Justice Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 29 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on February 8, the committee is meeting on its study of government obligations to the victims of crime.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you're not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of English, French or the floor. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I will remind you that all comments should be addressed to the chair.

I also use time cards. When you have 30 seconds remaining, I'll flash this card, so try to pay attention to that because I don't want to interrupt. If you're out of time, I'll hold up the “out of time” flash card. Please tidy up immediately.

For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best as we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Witnesses will have five minutes each before the beginning of a round of questions.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour: Arlène Gaudreault, Monique St. Germain and Kat Owens.

We'll begin with Arlène Gaudreault for five minutes.

[Arlène Gaudreault, President, Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes]

Good morning.

I would first like to thank you for allowing us to participate in this consultation. I am representing the Association québécoise Plaidoyer-Victimes, a victims' rights advocacy organization, of which I am the president.

To begin, I want to say that we welcome the work undertaken by the federal government to publicize the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, the CVBR, to put the provisions of the bill into practice, and to support the mission of numerous organizations.

With the financial support of the Department of Justice of Canada and the collaboration of the ministère de la Justice of Quebec, we have carried out numerous large-scale projects relating to the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights. I have appended a brief summary of these initiatives to the short memorandum I submitted.

In the time I have been given, I would like to highlight several obstacles that impede victims' path when they want to exercise their rights and remedies. I will speak first about the lack of knowledge of the victims' rights set out in the CVBR and the problems associated with the right to information, which have been extensively documented through the consultations held in Canada and in the reports of the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime. One of the things the ombudsman has recommended is that victims be permitted to exercise their right to information and that they be provided with information proactively rather than in response to a request.

This is an interesting proposal, but it should be studied in greater depth before being implemented. For example, the provisions of provincial and federal statutes that govern confidentiality and privacy should be examined. The arrangements that should be put in place also need to be considered and a very broad spectrum of victims consulted to obtain their opinions and proposals.

The CVBR presents certain difficulties. One of the most significant relates to the fact that it sets out a brief, non-exhaustive list of the rights that victims may exercise in various contexts and before various bodies. The rights are not well defined. The obligations of those bodies and of the actors in the justice system are not specified.

As a result, it does not enable victims to know what they can expect. They have to deal in multiple ways with various components of the justice system to get answers to the questions that they are concerned about.

To alleviate these difficulties, many organizations have developed directives and service statements to enable victims to better understand their responsibilities and the measures that have been put in place to address their needs and their rights. Commissioner's Directive 784 at Correctional Service Canada, entitled “Victim Engagement”, and directives issued by Quebec's Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, are good practices that could inspire other organizations that to date have not clearly defined their commitments.

The CVBR presents a fairly large obstacle because of the fact that the rights are discretionary in many cases and the actors in the justice system have a lot of latitude for determining what is reasonable and what is in the interests of the sound administration of justice. The CVBR also depends on the resources available to organizations. It depends on their respective missions and how they define their position vis-à-vis victims. It is also subject to other laws, such as the Criminal Code and the laws that govern the correctional system. These are realities that are not always clearly understood and accepted by victims.

When the CVBR was adopted in 2015, Parliament wanted to put complaints mechanisms in place to enable victims to exercise their rights when they feel aggrieved. That was a step forward. Unfortunately, the results we see at present are somewhat disappointing. In the federal entities where complaints mechanisms were put in place from the start, very few complaints are reported, something like 20 per year, for all federal organizations, which is really very low. It suggests that victims are not aware of the existence of those mechanisms.

With respect to the provinces and territories, there is no picture at present that would enable us to evaluate how they have responded to the CVBR's requirements, nor have there been any analyses.

That is an important question. A critical assessment is needed, to examine what has been put in place in all organizations in Canada. We need to determine the nature of the problems and apply corrective measures. The collaboration of the provinces and territories is essential for doing that assessment.

The ombudsman has made recommendations concerning a proposal that is often advanced: that victims be offered the opportunity to exercise judicial and administrative remedies. At present, they have no right to appeal a decision or judgment.

We believe that this complex question should be studied by a working group, which should look into the feasibility of this kind of remedy in our criminal justice system and make recommendations. That would provide a broader view of the question, expand the discussion, and identify the measures that should be taken.

I would like to add a few words about restitution, another major element. The provisions of the CVBR were meant to expand the use of restitution. If you read the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up there, Madame Gaudreault.

[Arlène Gaudreault]

Right.

I have two more things to say.

That element needs to be examined, because not only has the use of restitution not been improved, but we have seen a decline in the number of applications since the CVBR was adopted.

In conclusion, I will say that we are disappointed, and we do not understand the lack of urgency on the part of the federal government to move ahead with the parliamentary review that was provided for in the act when it was adopted. It is important to do this in order to identify the problems, strengthen the rights, be aware of best practices—

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Madame Gaudreault.

[Arlène Gaudreault]

—and transpose them into our workplaces.

Thank you very much.

I would also like to thank you for the work you are doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you.

Next we have Monique St. Germain, general counsel, Canadian Centre for Child Protection, for five minutes.

[Monique St. Germain, General Counsel, Canadian Centre for Child Protection Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and distinguished members of this committee. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this study.

My name is Monique St. Germain, and I am general counsel for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which is a global leader in combatting the proliferation of child sexual abuse material on the Internet. We are a national charity, and we have been providing programs and services to victims of crime for over 37 years.

For the last 20 years, we have operated Cybertip.ca, Canada's national tip line to report the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The tip line is a central part of the Government of Canada's national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. Our role through Cybertip is to triage reports to the appropriate police and child welfare agencies where necessary, raise awareness through education and provide support services to assist Canadian families and children directly. The tip line has never been busier, and my goal here today is to be a voice for the victims and families we help.

In 2015, our agency believed that the Victims Bill of Rights was a vital step towards a fairer system for victims. We still do, but since 2015, the extent of online child sexual exploitation has exploded. According to Statistics Canada, the overall rate of police-reported incidents of online sexual exploitation and abuse have increased from 50 incidents per 100,000 population in 2014 to 131 in 2020. These numbers signal that we have a tremendous problem on our hands, especially considering that the numbers would be the tip of the iceberg.

Child sexual abuse crimes are grossly under-reported. Many cases involve perpetrators who are a member of the child's immediate family or household or a person known to the victim's family, making the need for supports for both the child and the non-offending family members critical, yet many victim services programs do not cover services for the victim's family.

Perpetrators of online crime such as luring or sextortion may be committed by anyone, anywhere and on any platform. There are jurisdictional and other complications that make investigations difficult, leaving many victims without justice. Today, reports of sextortion are through the roof. Multiple policing agencies as well as Cybertip.ca have been issuing public alerts to try to warn parents and their children of the highly organized and ruthless nature of these crimes.

If you don't work in this space, you don't know how bad it can get. Our agency has become connected with families of children who have died by suicide after being the victim of sextortion. We've worked with survivors of child sexual abuse material who have essentially become secret public figures to those in the offending community. Their images are widely distributed, creating an online and ongoing cycle of abuse and an endless stream of offenders. Survivors responding to our international survivors survey told us that these crimes have a significant lifelong impact on them.

The power of their stories led us to create Project Arachnid, an innovative global tool that can detect where this material is being made publicly available online and issue takedown notices. So far, over six million images and videos of child sexual exploitation have been removed from the Internet following a Project Arachnid notice. These images and videos were detected across more than 1,000 electronic service providers spanning nearly 100 countries. The problem is immense.

I will close with a few recommendations. First, as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Canada agreed to “take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of: any form of neglect, exploitation, or abuse”. Online crime victims need ongoing safety planning, therapy and financial support. Their non-offending caregivers need the same things. These services and supports must be consistent across provinces.

Then there's restitution. Adding it as a specific right seemed like it would help; however, as an organization that closely monitors case law on all online child sexual exploitation offences, we can tell you unequivocally that restitution is not being ordered or even considered in most cases.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] is found in the collection of a subsequent offender. This means that victims of child sexual abuse material are rarely recognized as victims, so their rights under the Victims Bill of Rights are not being fulfilled.

In closing, we know that there are families out there doing their own investigations to unmask and protect themselves from an anonymous online perpetrator. Victims are self-policing to find their own content online to request its removal, and non-offending caregivers are struggling to hold it all together while being told by systems that are supposed to help them that they are not victims. It is not right, and it is not sustainable.

We urge the government to play a leadership role in better supporting victims of crime, not just through the criminal justice process but beyond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you.

Now we'll go on to Ms. Kat Owens of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund for five minutes.

[Kat Owens, Project Director, Women's Legal Education and Action Fund]

Thank you.

Good morning, committee members. My name is Kat Owens, and I am a project director at the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, or LEAF. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today from Tkaronto, or Toronto, which is within the lands protected by the Dish With One Spoon wampum belt covenant.

LEAF is in solidarity with indigenous communities, and we echo their calls for, among other things, the immediate implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action, as well as the calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This government has urgent obligations to bring justice to missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit persons and their communities, and to ensure that not one more indigenous women, girl or two-spirit person becomes a victim to this crisis.

LEAF is a national charitable organization that works toward ensuring that the law guarantees substantive equality for all women, girls, trans and non-binary people. It does this through litigation, law reform and public legal education.

LEAF is glad that this committee is not only studying the Victims Bill of Rights but is hearing about how victims or survivors of crime can be better supported generally. Given the nature of LEAF's work and expertise in advancing gender equality, I will focus on how to support survivors of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, of which women, girls, trans and non-binary people are disproportionately the targets.

As you know, gender-based violence takes a devastating toll on the lives of victims, survivors and their loved ones. It disproportionately impacts women who are Black, indigenous, queer, trans or disabled. We urge you, as parliamentarians, to hear from and listen to members of these communities and the organizations led by them as you do your work.

We need survivor-centred approaches to addressing and ending gender-based violence, and survivors must have agency and choice in every step of the process. Too often the criminal justice system is the site of further harm for those who look to engage with it. For many survivors, especially those who are Black, indigenous, trans or criminalized, it can simply be unsafe to come forward and engage with formal legal systems.

I have three non-exhaustive recommendations to provide to this committee on how to better support survivors of gender-based violence.

First, we need a fully funded, intersectional national action plan to end gender-based violence. Piecemeal changes to how systems deal with gender-based violence are insufficient to adequately address the problem. We need holistic solutions. We also need parliamentarians of all political stripes to ensure that this work moves forward in a timely way, that it is guided by expert organizations and those with lived experience, and that the plan is put into action.

Second, it is imperative to study, develop and implement survivor-centric alternatives that move beyond existing legal systems. Alternatives like restorative justice and transformative justice models broaden the possibilities for justice, accountability and healing. LEAF is ready to support this work through its alternative justice mechanisms project, which will look at legal barriers to these types of mechanisms for sexual violence and propose law reform measures to address these barriers.

Third, we need to make changes to our existing legal responses to make them more accessible to those survivors who choose to engage with legal systems. Free and independent legal advice and representation must be made available to survivors of gender-based violence. This is crucial for them to understand their options and their legal rights and how to navigate the justice system.

In the criminal context, we need to reform how publication bans are implemented and removed in sexual violence prosecutions, as well as how the criminal justice system deals with breaches of bans by survivors. Whether a publication ban is issued to protect a survivor's identity should be an informed choice made by that survivor. Should she no longer want the ban, there should be a simple process to remove it.

Finally, a survivor should never be prosecuted for breaching a ban put in place solely to protect her identity. I understand that Morrell Andrews will be appearing before you on Thursday, and I would encourage you to listen to her lived experience, leadership and expertise on this issue.

Thank you for your time. I would be happy to answer any questions that you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Owens, for being on time.

I want to welcome some members who are here substituting today. Welcome, Ms. Taylor Roy and Mr. Dreeshen, to the committee.

I'll begin by having the first round of six minutes begin with Mr. Brock.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, ladies, for your presentations and your willingness to participate in this extremely important study.

I'd like to speak to Monique St. Germain initially. My initial thought, Ms. St. Germain, is that your commentary alone with respect to the proliferation of child exploitation matters in Canada could easily form its own study. It's multi-faceted. It's multi-layered. I'm coming at my questions for you as a former justice participant who prosecuted these cases for the better part of two decades. I share your frustrations and concerns with respect to the inadequacies that the current system has to ensure that we deal with the under-reporting issues and that we deal with the supports that are currently lacking for all child victims across this country.

I listened very carefully to your recommendations. One comment was that child rights, in your view, are not being fulfilled by the current drafting of the Victims Bill of Rights. Could you expand upon that for me, please? I'll give you as much time as you need.

[Monique St. Germain]

For several years our organization has been working with material based on victims of child sexual abuse. What we're hearing from them, bar none, is that their safety considerations are immense and that the long-term impact on their lives, once child sexual abuse material has been created, is not well understood by any of the systems that are in place to support them.

For example, when they go to counselling, the counsellor often doesn't know how to deal with the imagery piece of the victimization. Of course, the imagery victimization is ongoing. There's the initial abuse, where the child is abused and the abuse is recorded. Then that recording continues to circulate online and continues to instill fear in the victim. Their counselling needs are very different from counselling needs that may exist for other victims for whom the crime is, in fact, over. For these victims, their past is their present. That is a big part of what we feel is lacking.

Certainly across the board we see that provincial systems are not equipped. The services that are being made available do not have the funding in place to provide the level of therapy and counselling that these survivors actually need.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you.

I have a general question now for Madame Gaudreault and for Ms. Owens. One reflection I had when I left law and entered politics was about the frustration that survivors of sexual violence have with the criminal justice system. They view it as a completely unbalanced justice system, under which all the rights, privileges and attention go to the offender, and lip service—those are my words—goes to the victims. It creates a level of distrust for those coming into the system, which probably explains why, historically, victims of sexual violence have not wanted to report it. They know that it's really dependent on the quality of the police service that investigates, the quality of the local supports available to the victims and the quality of the prosecution, and then there's the uncertainty of the judge.

With that in mind, I want to hear from both of you as to some of the shortcomings of the current iteration of the Canadian Bill of Rights and some of the ways in which we can improve, increase the trust and increase the reporting, particularly in the area of sexual violence. That's for either of you.

[Arlène Gaudreault]

The wording of the CVBR is very vague. In fact, implementation of a large portion of the rights rests on the provinces' shoulders, since they are responsible for the administration of justice. So it is difficult to have a complete bill of rights, unless all the rights are enumerated.

One of the ways of mitigating this problem is to ensure that the most victims possible have access to information in various forms and to service providers who can answer their questions and concerns. There is a lot of information, but it is very general. Victims need to talk about their cases, about their own situation, and to get answers to specific questions. The justice system is complex, and victims are dealing with different bodies. This is true for victims of sexual violence and spousal violence, but it is also true for all victims. So we have to continue to improve the system.

There have been significant advances in the treatment of victims in the justice system. Ms. Owens talked about legal advice. There are more and more legal assistance services that offer legal information and advice, because there is a lack of representation in some cases. A lot of initiatives have been put in place, particularly when it comes to preparing witnesses. The system is much criticized, but we do not hear a lot about the advances and the measures that are made available to victims. We also need to send a positive message to victims from time to time.

That said, despite what is in place, it is still an extremely laborious experience for victims.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Madame Gaudreault.

Thank you, Mr. Brock.

Next we have Ms. Diab for six minutes.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would first like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony.

Let me start by giving a brief opportunity to each of the three of you, although our time is limited, to give me your comments with respect to the appointment of the new ombudsperson for victims. How do you see that in each of your categories?

I know that LEAF spoke about the great work their doing on gender-based violence for women and the intersectionality.

Ms. Monique St. Germain, I know that you spoke about online sexual exploitation and child sex abuse on the Internet, which is actually something that I was quite familiar with as a Nova Scotian back when we implemented the Cyber-safety Act in our province.

I'd like to know how you think the ombudsperson could aid with that, if at all.

Ms. Owens, I'll ask you first.

[Kat Owens]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think it is always important to have more information as opposed to less, and to have a sense of how our systems are working and not working for survivors. I think that having an ombudsperson who is able to do that sort of work in assessing the systems is very important.

I would just go back to the point that whatever approaches are taken to respond to violence, they need to be survivor-centred. We need to ensure that survivors are informed about their options: that they have agency, that they have choice and that we expand those options.

I do think that the ombudsperson's work could be very supportive of that.

Thank you for the question.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

Ms. St. Germain is next.

[Monique St. Germain]

Yes, I would echo what Ms. Owens has said.

To build on that, the work of the ombudsperson, from the perspective of online abuse and technological abuse, could perhaps play a role in educating the various actors within the system of specific types of trauma and other safety planning considerations that need to be put into place, particularly when we're talking about children.

One thing that we see as an organization, as an example, is that for victims of child sexual abuse material, the offenders know who they are, or they spend time trying to figure out who they are. There are safety considerations that need to be taken into account a little differently, because that imagery is living online. The ombudsperson could be very effective, I think, in terms of educating and pulling together information from various jurisdictions to help better inform all actors within the system of these types of challenges.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Ms. Gaudreault, do you have any comments to add?

[Arlène Gaudreault]

The ombudsman is also doing important work on analyzing the systemic problems and broad issues that small organizations often do not have the time to study. They sometimes do not have the resources to do it. The reports that the ombudsman has released have been invaluable in advancing our discussions. In Canada, the ombudsman is also an essential spokesperson for victims of crime whose reports can be used for analyzing problems and making recommendations that advance victims' rights.

We are therefore very pleased with his appointment.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Right.

Thank you.

I have a follow-up question for you, Ms. Owens.

You spoke of the holistic solution and invited all parliamentarians, regardless of party affiliation, to work together. Gender-based violence is common out there. We all know that, particularly with women who are Black, indigenous, queer or disabled.

How about multicultural women and people of different ethnic backgrounds and so on? What would you say about that? Have you any studies on that or have you looked at that? This would be women who are immigrants and new to the country or who perhaps have been here for a long time but simply come from different backgrounds.

[Kat Owens]

One of the things we see is that gender-based violence touches members of all communities regardless of how new one is to Canada or how long one has been here. It's important to keep in mind how different systems of oppression work within this country and how they influence the likelihood that a person may experience gender-based violence as well as their response to it and the services that are available to them.

One thing I'll say that definitely speaks to the experience of folks who are new to the country, and also when we're talking about Black and indigenous folks in particular, is the way that the current default police and carceral response to gender-based violence often does not work. These may not be institutions that they feel they can engage with so there is a need to broaden the options and responses available to these community members especially.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of you.