Evidence of meeting #158 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 victims.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chair, Policy Review Committee, Canadian Criminal Justice Association
I'm almost done, though. I must say I can complete it in two more minutes if I can proceed.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I'll ask again. Do we have consent to let him go two more minutes to finish his remarks?
Chair, Policy Review Committee, Canadian Criminal Justice Association
I would make one final point. We fear that passing an amendment such as this can only add to the confusion in the public's mind about the actual nature of the sentence for first degree murder. Under our current criminal justice system, the mandatory sentence is life, not just 25 years, yet we so often hear inaccurate reports in the media about someone being sentenced to 25 years for first degree murder.
I fear that if this bill is passed, we will hear reports of 25-year sentences and 40-year sentences, both of which are incorrect. The sentence is life.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That concludes my remarks.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
We're going to suspend. We'll come back for Mr. Goldstein's remarks as soon as the vote is over.
Again, I apologize to the witnesses.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
We will come back now to the testimony of the witnesses.
We will turn to Mr. Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein, the floor is yours.
Partner, Abergel Goldstein & Partners, LLP, As an Individual
Good morning.
Thank you very much for inviting me to speak about this rather important piece of legislation.
I bring to you today the perspective of a criminal lawyer as a practitioner.
So that you know who I am and where I'm coming from in my testimony and give it the appropriate weight, I will tell you that I'm certified as a specialist in criminal law by the Law Society of Ontario. My practice is exclusively in criminal and quasi-criminal law. My firm has an appeal division, and prior to coming today, I consulted with them rather extensively.
Writ small, what that means is that I'm the trial lawyer who will be dealing with this legislation if it passes. What I bring to you is, I hope, both something of the 30,000-foot approach, but it's also about what happens when I see this in the latest Criminal Code.
I'll give you a précis of what I'm going to say: There are significant problems with this legislation.
First I should say that despite the flaws in the proposed bill, the goal is laudable. Mr. Bezan has brought forth this amendment to the Criminal Code for the purpose of alleviating the stress and suffering of the families of victims. That is a noble goal and one that is supported by all stakeholders in the criminal justice system, both Crown and defence. Nobody wants to see victims suffer or suffer again and again.
However, the question is how to do that. It is critical to remember that this bill is not designed to be punitive, but if it passes and is challenged, that is going to be an issue in the inevitable charter challenge.
Mr. Bezan has been quite clear: This legislation is designed to target a small group of individuals who have committed such egregious crimes that they statistically and realistically are not going to be paroled. They are the Clifford Olsons of the world. By narrowing the legislation in this way, Mr. Bezan seeks to ensure that the benefits of the bill, such as preventing families from having to attend numerous parole hearings, are not truly in competition with the deleterious effects of preventing release for persons who would otherwise be released. In other words, the people targeted by this bill are not getting out. That is the premise upon which this bill is proposed.
Mr. Bezan is not seeking to balance freedom against victims' rights. This is important, because if the legislation were designed to be punitive, it would run into a whole new series of challenges under section 12 of the charter, and these are challenges that it would likely not survive.
However, even if we accept that this is not a punitive bill and is strictly a procedural bill to alleviate the suffering of the families of victims, this is the wrong forum for it.
My first argument is that the Criminal Code is not where this problem should be remedied or where this goal should be set out.
The Corrections and Conditional Release Act, CCRA, is the statute that governs the parole process. Modifying it to change the frequency of parole hearings for this narrow group is much easier than modifying the Criminal Code, and it would not trigger any of the problems that I will be discussing.
Further, modifying the CCRA so that the families of victims can have their evidence recorded and played at subsequent parole hearings would also alleviate the pain of providing evidence at each parole hearing.
One or the other or both of these modifications to the CCRA accomplish the goal of alleviating their stress. It would not complicate trial matters. It would not lead to an infringement of the charter. It would also receive little or no push-back from any constituency or stakeholder.
My second argument is that Bill C-266, as it's written now, is likely unconstitutional for the following reason: The text of Bill C-266 reads, “In respect of a person”—and I underline the following—“who has been convicted, in respect of the same victim and the same event or series of events....”
What you need to understand is that with regard to murder, there is a provision under section 231 of the Criminal Code that allows second degree murder, which is all murders, to be elevated for sentencing purposes and classification purposes to first degree murder.
The language of this deemed elevation is subsection 231(5):
Irrespective of whether a murder is planned and deliberate on the part of any person, murder is first degree murder in respect of a person when the death is caused by that person
—and I underline this part—
while committing or attempting to commit an offence under one of the following
What are the differences?
In Bill C-266, a conviction for one of the offences is required. In section 231, which is already the law and has already passed charter scrutiny, no conviction is required. What does this mean practically?
If the trier—the jury, usually—based on the charge of the judge finds that a sexual assault occurred as part of the same series of events but not “while committing”, a second degree murder would not be elevated to first degree murder. This is the trickiness, right?
If it's part of the same series of events but it's not “while committing”—there's a temporal break, or a location break, or the jury's left in doubt in respect of those differences of wording—you're not going to trigger the elevation to first degree murder, but you might be triggering Bill C-266. What that means is a charter challenge, because you're punishing a second degree murder more harshly than a first degree murder. The jury may acquit a deemed first degree murder under section 231 and the offence would still be captured.
In other words, the series of events is not as clear as “while committing”, and that is likely a charter violation.
I know from reading the Debates that the member proposing this legislation believes that only a very few people would be captured. Respectfully, he's wrong. What will happen is that the trial Crowns, the people who are tasked with implementing the laws you pass, will have to start charging sexual assault and forcible confinement on the indictment, so an indictment that used to have a single count of murder—very clean, comparatively easy—will now have to have a minimum of three counts: the murder, the underlying sexual offence and the underlying confinement offence.
Presently when those facts are present but not necessarily charged, the Crown can charge first degree and rely on the facts as proven of the forcible confinement and/or sexual assault to elevate the murder to first degree, but because Bill C-266 requires a conviction, the Crown would now have to charge those offences. If the Crown did not charge those additional offences, the victims' rights advocacy groups would quite properly take the Crown to task for not taking the steps to trigger the most onerous sentence possible.
Thus, when the Crown does charge those additional offences, you would have a judge charging a jury that they might find that the sexual assault occurred, but to what standard? If charged, it would have to be beyond a reasonable doubt. There would be a necessarily complex and full charge on the elements of that offence, and then what happens if the jury is left in reasonable doubt about whether or not the sexual assault occurred? What happens to the underlying murder elevation? Would there still be a first degree murder conviction if there's a reasonable doubt about the separate charge of sexual assault on the indictment? We don't go into the jury rooms. We don't know.
What we do know is that the more complicated you make the indictment, the more complicated you make the judge's charge to the jury. The more complicated you make the judge's charge to the jury, the more likely an appeal.
Also, if we're talking about alleviating the stress on the families of the victims, imagine the year that it takes to get to the prelim, and then testimony on the prelim, and then the year it takes to get to trial, and then the testimony on the trial—and now there's an appeal. There's an appeal because this is not clear.
What if the appeal is successful? That's another year for the appeal, and then there's a retrial, which is another year. Now we're talking about four or five years not of potential parole hearings but of annual testimony, not of having the option of reliving the nightmare of being a family member to a victim as captured here, but of actually having to testify and actually having to hear the evidence of the forensic officers and the witnesses and reliving the traumatic effects of the trial.
This is a mess, because it's treating potential second degree murder charges like firsts and adding in a number of complications. It's ripe for challenges.
My third argument is a similar legal argument. It is the question of subsumed offences.
Forcible confinement is often an element of the offences of both murder and sexual assault, so where a choking is part of the sexual assault, it would now be charged separately, and that necessarily means another and more complicated charge.
The people who were contemplated and mentioned in the debates would not be captured by this, because they were not charged separately. What you will have is not the few people intended, but necessarily many more people charged on much more complicated indictments, leading to many more appeals, and that is not the goal.
I urge the committee to reject this bill and invite modification to the CCRA to accomplish the same goal.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
Given the time frame—we all know we have another vote—may I ask the committee's agreement that we do four minutes in each of the rounds? It will take 16 minutes. We should all then make it to the vote with no problem. Is everybody good with that?
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses who appear before us today. You've all brought a different perspective on the same issue. My understanding is that you'd all like to see the same result at the far end, but how we get there is the important part.
Mr. Wamback, you have spent a great deal of your life dealing with victims who are traumatized over and over, frequently by the parole process. What is your view of Mr. Goldstein's suggestion that the change could be accomplished through other legislation, as opposed to the Criminal Code, to give us that end result of keeping victims from being revictimized by people such as Clifford Olson, who used the system to abuse family members?
Is that an equal possibility to fix this?
Founder and Chair, Canadian Crime Victim Foundation
I'm not a lawyer and I certainly can't debate any of the technicalities that my colleague brought up. What I will tell you is that appeals are inevitable. In any form of extremely violent criminal act, there are always appeals. Victims and their families are always dragged through appeals again and again.
In terms of being able to pre-record a victim impact statement, the feelings you experience and the grief you live with during the trial and during the deliverance of a victim impact statement are completely different from when you deliver a victim impact statement at a parole board hearing. Having a recording of something that happened 15, 20, 25 years ago and dealing specifically with a parole board hearing today are two completely different things, because they involve a completely separate realm of emotional experience and grief. There are other people and other family members who are dragged into it as well.
Again, I'm not going to argue the technicalities and legalities of Bill C-266. What I am going to state very emphatically today is that this would reduce the harm done to those who are survivors and victims of extremely violent, horrific crimes in Canada. I'm very much in support of it, as is the constituency that I've spoken with prior to coming here.
Conservative
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
—and the cost of keeping somebody incarcerated for an additional year being a million dollars. I don't think the PBO did the research on how many of the Clifford Olsons don't get parole anyway. He's going to be kept in custody. I think it's a difficult challenge for the PBO to quantify those costs.
Would you have a different view than I do? Do you feel that the PBO is in a difficult position in trying to quantify the costs associated with this bill by looking only at incarceration?
Founder and Chair, Canadian Crime Victim Foundation
That was my issue. Either intentionally or unintentionally, the issues related to the victims were completely ignored. Then there's the cost to Canadian society; never mind the cost to families. We are aware of families in which fathers who have lost a child to extreme violence have ended up alcoholics, ended up being sound asleep at their son's grave for years after the event.
Everybody, every human being, will react to grief differently. Everybody does. The people who have lost a child will live with that grief for the rest of their lives. To have it brought again in front of their faces is absolutely horrific, and we should not allow this to happen in Canadian society.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Thank you, Chair. Thank you to all of our guests for being with us today. I really appreciate your presentations and your thoughts on this issue.
I can't stress enough, and I'm sure everyone around this table would agree, that whatever we can do to minimize the impact on victims and their families being re-traumatized is of utmost concern.
Mr. Goldstein, I understand that the charter issue you're raising is that it may lead to charges of second degree murder perhaps receiving harsher penalties then a first degree murder charge would.
Is that basically the idea behind the charter challenge?
Partner, Abergel Goldstein & Partners, LLP, As an Individual
That is one obvious one, just from the plain reading of it, yes.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Okay.
You also talked about the fact that it would inevitably or likely lead to Crowns contemplating more complicated indictments in order to perhaps pass the test that Bill C-266 considers in order to have the possibility of a higher parole ineligibility period.
Would having more complicated indictments before the courts have an impact on court delays?
Partner, Abergel Goldstein & Partners, LLP, As an Individual
Significantly.
As we have seen with some of these cases.... In the Pickton case, for instance, a judge simply said he would not proceed on all of those counts and was proceeding only on six. We see indictments pared down all the time. The Crowns, who are people too, are those trying to actually do the work of prosecuting these crimes. They have to contemplate what's in the best interest of getting the trial moving forward. The more complicated the charge, the longer the trial takes, and the more likely it is that there will be delays, both in pretrial motions and also in getting the time necessary for the trial, getting the witnesses together and all of that. There will inevitably be delays associated with the passing of this bill, yes.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Would it be possible that those court delays, given the Jordan decision, could result in matters actually being disposed of before a conviction could be entered?
Partner, Abergel Goldstein & Partners, LLP, As an Individual
It's legally possible, yes. In the fact scenario contemplated here, in practical terms it's unlikely.