Justice Committee on March 11th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you.

My apologies, Mr. Garrison. That concludes your time.

We'll now go on to the CPC.

Madam Findlay, go ahead please, for five minutes.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister Lametti, for being here. It is always very special to have a minister come before committee. We appreciate your taking the time to do so and to answer our questions.

I also am very concerned about where Bill C-7 is going, and very concerned that we are now dealing with debate closure on amendments from an appointed Senate. Although you have just said it is doing its job as a place of sober second thought, to me these are not sober second thought tweaks. They are substantive amendments in an area that you have said is concerning and is worthy of and needing study, which it would appear we're not going to have an opportunity to do before passing it into legislation; we're going to be dealing with the study and the concerns after the fact.

When we had it before our committee, of course, we didn't have this version. This effectively makes it a very new bill. As parliamentarians—which, as you have pointed out, we all are—we have responsibilities, and it's particularly concerning from a public policy creation point of view that we would end up creating public policy without careful consideration.

Particularly as we're talking today about funding and estimates, my question to you is, with this change that may go through, what new funding allocations are you envisioning or have already been provided to support such expansion?

We're terminating debate today. You're bringing on a closure motion, so we're not going to have a lot of time to even talk about this.

Here in committee, how do you anticipate, either from a funding or from a general point of view, supporting such an expansion?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

I obviously disagree with the characterization that you have given of the bill we're going to discuss, Bill C-7, in the sense that it was always going to be the case that we were going to look carefully at the question of mental illness. That was always planned for a larger parliamentary review, and that is still the case.

We have a better understanding of mental illness. We certainly have a long way to go, but we were always going to be looking at that, and there was a great deal of pressure from people within both the medical community and the legal community to make sure that mental illness was to be looked at seriously, and we're going to do that. I disagree with the characterization that we're doing something completely new here.

The rest of the question is premature because we haven't seen where this is going to land. We will know that only after parliamentarians have studied it carefully in the next couple of years.

I can say that our government has taken on a very proactive approach towards mental health. We've invested $10 billion across Canada—new money, since coming into government—precisely for mental health, and the provinces agreed to make sure that the money we put forward for mental health was spent on mental health. We'll continue to do that. As a society we are understanding better the challenges of mental health, and as a government we're committed to supporting that understanding in that study and to implementing programming that will be supportive of that.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Would you not at least agree with me, Minister, that the normal procedure is that we do the studying first, before we contemplate substantive legislative change?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

I'm not sure I would agree with you on the use of the word “normal”. This is a legitimate parliamentary process. As I said, since 2016 it was always clear that we were going to be looking at mental illness in the parliamentary review. That's what we're doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much, Madam Findlay.

We'll now go to our last questioner for the first hour.

Mr. Sarai, you have five minutes. Go ahead, sir.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister. Thanks for always being accessible, although for me it's the first time having you here, having just joined the committee.

First, federal, provincial and territorial ministers of justice and public safety discussed how to counter bias and racism in the justice system, I think at their December 2020 meeting, as well as the importance of disaggregated data to inform responses to systemic racism in the justice system. Is any of the funding outlined in the main estimates designated to such efforts, and if so, under what budget items?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

It's a question similar to Mr. Garrison's. I will leave that to my officials.

There is a whole-of-government response to it. I'm not 100% certain, I have to admit, that there is money in the justice-allocated portion, although we are working with Statistics Canada, as I stated, within their budget to get better disaggregated justice-related data. It is a problem that we have or that has had a light shone on it as a result of the pandemic and as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Indigenous Lives Matter movement.

Again, we have data gaps and we need to fix them.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Maybe you can help me on this one. You met a few months ago with members of the South Asian Bar Association in British Columbia, particularly some very astute female lawyers. They expressed some challenges and obstacles faced by women and men of colour in entering the judiciary. I'm wondering what the Department of Justice has done in this regard and what they are planning to do to address this going forward.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

We're continuing our outreach. Again, we're trying to identify elements within, in this case, the judicial appointment process, or elements within, I suppose, the legal practice and legal culture that serve as impediments—unknowing impediments, for example—that form part of the systemic bias against people. Again, it's not saying that people are racist. It's saying there might be something we didn't think of that has an unintended consequence.

That was the purpose of my meeting with members of the South Asian Bar Association, south of Vancouver. It was a very productive meeting. I got some very interesting ideas with respect to the criteria that exist on the appointment sheet. Many lawyers, just to give one example, never come into contact with a judge, so asking for a judge's recommendation on the application process is something that perhaps we need to look at. Is there a proxy we could use for the various practitioners? This is true in the South Asian community and it's true in the Asian community as well, where there are a lot of solicitor practices. They don't necessarily come into contact with judges all the time.

This is something that may very well be operating as a disadvantage. We need to look at it further. We need to keep open to other kinds of potential unintended consequences that exist in the system. That's what we mean by systemic bias. It is something we have to root out, and it is something we need to be open to studying further.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Many justices and people in the legal community have advocated for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences. You've tabled legislation to that effect. How does it empower judges to be more reflective of the victim as well as the accused's situation and address past systemic biases or aspects that particularly indigenous and Black Canadians face?

Maybe you can elaborate on that. Many people ask: What's the benefit of reducing mandatory minimum sentences, and how does it actually help a judge make that decision and give him or her more flexibility?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

MMPs have shown to be a colossal failure in terms of helping victims and helping the justice system be more efficient. They simply clog up the system. They cost us money. Over half the challenges in the criminal justice system are challenging MMPs, and they're often successful, so it ends up clogging the justice system such that real perpetrators who ought to be punished severely end up getting their charges dropped under Jordan rulings.

With respect to indigenous and other racialized accused, I'll give you an example. We have Gladue reports, and we're going to invest more in those reports across Canada in the fall economic statement. This is precisely so that a sentencing judge can take into account intergenerational trauma caused, say, by residential schools. With a project we're going to have in major urban centres—IRCAs—the same will be true for Black communities. Having these sentencing reports will allow a judge to look at the context of the person who is in front of them.

If you have a mandatory minimum penalty and you don't have an option of a conditional sentencing order, and you have to put somebody away for a minimum period of time, you have reduced the ability greatly—sometimes eliminated the ability altogether—of the judge to take into account the particular circumstances of the person in front of them and to tailor the best sentence that fits the crime, allows society to be made safer, allows the person to be made whole and allows the victim to be made whole. Eliminating as many mandatory minimum penalties as we can and bringing back conditional sentencing orders are critically important to making the justice system work the way it's supposed to work in terms of protecting society and trying to make victims whole, and moving forward in a progressive way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much, Minister and Mr. Sarai.

That concludes our first hour with the minister. The second hour will be with our department officials. At this time, I'd like to thank Minister Lametti for appearing before us today and for his very fulsome and wholesome responses to questions from committee members.

Minister, thank you very much.

Just before we get into our second round, I'd like to raise with members that we have about 50 minutes left of our meeting. We need to go through voting on the main estimates and the supplementary estimates (C) before we conclude our meeting today. We also have the matter of a notice of motion from Mr. Moore that we will be discussing today. I propose to members, and I leave it to you in terms of how many questions you have for our department officials, that perhaps we go through six minutes each per party and then see how much time is left, so that we have enough time to vote on the estimates and also to discuss Mr. Moore's motion.

Is that something that all of you are okay with?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much. In that case, we'll go to our officials. I have on my list Mr. Lewis as the next speaker.

Mr. Lewis, you can go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to be very brief on my questions, because I have a lot that I could ask today.

We've heard from the provinces that they would like to see more money from the federal government to support legal aid. Instead, according to the main estimates, less money will be provided in 2021-22. Why is the amount being decreased?

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Could the officials just identify themselves in answering that question?

[Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, Department of Justice]

Good morning, Madam Chair. This is Nathalie Drouin, deputy minister of Justice Canada. I just want to say at the beginning that I'm really pleased to be with you now.

As you know, in 2016, we announced a big increase in legal aid, but in that budget we had a specific $2 million that was only for a couple of years, dedicated to increasing innovation. It's only that $2-million part of the budget that sunsetted this year. That's why you see a decrease.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you very much to the witness.

Through you, Madam Chair, what conversations have you had with provincial counterparts on this funding cut?

[Nathalie Drouin]

That was well known in advance, so we didn't really have questions or a conversation about that.

The last conversation we had about legal aid recently was more about the impact of the pandemic. Because the courts shut their operations specifically at the beginning of the pandemic, we can expect some sort of a backlog in the coming months, and that can affect, in particular, criminal legal aid. That's one of the discussions we also had.

We also had a conversation about legal aid and systemic racism and racism in the justice system. This is why we have also announced—and we discussed this in the December FPT meeting—that Canada will provide and help to do an assessment of the impact of the legal system on minorities, especially visible minorities. That was the recent conversation we had about legal aid.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

It's really important that we bring our provincial friends to the table and have those discussions.

How do you expect legal aid programs to replace that money that's being lost?

[Nathalie Drouin]

As I said, the $2 million was an innovative kind of fund. It was to increase the effectiveness and the efficacity of legal aid. The purpose of it was to make legal aid plans and the legal aid system more efficient going forward. This is why it doesn't have an impact per se on the services—the different legal aid plans being offered to Canadians. It was to really build innovation in the system.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you for the answer.

Madam Chair, through you, the funding for the Canadian Judicial Council in supplementary estimates (C) nearly doubles, to $4.2 million.

Can you explain this doubling of funds required?

[Nathalie Drouin]

Right now this organization does not have permanent funding when it comes to dealing with the investigations it has to do and to providing legal support for judges who face disciplinary proceedings. This supplementary fund is for dealing with those investigations of responsibility.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

The victims fund in 2020-2021 only spent $14.8 million, whereas in 2019-2020 it spent $26.3 million.

Can you explain this significant decrease?