Justice Committee on Sept. 29th, 2022

[Sheri Arsenault]

Well, right off the bat, you're.... I don't know how to say it any nicer: You are read the riot act. You are told that if you make a sound, you will be asked to leave immediately. This is at parole hearings. You feel almost like you're the criminal. You are told to be quiet and you are told to read your statement and not to deviate one word from it, and then you're to sit down and be quiet. We were afraid to even cough, to be honest.

They're very intimidating. After four or five hours of straining to listen, because they plunk the victims way in the back of the room, many rows from the parole board members and the offender and their people, it's exhausting. It's just absolutely exhausting, and then it's only to go home and two or three months later get another letter that they're looking for parole again, so you go through it all over again if you so choose to.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Is there anything that can be done to address that?

[Sheri Arsenault]

No.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

You spoke about the fact that the criminal has his or her back turned away from the victim or the families of victims. Can you speak to what it would mean to actually see the face of the man responsible for the murder of your son?

[Sheri Arsenault]

Well, to me the victim should have the choice of whether they want to face the offender that made them a victim, because some want to face them.

I think the offender should have to look a mother in the eye. I don't understand why there is the big protection. No two victims are alike. They should have the choice to speak to them, to look in their eyes and read their statement to them, not to the back of their ears.

I believe it would greatly help victims in the healing process too if they were made to feel like their input actually was going to the offenders, not to the back of their heads.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Okay. I think my time is up, so thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Cooper.

We'll next go over to Mr. Naqvi for six minutes.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair. I want to thank all the witnesses today for their presentations.

I'm going to start with Professor Waller, if I may. Thank you again for being there. You and I have had many conversations around rights of victims, and you've been quite helpful to me in my previous roles at the provincial level in helping guide the work that we did in reforming the Police Services Act and looking at things like crime prevention and community safety and well-being planning.

I have read, if not all your books, at least two, I think, so thank you for giving me those copies. They've been quite instructive to me.

You started your presentation by talking about how the current victims bill of rights at the federal level is “inadequate”, I think was your word. Can you speak to some of the gaps, in your view, that exist in the current legislation?

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

I think the bill of rights, frankly, is a bill of goods. There is no remedy, so you shouldn't ever have used the word “right”. Jo-Anne Wemmers has detailed some of those. You have to go through your own civil procedure for restitution, and you're not provided with information.

I think one of the fundamental problems is that we don't know anything about whatever difference it has made. There was a promise to do a main report evaluating it, but we don't really have data. We have no idea whether people were better informed, whether restitution was ordered more, whether people were better protected or whether they had any participation. As most of this stuff is in the provincial domain, we have no idea if the provinces are doing it. The ombudsman is great, but we need a complete overhaul of what's going on.

Let's just start with what was mentioned by the previous witness: information. When I was a senior official in the Canadian government in the 1970s, the Edmonton police gave out a card to every victim. On the front of this card was a phone number—it was 1979—and on the back of this card were the various services. The chief had an office working for him, so it was up in the bureaucracy where it should be, and if they didn't give out this card, then it was a disciplining offence. It gave basic information about things like compensation and services.

Fast-forward to 2022: Canada does not have a basic role for what the police should do to provide victims with information. We do not have any policy for how the police can refer victims to services that can help them, if by any chance they exist. This is so fundamental.

The RCMP are roughly one in three of all police officers in Canada. It's in the federal mandate for the RCMP Act to be changed to require every RCMP officer responding to a victim to provide this basic information. We live in the IT age. You can give people information leaflets. You can give people a link, and you can also follow up. You can share the information.

Canada is basically backward. We need to move into the world where victims matter. We need federal legislation that will make a difference. In 1984, Senator Biden, a young senator, was one of the senators who approved the Victims of Crime Act. This was basically a way of providing funding to states in the U.S. so they could have compensation, so they could have services, so they could have specialized services, so there was an annual conference and so there was better data. It did all of those things. In 1984 they were doing that.

We, at one time, gave funding to help provinces put compensation in place, but that was abandoned. We need federal leadership to help provinces, one of which you were a senior minister in, to do the things that will make a difference.

There is a training program for the police called “first in aid” developed by NOVA—I was on their board in the U.S.—with funding in collaboration with the IACP. All the chiefs in Canada are members of the IACP. This sort of training should be given to every police officer. It mentioned information and training. It's at the police level. Most people who are victims of crime do not go to the police, but the more serious the event, the more likely they are to do so. If they go, then it's unlikely they will ever get somebody arrested or to the stage of parole, so we need to go upstream and deal with those problems there.

The stuff in the victims of crime act is nice, but until we have federal funding to make this happen, working with the provinces and working with indigenous groups, it is nothing but a bill of goods.

We knew this when it came through. Almost every U.S. state has a constitutional amendment. California has a way of implementing this—Marsy's Law—so that it becomes a reality. We need to be doing the same things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Waller.

Thank you, Mr. Naqvi.

It's over to you, Monsieur Fortin, for six minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank You, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome of the witnesses and thank them for being here today.

My questions will be for you, Mr. Waller.

You spoke to us about the importance of informing victims, and I think it is a crucial issue. I’m sure you know that you are not the first witness to identify the problem.

I would like you to tell me more about it. You were talking about California, but what does that state do, exactly?

I would also like to know if it would be helpful and desirable for victims of crime to automatically be included in the trial, summoned and represented, so they can participate in all the steps of a criminal trial that impacts them.

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

I am very keen to tell you about the situation in Québec, which has the VCI, the most generous compensation system in Canada. There are also Crime Victims Assistance Centres, CAVACs, and the Crime Victims Assistance Office, BAVAC, where officials are employed to support victims. When I taught at the University of Ottawa, I told my students that it was better for them to live in Gatineau rather than Ottawa if they were victims of a crime.

I will continue in French because the Rome Statute had an important influence on France. In France, a civil party participates in the trial and receives legal assistance to do so. We should have the same system here. We could start with a few trial runs, which could be held in Montréal, where we could combine the Civil Division and the Criminal Division. If such a system were implemented, a great deal more of compensation would be awarded.

In Canada, this is currently just fiction. Judges think in terms of years in prison. They don’t think about compensation that a person should pay if they have the means.

I think we have a lot to learn from this. Canada is a member of the International Criminal Court. Victims who appear before this court have much greater rights and reparations than a victim of domestic violence.

I am moved when I hear a victim testify, as they did today, and this should move everyone. There should be real measures to measure results. It truly is time to act.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

You talked about the system in Rome; it’s interesting.

I asked witnesses the same question. They told me that we must consider the fact that not all victims want to participate in the proceedings for a broad range of personal reasons.

I don’t know how it works in Rome, but how could we offer a victim the choice of participating or not in the proceedings, especially during plea bargaining? I don’t think that this is a bad thing, since we have to take a large number of factors into account. A trial is not always the best solution.

Would it be worthwhile, at the very least, for victims to have the opportunity to participate in the process if they want to, rather than be spectators and victimized again to a certain extent by a decision over which they had no control?

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

It is very clear that the majority of victims of property crime want to receive compensation. We must find a way to have them participate in the process and offer them legal assistance or a lawyer to help them define the compensation they want. That is how it works in France, where half of all proceedings are resolved through compensation.

The reality is different for victims of violence, who are looking for something else. Often, an offender does not have the means to compensate the victim.

However, granting the victim a legitimate role in a formal trial could increase the possibility of obtaining restorative justice, as mentioned by Ms. Wemmers.

It is important to emphasize that, unlike a victim, an offender always receives support. If both parties received support and had a good mediator, many things could be resolved. There would be an opportunity to arrive at compensation and a feeling of emotional reparations, for instance.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

I agree that compensation is a significant piece. That said, beyond this consideration, victims of violence, sexual assault or assault, as well as their loved ones—consider Ms. Arsenault, the mother of a victim of murder—should they participate in the trial of the accused?

Wouldn’t this participation have some healing properties? Would this be a way of reducing the problem’s impact?

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Monsieur Fortin, I think Mr. Waller is going to have to answer that in his subsequent round or in others. I'll have to move on.

The next round is six minutes for Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I too want to thank the witnesses for being with us today. It's certainly nice to have Professors Waller and Wemmers back before the committee, but I will say a special thanks to Ms. Arsenault. She's one of those examples we see again and again of families who have been determined to make sure there's a fair deal for victims of crime and to make sure that what they've gone through isn't gone through by any other family in the future. I salute the dedication of those like you, Ms. Arsenault.

At the beginning, one of the things you talked about was information, and I want to go back to that point, because I think you stated very well that most victims of crime have no idea what their rights are or what the possibilities are.

Can you tell us personally how you found out about the rights? Was it through your own perseverance, or was there any assistance?

[Sheri Arsenault]

Thank you very much for your comments. They mean a lot to me.

I will be honest; I was so deep in grief for well over a year. If it weren't for the amount of support.... You have to remember there were three families, a lot of people. They dug through, and they found what we needed to do.

I've helped many victims. They find out their offender is already on parole. They didn't even know. They had no clue. There needs to be some kind of agency—I would suspect government—that actually makes sure all the information gets to victims. Let the victim choose whether they want to go through these processes or not.

If it weren't for family or friends, I would not have had a clue. That was the last thing on my mind.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

We have heard sometimes from people who say some victims don't want these services, but I think what you're saying very clearly is that without the information, they don't know what choices they have.

[Sheri Arsenault]

Exactly. At that moment, sometimes you're so deep in grief you don't even know what you want or what you need. As time goes on, you may come out of that a bit and you might then start to be mad and want those resources and want to get involved.

My family was on them from day one, because we wanted to be involved in the process. We had never been through the justice system, and it's an eye-opener.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I want to turn to you, Professor Waller, because you talked about the possibility for police to maybe give information to victims.

I guess I'm going to be a bit of a devil's advocate here, Professor Waller. I wonder whether the police are the appropriate people to provide that information. I think that offices that support victims are probably better placed to make sure their victims get that information than are the random police officers who have to be involved in cases.

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

Twenty-five per cent of victims of violence go to the police. About a third of the victims of property crime go to the police, so the police definitely have a role. They're at the front end. I didn't say that they were to provide the service; I said that they were to provide the information and the referral—both things—to services that can help them. It's very hard for victims to find out about those services without going to the police. Victims have probably heard of sexual assault crisis centres and they may have heard of transition houses, but they probably haven't heard of the other general services that are available, and they don't know how to get in touch with them. I strongly believe that it's a basic role that the police can play.

For those people who want to see the offender prosecuted—and property crime victims don't always want that—if you're going to the police because you want prosecution and not just insurance, then it's really important that you be given information and that you then have somebody to support you with the police and with the prosecutor.

One of the previous members of the committee raised the issue of bail in the negotiation of charges. Victims need support through all those stages.

Yes, parole is very important, but for the vast majority of victims, they never get to the parole stage.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

If I'm interpreting you correctly, your suggestion is that the police have a front-end responsibility, but perhaps an office of victim services could provide the information services later on in the process for those who go through the process further.

[Dr. Irvin Waller]

Yes. If you go back to my Edmonton example from 40 years ago, that actual victim service unit was reporting to the chief, and it was therefore in the police department. It was therefore funded, although they had a lot of volunteers. The City of Ottawa has a unit within the police and a unit outside of them, and there have been lots of problems in getting them to work together.

As I've already mentioned, I'm a fan of Quebec: It has taken them a long time, but they actually have professional victim services now. I'm not sure whether that covers the whole province yet, but it's close to covering the whole province. It means that they're paying these people and that they're trained. That's the sort of thing that we should see everywhere in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Waller.

Thank you, Mr. Garrison. That's your time for this round.

Next, for five minutes, we have Mr. Brock.