Evidence of meeting #109 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 indictable.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
The Canadian Bar Association suggested wording to the effect that, for greater certainty, there's no intention of Parliament to have inflationary sentencing.
Do you think that any statement like that in the code would help?
4:45 p.m.
Professor and Chair in Feminist Legal Studies, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I'm not optimistic. I think if you're not satisfied, you should be concerned about this. It would be better than nothing to have that language in there, so I would support that. However, I do still worry, and the research from numerous jurisdictions shows, that when you start raising the ceiling this way, you do have that inflationary effect.
I don't know what kind of an impact that would have, but it would certainly be better than not including it.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate this panel's spending time with us today. It's very much appreciated. It goes to the challenges that we have, when you see the different views on sentencing, for example, that different members of the panel have, with completely opposite recommendations with respect to sentencing. Again, we will do our best, and we certainly hear the problems that you have raised. Thank you.
Members of the committee, as you know, we have votes, and we also have a reception that some of us want to go to.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
We're reconvening with the next panel at 6:45 p.m. or as soon as the vote is over, so come back here after the votes.
Thank you, everybody.
We're in recess.
6:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
It gives me great pleasure to reconvene the meeting and welcome this panel who are going to testify on Bill C-75.
I would like to welcome, from the Association of Justice Counsel, Ms. Ursula Hendel, who is the president. From B'nai Brith Canada, we are joined by Mr. Brian Herman, director of government relations, and Mr. Leo Adler, senior legal counsel.
We will be joined shortly by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, represented by Mr. Shimon Koffler Fogel, chief executive officer; and from the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, we will be joined by Deepa Mattoo, director of legal services, and Simran Dosanjh, a law student. They will be here by video conference from Toronto. When they join us, they will come up on the screen. When Mr. Fogel comes in, he will be seated over there.
In the meantime, we'll start hearing testimony.
Ms. Hendel, the floor is yours.
September 26th, 2018 / 6:35 p.m.
Ursula Hendel President, Association of Justice Counsel
Good evening, everyone.
I'm Ursula Hendel, and I'm the president of the Association of Justice Counsel. It is always a pleasure to appear in committee, but particularly so for me today, because the issue of delay in the criminal justice system is one of extreme importance to me and my membership.
By way of background, the association represents the 2,600 lawyers who work for the federal government. That includes the legislative drafters who prepared the bill, the criminal law policy sector lawyers who testified in front of you last Monday, and also all of the prosecutors who work for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. The federal prosecutors have responsibility for human trafficking, terrorism and organized crime prosecutions. We're Criminal Code prosecutors in Canada's north. We do environmental pollution and tax evasion, and the bread and butter of our work is drug prosecutions throughout Canada.
I told the chair I'd been listening to the testimony of all the witnesses—I've also read all of the bill—and I was impressed by the number of defence counsel who came before you to speak so passionately on issues they care very much about. Like them, for many of us, prosecutions is a calling. We are deeply committed to the system. It's not a job or a paycheque, and we are highly committed to it. We consider ourselves to be heavily invested.
We're very concerned about the issue of delay. You've heard from victims of violence, who spoke about and reminded us how important it is for their needs not to fall through the cracks in a stressed out system. You also heard a story about a young woman who was on bail conditions that prevented her from accessing the treatment centre that was at the very underpinning of her criminality and was the very hope for her success. That shouldn't happen. It doesn't happen because lawyers and judges are mean or incompetent. It happens because we don't have enough resources to do our jobs properly.
We had another warning—maybe a final warning—from the Supreme Court of Canada about delay in the criminal justice system a little more than two years ago. Since that time, some provincial attorneys general have taken immediate steps and hired additional prosecutors and judges. However, the federal government didn't follow suit, and there were no new resources for federal prosecutors.
A number of you in this committee expressed concerns last year about resourcing for federal prosecutors and the adequacy of resourcing for them. That is a concern I share. I'm sorry to report that things haven't improved since then. They've gotten worse. This year, in 2018, the PPSC has an anticipated budget shortfall and has accordingly required most regional offices to cut their operating budgets by 7.5%. We are being asked to do more with less.
We had a lot of hopes that the bill was going to provide us with some relief, because we're not getting any on the resourcing front. I listened intently, and there were three things that were said to cumulatively reduce delay. Those were the preliminary inquiry changes, hybridization and the administration of justice offence measures.
You've heard a lot about the preliminary inquiry, and what is striking is the near unanimity of the messaging. We're on opposite sides of an adversarial system, and it's not common for prosecutors and defence counsel to agree on very many issues of criminal justice policy. It's therefore quite striking that those of us who are on the front line are fairly universally of the view that the preliminary inquiry reforms are not going to fix the delay problem.
That's true for hybridization as well, but I just want to tell you that for federal prosecutors in particular, even if you aren't convinced that it's true, there's very little relief for us in this bill. The offences that we prosecute mostly—terrorism, human trafficking and major drug trafficking—are offences that carry life sentence maximums. The changes to hybridization and the changes to preliminary inquiries that are being proposed in the bill, by and large, don't affect us at all. We've been sort of left out.
That leaves us with the issue of the administration of justice offences, which perhaps hasn't been talked about quite as much, so I thought I would do so.
We were told that the AOJA offences are very numerous. I think the figure I heard was that 23% of all cases in the system are those kinds of offences. They're not actually federal offences. They're provincially prosecuted, although we do end up prosecuting many of them in what's known as “major-minor” agreements. Where there is a more serious charge on the cocaine trafficking file and that person has been released on bail but breaches that bail and there's a charge laid, that ends up tagging along in a major-minor agreement. The federal prosecutor will prosecute both of them. Thus, we do end up doing a fair bit.
That's important context to the statistics, because although they may be numerous and there may be a very valid debate as to whether there is overcharging and whether there are too many charges and we can do better in terms of having fewer of these charges, numerically, statistically, I don't think they're contributing in any meaningful way to the problem of delay. That's because they tend to tag along. The major charge gets prosecuted, and the breach follows along. When the major charge is resolved, however it's resolved, whether there's a conviction, a trial, a guilty plea, or an acquittal, the breach is then dealt with, usually in a summary fashion.
I've been a prosecutor for just over 20 years. I have worked in the GTA and in Ottawa, and I've also been fortunate enough to work in Canada's Far North. I've seen a couple of different systems. In a hamlet of 500 people in the north where there are two police officers, if you're put on bail and given bail conditions, you are extremely likely to get caught if you breach them, because that officer knows you and sees you every day. If you compare it with Toronto where, the moment you walk out of Old City Hall, you melt into anonymity, you find that there are many more administration of justice offences per capita in the north than in the major centres.
If they were contributing materially to delay, you would think the problem of delay would be much worse in the north than it is in Toronto, but it's actually the reverse. I have some ideas about why that is, but I'm not sure I have time to talk about them all.
Where I'm concerned is that the bill proposes to create yet another process. There's this new concept of a judicial referral hearing, a voluntary process that the Crown gets to engage, that doesn't really seem to add any new powers or new tools other than to add yet another layer. I'm not sure how the introduction of yet a new process in the very place that we are already congested is going to reduce delay.
We don't feel that there's really anything in the bill that's going to make the problem of delay better. We've come here today to humbly ask you for your help. There remains a really pressing need to tackle the problems of delay in the criminal justice system. It's not over. The work isn't done. In fact, it's barely even started. I would suggest that it should be done on a really urgent basis.
Thank you very much for listening.
6:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much. I appreciate that perspective.
B'nai Brith, you are up.
6:40 p.m.
Brian Herman Director, Government Relations, B'nai Brith Canada
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and we thank the committee for allowing us to appear this evening.
My colleague Leo Adler, our senior legal counsel, will elaborate on some of our key points, particularly the legal issues. I just wanted to give a brief introduction.
You have our legal submission and some related documents, which I hope have made their way to all committee members.
I am not sure if everyone is acquainted with B'nai Brith Canada. We have been before your committee previously. It was founded in 1875, with a history of defending the human rights of Canada's Jewish community and Canadians all across the country. Together with our League for Human Rights, we advocate for the interests of the grassroots Jewish community and for their rights such as freedom of conscience and religion, rights that we know are important to all Canadians.
The point I wanted to make is that our comments will be consistent with testimony before several standing committees in the past year, including my own remarks to this committee on Bill C-51 on October 30 of last year.
We hope the committee will continue to bear in mind that Canada's most targeted religious minority, in terms of hate speech and hate crimes, is the Jewish community. Our comments are rooted in that fact. In particular, we are ever-mindful of the signals Parliament and the government send to our communities as amendments to various pieces of legislation take shape over time.
We followed the government's several initiatives to modernize both the Criminal Code and the national security framework, including plans to deal with provisions that are focused on expediency or efficiency. These aims must not supersede the essential prerequisites of fairness and balance, nor must they supersede the requirement for our publics to know, and for perpetrators to understand, the severity of penalties that would accompany advocating or promoting genocide or in any way supporting terrorism.
Our question remains a straightforward one: whether proposed changes taken holistically represent a weakening of essential provisions in the Criminal Code and other legislation that is perceived by the public and by law enforcement as meaning the government takes these offences less seriously. This is the context, and we have concerns with specific aspects of hybridization—as Mr. Adler will outline. Certain of these offences are very serious. Notwithstanding government assurances, how does this square with an implicit aim of affording Crown counsel greater discretion in how to proceed with less serious offences?
We believe that, in today's context, we must exercise great care in taking actions that can be misinterpreted, and the signal such a step would convey in today's environment where anti-Semitism, hate speech, and advocacy to serious crimes such as genocide remain serious challenges, if not in Canada then elsewhere.
Our hope is that the committee, in essence, will recommend that offences related to advocating genocide and offences that are terrorism-related are not hybridized and remain indictable. Mr. Ehsassi has already spoken eloquently today pertaining to the genocide point.
As opposed to hybridization, there are other steps that can be taken. Mr. Adler, again, will explain, but in April, B'nai Brith Canada published an “Eight-Point Plan to Tackle Antisemitism". Committee members will have that. One of our recommendations is to publish the Attorney General's guidelines for hate-related prosecutions. We believe more can be done in this area, including for other incitement offences.
While we recognize it falls outside the scope of this draft legislation, we must acknowledge that certain remedies that were contained in section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act are part of this overall equation. We accept that freedom of expression is important, but in the context of Bill C-75 the right of potential victims to be free from acts advocating genocide or terrorism and the threat of terrorism must be the greater priority.
Clear penalties help ensure this. We ask committee members to consider carefully the signals they would send by endorsing hybridization of those offences with which we are most concerned.
Thank you.
6:50 p.m.
Leo Adler Senior Legal Counsel, B'nai Brith Canada
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think you should have the brief paper that I sent to the committee. I leave that to you to read.
I want to talk about words, and I want to talk about words that promote and glorify acts in support of genocide and terror. Recently, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution declaring the Rohingya to be the victims of genocide, yet this very same government wants to reduce the significance of promoting hate and genocide and terror.
This government is about to issue apology for the St. Louis incident, which, of course, was one of the precursors to the Holocaust, yet this government also wants to reduce the significance of promoting hate, genocide and terror.
Canada is a leading member of the ICC, which sets out what are called jus cogens crimes. These are crimes that are universal in their effect and must, under international law, be prosecuted everywhere. That includes genocide. It includes terror. Yet this government wants to reduce the significance of promoting hate, genocide and terror.
Canada has sent UN peacekeeping troops, I believe to Mali. What do you think occurred there? It was terror, yet this government wants to reduce the significance of the meaning of promoting hate, genocide and terror.
Chief Justice McLachlin, in the Khawaja case, which was one of the first cases dealing with terrorism, said, “Threats of violence, like violence, undermine the rule of law.”
As I wrote in dissent in Keegstra, which was an earlier case from the Supreme Court of Canada upholding the indictable offence of hate speech, threats of violence take away free choice and undermine freedom of action. They undermine the very values and social conditions that are necessary for the continued existence of freedom of expression, yet this government wishes to reduce it to a summary conviction or hybrid offence.
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of being a witness in front of the Senate and for the passage of the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. One of the preambles says:
Whereas hundreds of Canadians have been murdered or injured in terrorist attacks; [and]
Whereas terrorism is dependent on financial and material support;
It then goes on to create this act.
How do you think they get the money? How do you think they're able to come and go? It is through words and through the assistance of others, yet you want to turn this into a hybrid offence.
In the most recent terrorist threat to Canada public report, 2017, issued by Public Safety Canada, the minister's forward says, on page one:
Sadly, Canadians have become all too familiar with the tragic consequences - from the shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, which claimed six lives and injured many more, to the terrorist attack in Burkina Faso in which six Canadians were killed. Most recently, a police officer was stabbed and several bystanders were injured in Edmonton.
He goes on to talk about how security and intelligence agencies work in close collaboration with our allies: the Five Eyes, of course, the European Union and so on.
What message are you sending to those allies when you say we can somehow delineate which words are serious threats in terms of terror, in terms of genocide, and which words are serious when it comes to the promotion of these matters? You absolutely cannot, as Chief Justice McLachlin pointed out.
In the executive summary of this report, it says, “Extremist groups continue to use technology and social media as a means to recruit followers and promote their ideology,” yet you want to turn it into a hybrid-offence summary conviction along with shoplifting, common assault and car theft.
Is that where you really want to go for these most serious of crimes that constitute the basis of the International Criminal Court and for the Nuremberg tribunals and that constitute what happened in Yugoslavia and Rwanda? Is this where you want to go?
They go on in the executive summary to talk about stemming the flow of extremist travellers, yet that's going to become a hybrid offence, the leaving of Canada to go in—
6:55 p.m.
Liberal
6:55 p.m.
Senior Legal Counsel, B'nai Brith Canada
All right.
Let me just say that those are not the areas for you to hybridize. Frankly, if you want to deal with increasing the efficiency of courts, I'd be happy to tell you how you should cut, not add, to the Criminal Code and learn to recognize the difference between a minor crime of momentary stupidity or inadvertence versus an actual major crime.
Thank you.
6:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
We'll move to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs with Mr. Fogel.
6:55 p.m.
Shimon Koffler Fogel Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs
I thank you on behalf of CIJA for inviting us into this important conversation. I see friends on all sides of the House. It's an honour to be with you. Just by way of identification, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is the advocacy agent of the Jewish Federations of Canada. We're a national non-partisan and non-profit organization representing tens of thousands of Jewish Canadians affiliated through local federations across Canada.
On Bill C-75, our specific area of interest is the hybridization of some offences that—as was noted by my colleagues at B'nai Brith—currently may only be prosecuted as indictable offences. Our request is simple and focused: that Bill C-75 be amended to ensure that advocating genocide and terrorism-related offences are exempt from this broad hybridization and instead remain indictable offences.
We advocate removing the following: clause 16, providing or making available property or services for terrorist purposes; clause 17, using or possessing property for terrorist purposes; clause 20, knowingly participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group; clause 21, leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group; proposed subsections 83.23(1) and (2), knowingly harbouring a person who carried out terrorist activity or is likely to carry out terrorist activity; clause 122, advocating genocide; and finally, subclause 407(5), counselling commission of a terrorism offence.
We take no position on other aspects of Bill C-75 and do not object to its overall goals. Modernizing Canada's justice system and reducing backlog in the courts are vital objectives, and we acknowledge that hybridizing some indictable offences will contribute to this effort.
We also recognize that hybridizing what is currently an indictable offence does not mean that prosecutors will invariably choose to prosecute these crimes as summary offences, and we note that the bill proposes to increase the maximum penalty of summary offences to two years less a day.
However, we do believe that advocating genocide and terrorism-related offences should not be hybridized. Our position is rooted in three principle considerations.
First, on a practical level, terrorism-related offences and advocating genocide constitute a minute fraction of criminal cases in Canada. Recategorizing these crimes as hybrid offences will have virtually no impact on the current judicial backlog. It therefore follows that exempting them from this initiative will not diminish the underlying goal of Bill C-75.
Second, maintaining these crimes' current designation as indictable offences does not undermine judicial discretion in the sentencing of these cases. Because these crimes do not carry mandatory minimum sentences, judges may determine on a case-by-case basis the sentence most appropriate given all factors. It is one thing to allow judges sentencing discretion within a framework that affirms that a great violation of the law has taken place, that is, the designation of indictable offence. It's another to allow prosecutors the discretion to proceed on the basis that diminishes the very gravity of the crime, that is, by having the option to prosecute these violations as summary offences.
Third, and most important, allowing these offences to be prosecuted as summary offences sends a clear and unacceptable signal, diminishing the inherently grave, even heinous, nature of these crimes. Advocating genocide and terrorism-related offences are crimes that, while obviously impacting victims directly, also threaten the very foundation of Canadian democracy and universal human rights. These offences cannot, for example, be considered on a par with property crimes. Rather, they should be viewed alongside Criminal Code provisions related to treason or acts of violence to intimidate Parliament, both of which are indictable offences that Bill C-75, quite rightly, does not suggest hybridizing.
A person charged with a summary offence is not usually held in custody but given notice to appear in court. This is worrisome when it comes to advocating genocide and other terrorism-related offences. In the relatively rare instances when these provisions are used, it is almost certainly for high-profile crimes that carry with them a risk of mass violence and significant public alarm.
Like many in my community, I'm the child of Holocaust survivors. The Jewish people are tragically familiar with the dangers of genocidal propaganda, which often preceded such horrific campaigns of ethnic cleansing as the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and other atrocities. Society ignores at its peril those who call for the mass murder of entire communities, which is why the Criminal Code prohibits advocating genocide.
Given the premium we rightly place on the freedom of speech, the threshold for pursuing those charges is exceptionally high. Experience shows that those who surpass this already-elevated threshold are engaged in the most egregious violations. To be blunt, this provision is used in very rare circumstances against those who actively promote grotesque, dehumanizing propaganda to advance a genocidal agenda. Such cases should only ever be treated as indictable offences.
Similarly, the global Jewish community has had painful, first-hand experience with terrorism. Committee members are familiar with the history of terrorism targeting Israelis. Jewish communities worldwide have also been vulnerable to such violence, as seen in terror attacks in recent years at a synagogue in Copenhagen, a Jewish museum in Brussels, a kosher grocery store in Paris, a Jewish elementary school in Toulouse, and a Jewish community centre in Mumbai.
By definition, terrorism seeks to use violence to spread fear far beyond its immediate targets. Attackers typically benefit from the support of a broader network that includes ideological mentors and clandestine members of proscribed terrorist organizations. These background criminal activities, such as counselling terrorism or knowingly participating in the activity of a terrorist group, help make large-scale terror attacks possible. In recognition of the threat and danger posed by terrorism, these crimes should never be prosecuted as summary offences.
I thank the committee members for their consideration of what I think are modest amendments to Bill C-75 that preserve the bill's objectives while ensuring that these grave crimes maintain the designation they warrant. I welcome any questions or comments that you may want to pose.
Thank you.
7 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
We're also joined from Toronto by the Barbara Schlifer Commemorative Clinic.
Ms. Mattoo and Ms. Dosanjh, the floor is yours.
7 p.m.
Deepa Mattoo Director, Legal Services, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
Thank you.
Thank you, honourable Chair and committee members. We are honoured and grateful to have the opportunity to speak to you today about the significant impact that some of the changes proposed in Bill C-75 may have on the women the Barbara Schlifer Commemorative Clinic serves.
Some of you might not be aware of the clinic. To give you a brief background, our clinic is unique in Canada. It is the only clinic that provides specialized services for women who have experienced violence.
Since 1985, the clinic has provided legal representation—
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Ms. Mattoo, I'm getting a request for you to please try to speak up and perhaps also slightly more slowly.
7:05 p.m.
Director, Legal Services, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
Yes, the slow part I completely agree with. As it is for many other people, English is my second language and I go very fast. I think I compensate for the language.
7:05 p.m.
Director, Legal Services, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
I'll repeat from where I left off.
Our clinic is unique in Canada. It's the only clinic that provides specialized services to women who have experienced violence. Since 1985, the clinic has provided legal representation, counselling, and language interpretation services to over 65,000 women. Over the years, we have experienced a steady increase in the number of women seeking assistance. In 2017, we served 4,700 women. Last year we saw an 84% increase, and we served 7,000 women.
We want to submit to the committee that, broadly speaking, the clinic welcomes proposed amendments to broaden the definition of “intimate partner” to include dating and former partners, as well as the amendments that reflect a desire to safeguard the interests of women.
At the same time, however, the clinic is concerned that some of these changes will place an undue burden on women who are subjected to criminal responses. With that in mind, we are proposing that the committee undertake an impact assessment to determine the impact of Bill C-75 on women. I will be focusing on four areas today to support that.
First, the proposed amendment fails to consider how increased penalties related to intimate partner violence can further criminalize women, and fails to consider the impact of mandatory charging policies related to intimate partner violence on racialized and immigrant women.
I will also be making submissions on amendments that could further impact the lack of agency that women generally experience in the criminal justice system.
The last point is that the government's objective of improving access to justice for marginalized, racialized and indigenous women with these amendments does not necessarily impact in the correct way the women who belong to these groups.
There are some other, additional changes that the bill is proposing that we are concerned about. We specifically want to make submissions around the bawdy house, indecent act and vagrancy provisions, as well as the prohibition on the provision of sexual services. We are requesting that the committee consider repealing this under this bill.
We are also concerned that lumping all summary conviction offences under serious criminality may increase barriers to access to justice and finding of inadmissibility under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. We find that the implications of that were not at all considered by the makers of this bill.
With regard to the mandatory charging policies, we all know that these policies came into being for better protection. However, what we have seen is that the application of these policies over the years has, in many cases, created a situation where when the police receive a call from an intimate partner violence situation, they are required to act. There is lack of discretion for the cops in these situations. In some cases, what we see is that the perpetrators, or the instigators, of the violence will use the threat or action of calling the police as a weapon against their victim. When this threat is acted on for a variety of reasons, including retaliation or control, the police are forced to charge the woman instead of the man, a woman who was either a blameless survivor—a victim—or who used physical force in self-defence. Abusers may misuse mandatory charging in order to further terrorize, punish, intimidate and control their partners.
This may have extremely negative consequences, including, but not limited to, cases where the children are left with the instigator while the person who is a survivor is removed. Bill C-75 fails to consider the experiences of the survivors of intimate partner violence who are not the primary aggressors. The bill similarly fails to consider history of experienced abuse in sentencing or bail considerations for this population. These omissions can have devastating consequences on women who are criminalized under the criminal justice system. In addition, most of these women are from racialized backgrounds, and I'll be addressing that next.
It is widely recognized that the criminal justice system disproportionately impacts marginalized, racialized and indigenous people. Women from these backgrounds who are charged with violence toward an intimate partner are more likely to face the full force of the penal law. Bill C-75 provides the means by which this can happen by increasing the maximum penalties for the repeat offender. Along with the specific provision that increases the incarceration ceiling for intimate partner violence, Bill C-75 also raises the maximum penalties for summary convictions from six months to two years. This means that racialized, marginalized and indigenous women facing these summary charges, who are more likely to face poverty, encounter further barriers to justice.
In addition to that, raising the maximum penalties from six months to two years means that, under section 802.1 of the Criminal Code, women from these particular backgrounds will not be able to rely on paralegals or law students for their representation. These agents are cost-effective alternatives to retaining a counsellor, and that will be denied to marginalized women. This raises a constitutional issue related to the right of a fair trial, access to justice and equality rights. These issues must be canvassed, and what we propose is that there should be an impact assessment, as suggested above, on the situation of women.
My last point is about the impact on the survivors of violence. Bill C-75 fails to consider how the increased penalty for intimate partner violence can enhance the lack of urgency that female complainants generally face in the justice system. A women experiencing violence, when she interacts with the justice system, may or may not be accessing these services without fully appreciating the outcome of this call that she's making. Once a charge is laid, a female complainant is more or less completely removed from the process. This is something that we also hear routinely from survivors of sexual assault and survivors of various kinds of intimate partner violence.
Although a woman may seek to have the charges removed for a variety of reasons, Crowns are often unwilling to consider these considerations. These reasons can include, but are not limited to, reliance on her partner for immigration status, economic and emotional support, and a desire not to be called as a witness.
This can result in women feeling powerless and patronized. This will further deteriorate the sense of powerlessness by increasing the legal jeopardy for abusers, which invariably impacts their lives with their intimate partners. Women who rely on their partners for economic security may be further impacted by the victim fine surcharge amendments. What we see, which could be an unintended consequence of the bill, is that, in many cases, requiring a fine for each offence can take significant assets out of the hands of women and children who are left economically vulnerable, further contributing to their sense of powerlessness.
I just want to say there are two additional points, as I submitted at the beginning, that this bill is kind of failing to do, so there are some great changes, as we've said, and we welcome those changes.
One of the biggest changes that we see that this bill is failing to amend is something that has been proposed by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged in Bedford that criminalization of—
7:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I'm sorry again, Ms. Mattoo. Translation is having difficulty. You're going too fast.