 17. These girls and women are trafficked by their boyfriends, family members, and organized crime. By organized crime, we often think of bikers or the Mafia, but I'm talking about small gangs that exist in communities across the country.

We need to recognize that there is a relationship between organized crime, male violence against women in intimate relationships, and trafficking. As has been stated already, trafficking of women and girls is highly profitable, unlike trafficking of weapons or drugs, where the trafficker has to continue to spend more money to get more supplies. Traffickers can make money off of the same woman over and over again.

Many women we work with have been forced by their pimps to bring home every day between $1,500 and $2,000. This means that they are providing sexual services and fulfilling the porn-fuelled fantasies of anywhere between 15 and 20 men per day.

We ask that you please try to understand and acknowledge that there is a relationship between prostitution and trafficking and that prostitution is inherently harmful, violent, and dehumanizing. Prostitution fuels trafficking.

Our current legislation in Canada criminalizes pimps, brothel owners, and sex purchasers and has been identified by many police services across this country as a valuable tool to help them in their fight against trafficking. On a side note, a recent Ipsos poll on Canada's prostitution legislation found that 58% of those living in Ontario support the current legislation.

I know how difficult it is for people to hear about repeated torture that is experienced by prostituted, trafficked, and sexually exploited women and girls, but to understand the significance of the issues, it's important that you hear about it.

Most trafficked girls have no idea what their trafficker has negotiated with the sex purchaser. When men appear to fulfill a rape fantasy, as an example, the woman has no idea. The man is given a card to get into her room, comes in, and literally rapes her as his fantasy. That experience for her leaves her feeling as if she was just raped, and she's left deeply traumatized.

We know some of the experiences women and girls share with us, particularly when they're trafficked into pornography. They are waterboarded. They are strung from the ceilings by their feet while being whipped, beaten, and electroshocked on their labia and in their vaginas. Their feet are repeatedly beaten until they are swollen and bleeding, and their nipples are nailed to wooden boards to stop them from moving.

This is torture. It can be called nothing but torture. It's torture in the private sphere, and it does require legislation to acknowledge it as non-state torture, so that women's experiences are validated.

We know that Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos tabled a bill in the House of Commons to amend the Criminal Code regarding the inflicting of torture. It was known as Bill C-242. We felt that it was minimized when it came to this committee and minimized at the House of Commons in Parliament. Only two experts in non-state torture were called, no victims, and it was then sent back to Parliament, where on November 29, 2016, its status became known as dead. It's appropriate to call it dead. “Dead” is the exact word used when tortured women and girls are asked how they feel, and of course it's the word we all use when women are killed as a result of torture—“She's dead.”

Pornography today is extremely violent and has resulted in the murder of women on film. Men who watch pornography learn that women are nothing more than disposable objects who exist solely to satisfy male fetishes. The average child will watch pornography at age 11. When I go into school grounds and I see a group of kids huddled, I go over—it takes only one kid with a phone—and they're all watching pornography. These are kids in grades 2, 3, and 4.

In pornography, women are pulled by their hair to a bathroom where their heads are shoved into the toilet while it is repeatedly flushed. Women are shown in the videos fighting to live and gasping to breathe while inhaling water and choking, yet the more they fight, the longer their heads remain in the toilets.

Men in pornography, like many men in society, want women and girls to know they have both the power to kill them and the power to bring them back to life. Women and girls are forced to endure multiple men ejaculating on their faces, and unprotected anal-to-oral sex is the norm. These women and girls suffer from trauma and significant health issues like syphilis, gonorrhea of the eye, and prolapsed anus.

M-47 was a motion introduced by Conservative member Arnold Viersen. It was referred to the Standing Committee on Health to examine the public health impacts of pornography. The committee provided a response that failed to address the systemic public health issues in pornography. Instead, the committee addressed it as an issue of sexual health to be resolved by education. That's not appropriate.

I'm getting to the recommendations. Are you about to tell me I'm at 10 minutes? I say I'm at eight.

8:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

You're at about nine minutes, 10 seconds.

8:15 p.m.

Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

Megan Walker

Oh, all right. I'm almost done.

8:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

You'll have to get to your recommendations on Bill C-75.

8:15 p.m.

Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

Megan Walker

Bill C-75 is very difficult to wade through, which makes it inaccessible to almost all victims, and particularly women who've experienced violence or sexual exploitation. For the most part, sexually assaulted, tortured, prostituted, and trafficked girls and women have no idea that the government is even discussing these issues at this moment.

We do have some recommendations.

We would like you to develop a consultation tool to allow women's voices to be heard, particularly those impacted by prostitution, trafficking, exploitation, and male violence, so you can incorporate their feedback into the legislation. We know how to do those tools for you. We need you to reach out to these women and girls.

We're asking you to re-examine the issue of legislating non-state torture as a criminal offence. We're asking that you legislate an opt-in process for online pornography, so that, similar to online gambling, only those over the age of 18 can access it. We're asking you to address the systemic failures that discriminate against women, preventing them from either accessing the criminal justice system or remaining involved in it. At the very least, we ask that you stop using the term “gender-based violence” and call it what it is: it's male violence against women, and women have been invisible for too long. The time has come to continue to talk about them.

I'll just get to the final one. We'd like to see a strong appeal by the House of Commons to the Senate to quickly pass the amendments to the Judges Act. It was a unanimous vote in the House of Commons, and it's been stuck in the Senate now for about two years. Women are anxiously waiting to have judges who are trained to address sexual violence.

It is difficult to discuss our problems around male violence against women, oppression, and human rights violations in front of a committee with 11 male members and one woman. That's hard, because as well-meaning as all of you are, as men you have power and privilege that women don't have.

The term “nevertheless we persist” is valid, because women have to fight every day to be heard and to survive and to be believed. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and to present some facts around trafficking and some recommendations.

8:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much.

We're going to go to questions from Mr. Clement or Mr. Cooper, whoever would like to go.

8:20 p.m.

Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC

Tony Clement

This is my first meeting.

8:20 p.m.

Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

8:20 p.m.

Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC

Tony Clement

I want to thank all of the presenters, of course. It's a very harrowing topic. It's very upsetting to all of us—more than upsetting.

I don't know whether this is appropriate: I am a male but I also have a wife, a mother, a sister, and two daughters. This affects all of us. I know obviously I cannot speak from the experiences that all of you have come across, but it's important to have this on the record, so thank you, all of you, for doing that.

I'm trying to figure out how. You've all offered some prescriptions. Some of them have differed in their remedies. In terms of our consideration of Bill C-75, I think we're hearing that either through this legislation or through a companion piece of legislation, there have to be more remedies than are provided.

I understand, Chair, as I've heard around the table at my first meeting ever that as a committee you have been doing some work on human trafficking and you're working on a report.

8:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Yes, we are.

8:20 p.m.

Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC

Tony Clement

I think that's important to put on the record as well.

Ms. Walker has been quite prescriptive in the things she's wanted to see.

The same applies for Ms. Sylvestre.

Maybe I'll just throw it over to Joy Smith.

You identified, Joy, some areas where you felt that the bill wasn't taking these things seriously, so whether it's through this bill or through other legislation, could you just expand a little bit on how, in an ideal world—which is what we all aspire to on both sides of boardroom table—things could be made better so that you don't have to exist any more in the great work that you are doing for women and girls in our society?

8:25 p.m.

Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.

Joy Smith

Thank you, Tony, for that question. I'm used to calling you Minister Clement, so it will have to be Tony tonight.

8:25 p.m.

Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC

Tony Clement

In a galaxy far, far away....

8:25 p.m.

Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.

Joy Smith

This is a very serious issue. What Megan described is just so dead-on. There needs to be a consultation greater than what we're hearing right now in terms of going across the country and talking to different people. You know, there needs to be an in-depth consultation specifically with survivors of human trafficking to understand what they really go through and what they need to have to be rehabilitated.

l believe the third piece is prevention. We just took it over in the foundation, and we've developed school programs, but this has to be a government-supported initiative throughout post-secondary and elementary schools. The kids that are being subjected to this trafficking are very young. The youngest one that I ever dealt with was five years old. No child ever gets over that kind of thing, no matter what kind of rehabilitation is done. They have triggers—smells, words, everything—that bring it up over a lifetime, so the prevention piece is something that needs to be addressed as well. I think the federal government has to take a look at that.

I think also that enhancing the charges against these people would help, because if there's light sentencing, the perpetrators just keep on doing it, and they leave the whole community in a wake of destroyed young lives. The recommendations that Megan brought forward, I thought, were very good.

However, in addition to that, there needs to be the prevention piece as well, and the federal government is in charge of post-secondary schools. I know in some of the conferences that I've done.... At one conference, I was in Calgary. There was a young girl that came up, and she had been trafficked and controlled within the university itself, so it's all over the place, and this awareness is far too little. People in Canada now still do not understand human trafficking.

8:25 p.m.

Parry Sound—Muskoka, CPC

Tony Clement

Ms. Mourani, do you have anything to add is this regard?

September 24th, 2018 / 8:25 p.m.

Criminologist and Sociologist, President of Mouranie-Criminologie, As an Individual

Maria Mourani

Certainly.

As to the recommendations, let me repeat what victims and the police told me. Victims are waiting for Bill C-452 to come into force, which received royal assent in 2015. For three years, the government has refused to bring this law into force.

Having been a minister, Mr. Clement, you know that it takes more than a day for a ministerial order to be issued to bring a law into force. As you also know, the House voted unanimously twice, at second reading and at third reading of this bill. Even Mr. Trudeau, who is now the prime minister, voted for the bill.

The current Minister of Justice says Bill C-36 would create problems for consecutive sentences. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the previous government for passing this major piece of legislation on prostitution. You will recall that Bill C-36 received royal assent on November 6, 2014, while Bill C-245 received royal assent on June 18, 2015, nearly a year later.

Everyone voted for it. Why does Mr. Trudeau seem to be changing his mind now that he is prime minister? Victims are very frustrated by this, especially families with children who have run away or who are in prostitution networks, and who are told by police officers that they cannot take action without testimony or a complaint, even in the case of girls who are minors. The government must declare this act to be in force immediately without waiting for Bill C-75 to be passed or receive royal assent.

8:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Virani.

8:30 p.m.

Parkdale—High Park, Lib.

Arif Virani

Thank you, everyone. The testimony we have heard has made me and my colleagues realize that the committee members are all men, except for Ms. Khalid. So it is important for us to listen to you and for you to inform us well.

This week and last week, we heard testimony about the overrepresentation of indigenous persons and persons from visible minorities. Yet our committee has no indigenous members, and just two members of a visible minority. So there are certain gaps in our membership.

I would like to talk about three things. If you don't mind, I will ask my questions in English. You may of course answer in French, Ms. Sylvestre. I read your summary in English.

You highlighted something that is very important right now, which is harm reduction. You talked about it in the context of the homeless woman, Martine, whose story you outlined, and it's something that's very much in the news right now because some governments—including the Conservative government in my very own province—are now challenging all the well-established evidence we've seen on harm reduction.

We have an overdose prevention site in my riding of Parkdale—High Park that is operating extralegally because Premier Ford, in his infinite wisdom, has seen fit to withdraw the approval of it, at least on a temporary basis. The police don't agree with it, the mayor doesn't agree with it, and our federal government certainly doesn't agree with it, but what's important from your témoignage, if I understood it well, is that if you really want to apply harm reduction, it needs to apply across the board.

It even needs to inform judicial determinations and court determinations about things such as conditions on bail. If you impose too restrictive a condition, you prevent people from accessing a geographic area or a service—or in this case a supervised injection site—and getting the assistance they need. Instead of rehabilitating people, you're actually criminalizing them and trapping them in the system.

Did I understand you well? Can you elaborate on that point in particular, about how that should inform our approach to bail?

8:30 p.m.

Full Professor, Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Marie-Eve Sylvestre

I guess one of my main arguments is that abstinence clauses and red zones, or no-go orders, are preventing marginalized people from getting the health services and the social services they need, including harm reduction services. Part of our research was conducted in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, where people need to have access to harm reduction services, including safe injection sites. The red zones are almost automatically applied in cases of drug offenders, including for possession but also trafficking, so they were prevented from getting access to these vital services in a time of crisis in Canada.

It's really important, when we think about imposing conditions, that we think about the consequences on marginalized people in getting the health and social services they need. It's also important in terms of thinking about drafting conditions related to alcohol and drugs. If we impose abstinence clauses on people who, because of their addiction, are unable to comply with those conditions and are forced to systematically violate those conditions and build up a very heavy criminal record, then we're obviously not helping those people get out of the social problems they're involved in.

I guess my main message to you, members of the committee, is that the criminalization of minor offenders and marginalized communities is probably the worst solution or the worst means to deal with social problems and, to get back to your question, for them to get access to harm reduction services.

8:35 p.m.

Parkdale—High Park, Lib.

Arif Virani

In that vein, just to continue with that thought, one aspect of this legislation that we've heard evidence on is the administration of justice offences and the rethink we're doing with respect to that. Again, you have minor breaches of conditions that don't result in danger to society but do result in, as you said, six infractions for bail, whereas the original infraction for the original crime was much more minor. You get a sort of knock-on multiplier effect.

I'm wondering if you can comment on the administration of justice changes we're proposing in Bill C-75, and in particular how it connects to the indigenous community, the racialized communities, women, and other people you mentioned in terms of this group of vulnerability.

8:35 p.m.

Full Professor, Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section, University of Ottawa, As an Individual

Marie-Eve Sylvestre

I think Bill C-75 is not going far enough in terms of preventing those breaches and the accumulation of offences against the administration of justice. Many changes would need to be made, one of them being the reverse onus on people who have breached a condition. That's putting some pressure on people to be held in custody, so that's highly problematic.

There's another thing that would need to be changed. That's the imposition of unrealistic conditions in cases of people who don't pose a serious threat to the public, to victims, and to witnesses. In our study, for instance, one of the most important predictors of breach was the number of conditions imposed. The more conditions imposed, the more likely you are to breach them, which seems logical, right? We know that on average, seven or eight conditions per bail order are imposed on people. That's a lot of conditions to comply with. Many of them have nothing to do with the offence. Many of them are not criminal offences in themselves, but just become so because they're entrenched in the bail orders.

We really have to release people unconditionally when they're not posing any threat. That's what the Criminal Code has been saying since 1970. The Supreme Court of Canada has been saying it and the Canadian charter has been saying it. It's still not applied by judges and peace officers. I think we have to strengthen the language in Bill C-75 to make sure we get rid of these many offences against the administration of justice.