Justice Committee on June 1st, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good morning, everybody. I hope everybody is refreshed, recharged and ready to go for another week in Ottawa.

I would like to call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 32 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Pursuant to the order of reference of March 24, 2026, the committee will begin its study of Bill C-235, an act to amend the Criminal Code, increasing parole ineligibility.

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

I would like to confirm that sound tests were made successfully.

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. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen, you can choose from floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair. For the members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For the members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Appearing for the first hour today, from 11 a.m. to noon, we have the sponsor of Bill C-235, the MP for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, Mr. Jeff Kibble.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us today.

The floor is yours for up to five minutes for an opening statement, and then we'll go to questions.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me to be here today.

I want to begin by acknowledging someone who will appear before this committee on Wednesday: Ms. Landolt, Kimberly Proctor's aunt. She's agreed to testify because she believes Parliament can do better for families like hers. I ask every member of this committee to hold that in mind as I speak today.

Bill C-235 has been tabled in Parliament four times before. In 2019, it passed committee and was set to return to the House for third reading. Then Parliament dissolved, progress died and families kept walking into parole hearing rooms they should never have had to enter. I'm here today to make sure that this does not continue.

Let me be precise about what this bill does and does not do. It does not create mandatory minimums, it does not impose new sentences and it is not retroactive. It does give a judge tools—a targeted tool applicable only when abduction, sexual assault and murder were committed against the same victim in the same event. In those cases alone a judge may, after hearing jury input, extend parole ineligibility from 25 years up to a maximum of 40 years. There's full judicial discretion every time.

That 40-year ceiling was not chosen arbitrarily. It reflects the consecutive maximum ineligibility periods for all three charges combined. The legal framework is sound. The bill was modelled after Bill C-48, the multiple murders act, which has already survived a charter challenge.

There is a further point that bears directly on that analysis: When a victim was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered, prosecutors routinely stay the abduction and sexual assault charges and proceed only on murder charges. Under the current law, conviction in all three offences yields the same 25-year ineligibility on the murder alone, so there is no incentive to charge all three. Offenders are, effectively, sentenced only for murder, even when they committed two additional serious crimes. Bill C-235 corrects this. The extended ineligibility is not cruel and unusual punishment; it is proportionate for the three distinct crimes committed in a single incident.

I have carefully reviewed the proposed amendments put forward by the party opposite. With respect, I do not believe any of them strengthen the bill. Some are legally redundant. The law already provides what they seek to codify. Some risk making the process more complicated than it needs to be, and some, I would suggest, come close to instructing judges on how to do their jobs, which is precisely the kind of judicial discretion this bill is designed to protect. I'm happy to speak to any of them in detail through questions from the committee.

The heinous criminals that this bill targets are never going to be released. We have never found such a case: The Parole Board has been consistent. These are dangerous offenders and psychopaths, but they are permitted to apply for parole every two years, beginning at year 23. They use those hearings not to seek freedom but to terrorize the victims and their families, to recite in gruesome detail what they did, to force families back into that room and crime scene over and over. This bill would eliminate an average of eight of those hearings—eight times a family does not walk back in, eight times a sadistic offender cannot use the process as a weapon against the people he destroyed.

Fifteen years ago, 18-year-old Kimberly Proctor was abducted, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered by her classmates on Vancouver Island. Her killers were charged as adults but, unusually, sentenced under the youth framework, with no chance of parole for 10 years. That outcome falls outside the sentencing scope of this bill, but the parole process that follows, what it costs a family to live through, is exactly what this bill addresses. Her family has already faced multiple parole hearings. They will face more, every two years for the rest of their lives.

Ms. Landolt will tell this committee on Wednesday what that costs a family. I will not speak over her testimony.

We know the names of the men and women who did these terrible things. Their names are infamous, notorious, and repeated in headlines and courtrooms for decades. Their victims' names are not. These are the names we forget, the names that history has not given the same weight as the monsters who took them: Tori, Holly, Tammy, Leslie, Kristen, Christine, Colleen, Daryn, Sandra, Ada, Simon, Judy, Raymond, Sigrun, Terri, Louise, Sereena, Mona, Andrea, Brenda, Georgina, Marnie and, of course, Kimberly. Their families are still living with what was done to them, and they are still walking into parole hearing rooms they should never have to enter.

Together, let's pass Bill C-235. On Wednesday Ms. Landolt will tell you in her own words what that protection means to a family.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kibble.

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

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Kibble, for your advocacy and showing the respect where respect is due to all the victims you've named as a result of their tragic deaths by these sadistic monsters.

I especially prefer and support the title that you've created for this act.

There is one area where I require some clarification. We, as parliamentarians, should always strive to be very clear when we're amending the Criminal Code.

In your bill, proposed section 2 talks about a conviction involving the same victim and the same event. I understand the rationale behind that verbiage “or series of events”, however, the phrase “series of events” is not defined.

Is there a temporal element to “series of events”? Hypothetically, can this monster decide to sexually assault a victim at one point in time, then months or years later abduct that victim, then months or years later kill that victim? Does this bill contemplate that scenario or not?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

The intent of the bill is that when those crimes are connected in the same series of events, not separated by years or separated at all. I'm certainly open to removing that word. In the case of Kimberly Proctor, it took a period of four or five days, but the events were ongoing and interconnected, so it's events that are interconnected.

I am certainly open to removing that word so that there would be no misinterpretation such as that you've expressed.

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

Thank you.

I cede my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Next is Mr. Lawton.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Kibble, for your tremendous advocacy for victims.

I think I speak for all of my Conservative colleagues when I say that we believe victims should be front and centre when we talk about criminal justice reform. It's victims who have been failed by the last 10 years of changes the Liberal government has made to the bail system, the sentencing system and the justice system.

I saw, in my time in media, exactly what you're trying to counter here, which is families, survivors, families of victims getting dragged to these parole hearings. There is a glee in some of the offenders because they know they're not going to get out; they know they are never going to get parole, or at least not in this time frame, but they enjoy the power they still hold over families.

For anyone who thinks there is a problem with your bill, for anyone who wants to make a claim that this is not respecting the rights of offenders, can you please explain very clearly exactly which types of offenders are affected by this? Who is triggering this provision you're trying to change?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

It is Paul Bernardo and those types of offenders.

I will add further—and you said they get glee—and pardon the term, but it's noted and has been studied and documented that these types of offenders get off on retraumatizing the victims' families. In the Kimberly Proctor case it's even documented that they have shared their crimes in such heinous detail with cellmates that this caused cellmates to have to seek help and be moved.

While they know they're never going to be getting out, they actually get off on retraumatizing the families by having a free platform at the parole hearing and going into gruesome detail, as I said in my statement. This is completely wrong and unjust for the families of those I mentioned.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

You did, in your opening statement, mention the names of a number of victims. One of them was Tori, and I assume you were referring to Tori Stafford.

This was a case that hits very close to home. I remember when the search was on for Tori, being in a nearby area.

We have seen Terri-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty again try to avail themselves of all these tools and tricks that have been given to them in the justice system. Terri-Lynne McClintic will be eligible for parole in 2031, so in just three years she will be, without serious change, able to do exactly what you are trying to prevent, which is to start terrorizing and traumatizing families through the parole process.

Do I understand that correctly?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

That is correct, and if we go on the past record and the Parole Board's performance, these types of people such as Olson, Bernardo, McClintic, Rafferty and others will not ever get out, but they will, as I said, get off on the gruesome details because they know that they can retraumatize, in this case from a distance. They did it to their victims, and they're doing it to the families.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I know that Tori Stafford's father, Rodney Stafford, has been very outspoken, not just in southwestern Ontario but nationally about how, in his words, he's been “angry, revictimized and let down by Canada's justice system”.

What would it mean if Parliament were to ignore the cries from Rodney Stafford and other families who have gone through this horror?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

As I said in my statement, they would feel that they were being abandoned and that Parliament had let them down.

This is the fourth time for this bill. As I said, it was set to pass committee. I hope that it passes committee so that people like Rodney do not have to go through that again and can be spared that.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Now we go over to you, Ms. Gladu.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Kibble, for being here.

I grew up in St. Catharines. I lived a block and a half from where Kristen French lived. I went to school with her brother. I walked the same road that Kristen and Leslie were taken from. To watch the torment that those parents have been put through with the parole hearings is awful, so I want to thank you for bringing this bill forward.

Now, I want to talk about a few items within the bill. The first one is judicial discretion. It leaves the ultimate decision to the sentencing judge.

Why did you think it was important to allow that?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

After the consultations that I did, I felt that we didn't want to take away from our judges who do excellent work. They're the ones who delve into the detail of the cases and get to know the families, the perpetrators and ultimately the criminals. They're best suited, with advice from the juries, to make those decisions. It keeps it out of politics, and it keeps it solely in their hands. It keeps it out of the legislation, and we trust their discretion for the sentencing, whatever it may be, whether it's a period of ineligibility of four years or 10 years. This is designed to trust their discretion.

I appreciate your emotion. I just would like to add that, while there are fortunately not many of these cases in Canada, there are still too many, and you can see the impact already in our first two witnesses. They have stories that may not have affected them directly as family members, but the impact is so heinous.

You're showing incredible emotion because it was from your area; you're aware of it, so imagine having to hear all of those details as a family member over and over again. How devastating that is.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Thank you.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the amendments, because you mentioned that you weren't in favour of most of them.

There's one, for example, that is a coming into force of the legislation that would mean it that applies to everything in the future, but it wouldn't open the door for numerous appeals related to situations from the past.

Another one just says whatever we do in the criminal justice system, there's a parallel in the national defence system, and we should keep the same there.

Can you comment on why you don't support those types of amendments?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Absolutely, and I appreciate your question.

I'll speak to the first one, prospectivity. The amendment is legally redundant. Charter section 11(i) already prohibits retroactive punishment.

All new legislation is prospective by default unless it explicitly states otherwise, which this does not, so this would go forward without being retroactive by default; it's already codified in the law. I don't see any value in it as a pure housekeeping measure, and it would have no effect. I certainly don't object to it, but it's just redundant, in my opinion.

As for the National Defence Act, under the National Defence Act, courts martial don't try abduction and murders that are committed in Canada, and the core offences that Bill C-235 targets are those.

Military jurisdiction is limited to offences that are committed abroad. It would certainly be worth considering a potential different bill that would address that, but it would be an amendment to the National Defence Act.

As for sexual assault, that presently remains within the military. Victims have the choice between either the military or the civilian justice system for now, but recent legislative reform will potentially transfer that jurisdiction to the civilian justice system anyway.

The combination of those offences that Bill C-235, my bill, addresses—abduction, sexual assault and murder—would therefore only potentially apply for overseas cases and, as I said, that would be worthy of being looked at potentially in a separate bill and not conflating the two.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Another amendment speaks to having an ability to appeal a decision. Typically, in the court system, you have a mechanism to appeal. There isn't one here, so one of the amendments speaks to adding that.

Why do you oppose this?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

That's a good question.

The first one was the right of appeal for an offender where a judge would order...extended beyond the 25 years. Extended parole eligibility under Bill C-235 already results from deliberate judicial discretion informed by a jury input. Adding an offender appeal right layers more process onto sentences designed for the most aggravated murder cases. It would undermine the finality and potentially expose victims' families to prolonged litigation, which is precisely what this bill is aiming to protect them from.

The Criminal Code already provides for a robust appellate review of sentencing. This amendment, I believe, does not fill that gap. Rather, it would create one.

[Marilyn Gladu, Liberal, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Thank you.

One of the other amendments requires the judge to give the reasons for why they are extending a sentence beyond 25 years. This would be very helpful to prevent appeals that are not based on some additional information.

Why do you oppose having a judge give reasons for extending a sentence?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Judges already provide reasons for their sentencing, whether it's 25 years, 10 years or 40 years in the most heinous cases. This obligation is established in law. A statutory requirement specifically targeting this provision, in my opinion, would imply a distrust of the judiciary. Parliamentarians and Canadians should trust our judiciary. They already include it. Indeed, they give specific answers that are already required. In my mind, it would add procedural weight, and this is designed to be streamlined.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Ms. Gladu.

Mr. Fortin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Kibble, thank you for your bill. Thank you for being here today.

You raise an important issue. My heart goes out to the families of the victims who, in a way, are victims of the hearing process before the Parole Board of Canada. That said, I think that, to some extent, this may be a mandatory or necessary process.

I understand your proposal to increase the time before an offender is eligible for parole. However, beyond simply extending the wait for hearings from 25 years to 40, do you think there are any other measures that could help ease the burden on victims' families?

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you for the question.

We looked at various measures. We wanted to keep this very tight and targeted, such that it would provide deterrence—although deterrence is obviously considered very low when it comes to very heinous individuals. People have said things like, “Why do the families have to go to the parole hearings?”, but families feel compelled or obliged to give a voice to their loved ones or the victims who are no longer able to speak.

That's just one example. Other possibilities do not provide the same effectiveness that we can put into this legislation. There are other ways to mitigate it through the parole process. Legally speaking, this would be a very powerful and effective way to do it.