Justice Committee on Feb. 23rd, 2016

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Piragoff. It was an excellent presentation.

I had a number of specific questions, but maybe I'll pick up on where Mr. Fraser left off on legal aid. Have you statistics on the number of unrepresented accused in courts? I'm hearing anecdotally from judges that in my province, British Columbia, there's a huge increase in the number of people who are appearing without counsel. I want to know what that means in terms of costs and in terms of the kinds of delays and lengths of trial that might result.

[Donald Piragoff]

I don't have the numbers on hand. If you'd like them, Mr. Rankin, we can get those.

There is anecdotal evidence that the number of unrepresented persons is increasing, not only in the criminal justice system but also in the civil system, in particular the family law system.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

That's as a function of lower legal aid access opportunities, I presume.

[Donald Piragoff]

Well, that's part of it, yes.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

There are no stats that you're aware of that would talk about the increase in the length of trials that results from that. If you're not represented, do you have shorter trials or longer trials?

[Donald Piragoff]

No. I mentioned the stats earlier in my presentation. If you're not represented, the trial takes longer.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Right.

Just for definitional purposes—some of us, most of us, are new on this committee—when you speak of administration of justice offences, what does that term include?

[Donald Piragoff]

It means breach of a bail condition while you're out on bail or breach of a probation order.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Those are the two main things.

[Donald Piragoff]

Those are the two main ones. It's either up front or it's after the sentence and you breach a probation order. The conditions vary. With some police officers and some judges, there could be some 20 conditions on a bail order.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Understood.

[Donald Piragoff]

It's kind of boilerplate. The real question is that a number of judges are now talking about more fine-tuning of the conditions to the actual offender, less boilerplate and more custom conditions, which actually makes sense. It really makes no sense to impose a condition on alcoholics that they not drink. I mean, you're basically setting the person up to fail, and you're essentially setting it up for the police to arrest the person. Now if he gets convicted of a breach of an administration of justice charge, he now has conviction for, essentially, a social problem. He's an alcoholic.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I understand the example.

I just want to ask you about a couple of things in the statistics. On page five you set out the overall crime rates showing, of course, there and on the next slide, that they're much higher in the north. I wonder if some of that has to do with a greater propensity to charge or greater reporting that might occur. Just in general, the stats are much higher in the north, as you point out. I wonder, aside from the difference in the population—you mentioned more indigenous people—could this just be better stats on reporting or more charging opportunity there? Why would that be?

[Alyson MacLean, Acting Director, Research and Statistics Division, Policy Sector, Department of Justice]

We don't have very good statistics on that issue. The research and the data do show that the northern parts of the provinces also have high crime rates, in between those of the territories and the provinces. Of course, crime is affected by many factors, including economic factors, unemployment rates, lack of education, and lack of employment opportunities. We typically find that those factors are more prevalent in the territories and the northern parts of the provinces.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

There's a statistic about sexual assaults. I just need clarification on the third bullet. It reads, “For sexual assault, 83% of incidents were not reported to the police, while 5% of incidents were reported.” Is there a gap? I'm just not sure where, logically, the other per cent goes.

[Alyson MacLean]

Twelve per cent of the respondents did not answer or did not know if they had reported it to the police.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

That would cover it all. Okay.

On page 11, the last bullet talks about the bail issue. It makes the point that, “Criminal justice professionals have noted an aversion to risk reduces discretion at all stages of the bail decision-making process.” I understand that, so is there a recommendation that results from that observation?

[Donald Piragoff]

Yes. The federal government works together with the provinces in a number of forums: at the ministerial level, at the deputy minister level, and also at the officials' level. Federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of justice have approved some recommendations coming from officials that greater discretion should be given to police officers at the front line.

Right now there are certain types of situations where even the police officer must send the case up to an officer in charge as opposed to actually dealing with the situation. One of the proposals is to give greater discretion to the front-line police officer to release on conditions as opposed to passing it up the line. Whether that, of course, is going to psychologically affect the person's reticence, I think that's going to require a lot more training for police in terms of how they exercise their discretion, when it is appropriate to release, and when it is appropriate to pass the person to the next level of processing.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Given that so much of our policing is done by the RCMP on contract, would that training or that additional discretion, if it were to be bestowed on police officers, be done at RCMP headquarters? Or would that be a provincial initiative, due to their administration-of-justice responsibility?

[Donald Piragoff]

I think that most of the policing is actually under provincial control. Quebec and Ontario have provincial police forces. Municipal police forces are, again, under provincial control or municipal control. The RCMP really is only contracting, and in a sense, is contracting in the western provinces and in the Maritimes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rankin.

We will go back to Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you.

I have just one more question. I believe there are other questions from our side.

With regard to the Gladue factors, it appears as though they're not having an impact in reducing the representations of indigenous people in custody. Are the Gladue reports being utilized and are they accessible across the country, as envisioned, I guess, in the Gladue response?

[Donald Piragoff]

We're just starting to undertake research in the area of the impact of the Gladue reports. There is variation across the country. Even within provinces, there's variation. In certain parts of Ontario, the Gladue reports are quite regular, while in other parts they are not. In some provinces, they are not being utilized that much, despite the fact that some of those provinces have high indigenous populations.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay.

If I could ask just one quick follow-up, where Gladue reports are being utilized, do we see any reduction in custodial sentences?

[Donald Piragoff]

Alyson, do we have research into that yet?