Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This amendment is similar to the one that was submitted as PV-15. It's to eliminate the possibility of triggering a judicial referral hearing where a charge has been laid for a failure to comply with release conditions. If charged, it should go through a bail hearing system. As a corollary to that, the judge's powers under proposed subsection 523.1(4) to dismiss a charge after a judicial referral hearing would then be moot.
This deals with the risk of confusion or redundancy if a judge or justice must dismiss the charge, no matter what decision they make in the judicial referral hearing. This is similar to the government's intent in the summary of this bill, that the goal of the referral hearing was to provide “an additional tool to direct certain administration offences to a hearing, as opposed to laying new charges”.
This is one that I think actually clarifies C-75 to more perfectly meet the government's intent as described in the summary.