Justice Committee on March 23rd, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back.

It's good to see everybody. It's a new day, a new week, a new piece of legislation and a new level of enthusiasm. Let's get under way.

I call the meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 21 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Pursuant to the order of reference of February 2, 2026, the committee is meeting to begin its study of Bill C-16, an act to amend certain acts in relation to criminal and correctional matters regarding child protection, gender-based violence, delays and other measures.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to confirm that the sound tests were done successfully. Everybody knows the guidelines that are in front of them on the desks.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. As for those participating by video conference, Mr. Housefather, you know the routine. I don't think I need to go through all of the details, so I will skip that.

I will jump to welcoming our witnesses.

First of all, we have the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.

Welcome, Minister. Thank you for attending today.

The minister will be with us for the first hour. He's joined today by Department of Justice officials Owen Ripley, senior assistant deputy minister, policy sector; Matthew Taylor, senior general counsel and director general, criminal law policy section; and Nathalie Levman, senior counsel, criminal law policy section.

Minister, I will turn the floor over to you for your opening comments. Thank you for being here.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Chair, how long do I have for opening comments?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have a maximum of 10 minutes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I will endeavour to be shorter than that to leave more time for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and colleagues, for being here at committee to discuss Bill C-16, the protecting victims act. This is an important piece of legislation that I believe is going to improve safety outcomes in a number of different contexts, including gender-based violence and the protection of kids online, in addition to making certain other changes that will, in my view, strengthen the capacity of the justice system to respond to pressing social challenges.

That said, before I get to the bill itself, I think it would be helpful to talk about the context for the committee's examination of Bill C‑16.

We have a strategy to protect the public and to strengthen public safety. The strategy has three pillars.

The first is to strengthen criminal law reforms to ensure we have laws in the Criminal Code that are designed to enhance public safety and ensure that serious crimes are met with serious punishments.

The second pillar of this strategy is focused on supporting the front line. This includes 1,000 new RCMP officers and 1,000 new border officials, but it also includes giving law enforcement the tools they need, whether that is, more recently, Bill C-22 or other authorities that will help them investigate and prosecute and help them protect the public from crime through prevention efforts.

The final pillar of the strategy is making the upstream investments to help build healthier communities and healthier people in the long term. This is where we're talking about investments in mental health and addictions, in affordable housing and in programs that target at-risk youth, to ensure that as we build healthier people in healthier communities, we have a long-term opportunity to reduce violent crime in Canada.

Today's bill really falls under the first pillar: strengthening criminal laws in this country.

There are a number of different themes that I hope to draw your attention to. Of course, there are several dozen different measures in this bill—we have 83 distinct changes—but I'm going to focus on a few key ones.

First, I want to discuss the importance of addressing the femicides that are occurring around the country. I've seen the stories in the news. This year, Quebec alone has had seven femicides, and that is a shame. We need to take action to stop femicides, not just in Quebec, but also across the country.

There is a gross injustice taking place in this country when it comes to the murder of women, often at the hands of their intimate partners. We have an opportunity to respond by creating a constructive first-degree murder charge in cases of femicide. This will include murders that are committed in different contexts, including hatred-motivated murders, where someone is targeting a victim, for example, on the basis of their gender. It will include murders that are committed in the context of a coercive and controlling relationship. It will also include murders that are committed in the context of the commission of a sexual offence.

I want to pause on the issue of coercive control for a moment, because in addition to it being a qualifier for a constructive first-degree charge in cases of femicide, we've made the decision in this bill to move forward with the criminalization of coercive control as a stand-alone offence. We want to do this because we have an opportunity to have the justice system intervene before a relationship becomes violent and before violence becomes fatal.

Through our engagement in the preparation of this bill, time and time again we saw those who have spent their lives and careers studying the issue citing coercive and controlling behaviour as being predictive of future violence that may take place in the household. We are not talking about ordinary facets of a healthy relationship. We are not talking about arguments over who's going to manage the household finances. We are talking about behaviours that would reasonably cause a person to fear for their physical or psychological safety.

In addition, this bill makes changes to the charge of criminal harassment, ensuring that it's modernized for new technologies, but also ensuring that we've shifted the test towards an objective standard rather than a subjective standard, given the feedback we heard about how difficult it can be for victims of criminal harassment to demonstrate what they in fact felt, rather than what a reasonable person would feel in the circumstances.

There are a number of other issues in this bill that I want to draw your attention to, including the creation of a number of new sexual offences. In particular, I'll direct you to portions of the bill that speak to changes with regard to Canada's criminal laws insofar as they impact the distribution of intimate images. I'd like to focus on the two key ways in which we are changing the law.

The first is to ensure that criminalization applies to not only the distribution of these intimate images without consent, but also the threatened distribution of images.

There's one other feature that has found itself in the news, perhaps for obvious reasons. Our laws need to be able to keep pace with changing technologies in this country. We've seen a preponderance of cases making their way through our communities, into the newspapers and occasionally into our courts involving the use of artificial intelligence to create deepfakes of intimate images, which bear the likeness of a person known to the prospective offender. I say prospective because the Criminal Code today does not necessarily recognize the use of AI deepfakes the same way that it would recognize intimate images that are captured through other technologies.

In my home province of Nova Scotia, very recently we saw a judge dismiss charges against an accused person. It was not that the act was not heinous or morally culpable; it was because the definition of intimate images in the Criminal Code does not include those that are created through the use of artificial intelligence. This bill proposes to change that and deliver justice to victims who are having their likeness used for such an inappropriate and morally culpable reason. With the modernization of the Criminal Code, we will be able to ensure that these behaviours are captured and that wrongdoers are punished for their actions.

In addition to certain new sexual offences that are being established, we are going to be increasing the penalties for certain sexual crimes, including voyeurism and summary sexual assault. We will be looking at a number of other matters when it comes to sentencing as well. By and large, these changes are made to provide equity between existing provisions within the code and to align the maximum sentences in some charges with the maximum sentences that pertain to other charges that take place in a sexual context.

While we're on the subject of expanding maximum penalties, this bill also takes significant steps to restore mandatory minimum penalties for a wide variety of crimes where a mandatory minimum penalty either has been struck down or maintains its place within the Criminal Code today but carries with it constitutional vulnerability as a result of the treatment by the court of mandatory minimums that existed previously.

This is a response, very directly, to the Senneville decision from the Supreme Court. We made the decision to restore these mandatory minimums, but took the court's direction by creating a safety valve for only those circumstances where the mandatory minimum would be grossly disproportionate.

It's important to ensure that the constitutionality of these provisions is protected if we want the provisions to be useful. The provisions that exist today are offering no protection to anyone, because the court has indicated that they will be struck down when challenged. We have found a way forward that reflects the feedback included in decisions of the Supreme Court.

Part of the reason we chose this particular approach was the public statements we've seen in the House of Commons and elsewhere from members of both the Conservative Party of Canada and the Bloc Québécois. Our desire was to find a path forward that would gain multipartisan support to ensure that we could address this particular issue professionally and in a way that would stand the test of time.

There were other strategies we looked at, for reasons that I'm happy to get into during questions. We've chosen to move forward with the strategy outlined in the bill.

There are other changes we made, particularly to protect kids against exploitation, including in an online environment. This includes changes to sextortion, including not only the distribution but also, as I mentioned in the context of intimate images, the threatened distribution of child sexual abuse material. It also involves changes to child-luring provisions within the code, to ensure that they are incorporated within the definition of sextortion for the purpose of this bill. A series of other penalties range from depicting bestiality to inviting exposure, and a series of other measures impact mandatory reporting and other facets. Suffice it to say, we've taken feedback from stakeholders who have made it their life's work to protect victims.

I have one item I'd like to complete before I finish with the time I've been allotted. It's on the issue of delays and the court process.

Over the last number of years, according to news reports, we've seen nearly 10,000 cases dismissed for delay. It's not because trials have come to their conclusion and had a not-guilty verdict rendered, but because stays of proceedings have been issued. This often comes up in complex drug investigations. It also often comes up in sexual assault contexts.

It's never felt like justice to me that the potential perpetrator of a crime would benefit from a stay allowing them to live in the same community where the victim resides. This bill proposes to address that challenge in a number of different ways. One is addressing delays directly by seeking to streamline procedure. Another is encouraging the court to use a lengthened timeline for complex cases and, when that time is hit, to consider remedies other than a stay of proceedings.

Mr. Chair, I think my time is up, so I am ready to answer the committee members' questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Minister.

We'll start the first six-minute round with Mr. Brock.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for your attendance, and thank you to your officials from the department.

Minister, after a decade of catch-and-release Liberal bail, repealing mandatory minimum penalties and other hug-a-thug laws, Canadians are understandably scared. Since 2015, human trafficking has increased by 84%, sex assaults are up almost 76% and violent crime is up almost 55%.

Bill C-16 egregiously continues the Liberal soft-on-crime agenda by empowering judges to ignore literally every mandatory prison sentence in the Criminal Code other than for murder and treason. Liberals are now trying to allow judges to ignore them for aggravated assault with a gun, human trafficking and multiple firearm offences, including extortion with a firearm, weapons trafficking, drive-by shootings with a restricted or prohibited firearm and more.

Parliament sets mandatory minimums for these heinous crimes for a reason, but if your government allows judges to ignore them, there will be nothing mandatory about them, period. The passage of this provision would be a total abrogation of our duty as elected representatives to keep our communities safe. Conservatives will never vote for lighter sentences for serious offenders.

Will your government immediately split off this poison pill so we can all get back to work on making this bill better and keeping Canadians safe?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Respectfully, I have a different point of view from my honourable colleague on the value this bill is going to offer more broadly. I take the closing comment in his question as an endorsement of at least some measures within the bill, if not the provisions that apply to mandatory minimum penalties.

On the issue of mandatory minimum penalties, though, there's a particular piece of context we need to understand. I know the member asking the question believes the government should adopt laws to protect against the harms he's enumerated. I share that desire sincerely. We all want strong penalties for serious crimes, but we have to ask ourselves what the value is of a mandatory minimum that exists on paper but is not recognized by law after a decision by the court to strike down that mandatory minimum. If our laws written into the code are not enjoyed in our communities, then those laws are not worth the paper on which they are written.

Today, mandatory minimums, including those that were subject to the Senneville decision, offer no force of protection for Canadian victims. We might feel good about what the code says, but if the court is going to strike down those provisions and not incorporate them into the sentencing regime, we can't say there is a functioning mandatory minimum regime today. We made a decision to restore those mandatory minimums, taking the constitutional guidance from the court, so they will actually be put in place and will demand reasons from the court in circumstances where it deviates from the mandatory minimums.

Keep in mind that we're not dealing with some widespread discretion. We're dealing with circumstances that are “so excessive as to outrage standards of decency”, in the court's words, or that would be “intolerable” to society. We think we've found the right approach.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

A glaring omission in Bill C-16 is the lack of reintroduction of the 15 offences that your government removed, which you voted for, Minister, in the passage of Bill C-5 in the 44th Parliament. Will your government reintroduce all of those mandatory minimum penalties for the offences that were removed?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

One historical development piece of this bill that's important to understand is that the Senneville decision arrived as we were preparing the content of the bill. We made the decision to respond, and we thought it best to address the issue of mandatory minimums that existed today that were baked into the code previously, including those that remain in the code and those that were struck down. We didn't do a full-blown consultation either about provisions that had been removed by Parliament or about those that could potentially be added or removed from a mandatory minimum regime.

If that's an issue this committee would like to study to provide guidance, I would welcome that guidance, but it would be important to actually conduct that consultation.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

The only reason I raise this is that your predecessor, David Lametti, was very proud of the fact that mandatory minimum penalties do not work. In fact, he was quoted numerous times, and the quotes have not aged well over time given the rise in crime levels in this country. I put to him the very possibility that the Supreme Court of Canada could be upholding mandatory minimum penalties that Bill C-5 removed. I raised that as an issue, and sure enough, after the royal assent of Bill C-5, the Supreme Court of Canada, in the Hills and Hilbach joint decision, upheld the mandatory minimum penalty that was removed by Bill C-5.

Given that the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld a number of mandatory minimum penalties that have been in existence in the Criminal Code since the late 1800s, and given that the 15 classes of offences that you removed in Bill C-5 are very significant and violent offences, including every single drug offence in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, why wouldn't this government take this opportunity to strengthen our criminal laws, as opposed to weakening them?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I don't view Bill C-16 as weakening Canada's criminal law, for the reasons that I articulated in my opening remarks. It strengthens it in a number of particular ways.

To go back to the question you asked, when we were moving forward with the decision to address the consequences of the Senneville decision, we were dealing with the umbrella analysis about the protection of mandatory minimum penalties across offences. We did not do the—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Nobody [Inaudible—Editor] yourself, Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Brock, you're out of time. I was just allowing him an opportunity to answer your question.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, ON]

Thank you.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm happy to address it further, in response to—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

If you want to finish your answer, Minister, go ahead.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I will, only to say that if you're going to add or subtract particular offences from a regime that purports to impose mandatory minimum penalties, you should appropriately engage with stakeholders, experts and law enforcement to understand which provisions are going to have the most meaningful impact. That would be an excellent task for this committee to take on, should you wish, Mr. Brock, to make further recommendations.

Having not done that policy work, given that it was outside of the scope of the initial intended range of measures included in the bill, I don't think it would be appropriate to start adding new offences to that regime without the policy work being done in advance.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Brock.

Mr. Chang, you have six minutes.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here and for your leadership on this important legislation.

Bill C-16, the protecting victims act, reflects our shared responsibility to ensure that victims are better protected and supported within our judicial systems. Canadians expect a system that's fair, compassionate and responsive to those who have been harmed.

In my riding of Burnaby Central, many of my constituents have shared their concerns about safety, accountability and the need to better protect vulnerable people, particularly in the face of evolving threats. I appreciate the work that has gone into this bill and the focus on strengthening public confidence while upholding the rule of law.

With that in mind, Minister, could you begin by outlining the main purpose of Bill C-16 and why the government believes reforms are necessary at this time to better protect victims and vulnerable people?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Certainly, and it's a bit of a complex question to unpack, because there are a number of different policy areas that this bill covers, and the motivation within each policy area may be slightly different.

If I could boil it down for the purpose of simplification, a significant portion of the energy that's been dedicated to this bill is focused on the problems we're seeing with intimate partner violence in this country. It's egregious to me the level of violence facing Canadian women, as is the routine nature of the stories we see in our newspapers in which that violence is too often perpetrated by a man who is in a relationship with the victim.

When we hear calls for the government to take action to address femicide more squarely, we're not dealing with a philosophical issue; we're dealing with cries for help from family members who are dealing with the years that will not be lived of their most closely held loved ones. When we're dealing with coercive control, we are hearing from women who may have escaped violence, hoping that they can offer protection to other women in similar circumstances. When we hear about the need to change the laws around criminal harassment, we're responding to very real calls for action, where people have gone through the process but have been unable to meet an evidentiary standard, notwithstanding that they've not been able to live safely in their communities.

Similarly, we want the mandatory minimum penalty regime to deal with the world that we actually live in, not some hypothetical version of it where we can ignore the decisions that were taken by the courts, which we have an obligation to respect as elected officials. We wanted to ensure that we had mandatory minimums in place to say that there will be serious consequences for serious crimes, while we respect the nature of the court's decisions with respect to safety valves for circumstances that would result in a consequence the public would find intolerable.

There are other changes that were motivated by shifting technology, again for criminal harassment and AI deepfakes. This is to make sure our motivation is to offer protections that we always thought would exist, recognizing that laws need to be updated to reflect the modern tools being used to commit morally culpable behaviour that may be outside the definition of a crime.

Finally, because I don't want to eat up all of your time, Mr. Chang, the prevalence and expanding rate of exploitation of children online is something we needed to address. As a parent, I have grave concerns about the ability of people who would do harm to engage with kids who are the age of mine. We have to adopt protections that will recognize that these heinous behaviours take place in our communities, and offer protections against them.

We can't lose sight of the fact that this bill is one part of a larger, broader strategy that will seek to end violent crime in our communities. Those are the kinds of motivations that justified the introduction of this bill.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

As technology continues to evolve, we have been seeing new forms of harm emerge. Could you outline how Bill C-16 updates the Criminal Code to respond to crimes such as sextortion and the creation and distribution of sexual deepfakes?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Let's dig in on this issue.

A couple of decisions rendered by courts point to the fact that the use of AI deepfakes to create an intimate image without the consent of the subject of that image is a horrible behaviour that demands action. It's rare that the courts will so clearly point out the need for legislative change to address a particular social harm that they witness and agree is bad but cannot do anything about, because courts recognize that their jurisdiction does not extend to rewriting the offences included in the Criminal Code.

We have an obligation to respond when people are using new technologies to commit old crimes. We have to update our laws to reflect the changing nature of technology. It's not just present, by the way, in the use of AI deepfakes when it comes to intimate images. It's also present when you're looking at criminal harassment, such as when people are increasingly using cellphones to track the whereabouts of their partner without their knowledge, potentially. You also see people threatening to distribute, through online means, child sexual exploitation and abuse material.

If we don't update our laws to reflect the changing nature of technology, we might feel very good about ourselves for what's written on paper until we learn about the severe harm that's befalling innocent Canadians that could have otherwise been prevented.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

Many stakeholders and community organizations have called for stronger tools to deal with intimate partner violence and coercive control. Could you speak to how Bill C-16 responds to those calls and why the measures are so important?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I addressed in my opening remarks some of the changes we're making to femicide. We are creating a constructive first-degree murder charge to demonstrate that we will take hate-motivated murder as seriously as any other crime in the Criminal Code. We will deal with murder committed in the context of a sexual offence as seriously as any other crime in the Criminal Code. We want to demonstrate to Canadians that we will not tolerate this most heinous version of murder that exists. We also want to focus on not just punishing crime after it takes place, but potentially having the justice system intervene earlier in the process. This is where changes to the new offence of coercive control come in.

When we know there are certain behaviours that are predictive of violence, potentially predictive of fatal violence, we have an opportunity to intervene. That could lead to criminal charges for the offensive behaviours that we know often precede violence and often precede murder. When we have an opportunity to address these kinds of needs, we must take that chance.

I should take this opportunity to offer my thanks for the collaboration of Mr. Caputo and his private member's bill, which complements some of the measures included in Bill C-16, in response to a horrific tragedy that came out of British Columbia, the case of Bailey McCourt. When we work together across party lines to address a problem of common concern, we can offer more protections for vulnerable people.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Fortin, you have six minutes.