Thank you.
I'm grateful for the invitation to share my views on Bill S-217 with this committee today. Although Tony Doob and I may appear to you as two people, we're actually functioning as one witness today. As such, we've divided the eight minutes between us.
Let me begin by publicly presenting, as have others before us, our heartfelt condolences to Ms. MacInnis-Wynn and her family for the tragic origin of this bill. It's our genuine wish that Parliament continues its search for effective solutions to the growing crisis in the Canadian bail process. Indeed, over the last decade in which Tony and I have been examining pretrial detention, a new expression has taken shape whereby a growing number of academic, professional, and media reports have claimed that bail is broken.
I applaud this committee for considering a bill that proposes changes to the Canadian bail law. We differ simply in the approach. I have no doubt that we share the same objective—in this specific case, of trying to avoid the terrible tragedy that occurred in early 2015. We're simply concerned that the current bill will not meet this objective. Specifically, it seems to us to miss the mark.
We would argue that it's likely no coincidence that the proposed legislative changes were not part of the numerous recommendations made by the two Alberta reviews examining potential deficiencies in the administration of the bail system in that province. Nor could we find any similar recommendations in the numerous other governmental, non-governmental, and academic studies of bail in Canada. The problems, we would submit, are unlikely to be rooted in any purposeful or intentional failure to bring forward an accused's criminal record, outstanding charges, or failures to appear in court, which an explicit legislative obligation would now solve. Rather, the problems are multiple in nature, complex as well as intertwined, and largely systemic, embedded in the very culture of bail court.
More simply, it seems we have lost sight of what bail was originally intended to be, a summary procedure that determines whether an accused person is to be detained or released until trial while ensuring a balance between individual rights and public safety concerns. Here lies the fundamental problem that the current bill doesn't address and, perhaps ironically, may well end up contributing to.
In fact, we respectfully submit that it would be misguided to suggest that there are any easy, quick fixes on the legislative front. Strategies of intervention will likely need to be conceptualized as part of a multi-faceted, long-term solution that recognizes that isolated changes will have little effect without altering the mentality of the court more broadly. Indeed, a pervasive risk-averse mentality has been progressively adopted over the past several decades, which has set in motion a plethora of changes in the legislative framework, the court culture, and ultimately the policies and practices of the day-to-day operations of the Canadian bail court.
We're not short of evidence that bail in Canada is broken. The proportion of remand admissions who are indigenous continues to rise in most provinces and territories. In Ontario over 4,500 cases were in remand in 2013 and 2014, only to have all charges ultimately stayed, withdrawn, or dismissed. Or there's the fact that 41% of cases in this province began their criminal court lives in bail court during this same year. Of these cases, 54% had no violence.
Further, despite being conceptualized as a summary procedure, the bail process is taking longer than it did when these laws were originally introduced. In 2013-14, 37% of Ontario cases took three or more appearances to resolve the question of bail. In a study of 11 large Ontario bail courts, most cases were adjourned on any given day. Show-cause hearings have not only become more frequent but they also often resemble mini-trials.
My guess is that of those knowledgeable about our current bail laws, few have confidence that they are currently serving us well. More importantly, for our current purposes, Bill S-217 does not address, much less resolve, any of these issues. In fact, it may exacerbate them.