Public Safety Committee on May 1st, 2012

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Sure.

I'm done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. Thank you.

Everybody is 30 seconds early today, so we'll go back to Monsieur Rousseau.

Mr. Rousseau, you have five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. O'Sullivan, if I understand correctly, rehabilitation is one way to help victims of crime who find themselves before individuals who are often—we hope—more responsible and "accountable" upon their release. Do you have any suggestions on how we could use rehabilitation more to support the victims? For example, I'm thinking about the possibility of combining Bill C-350 with a program on fiscal responsibility, depending on the resources of our correctional system, of course.

[Susan O'Sullivan]

Under the recent legislation, Bill C-10, I understand that restitution will be included in the offender's correctional plan, but I don't have any of the details. For example, if the offender doesn't pay the restitution, is their parole suspended? We don't have any of those details yet. We're waiting to hear what that means practically, in terms of implementation plans. None of that detail is available yet because they are trying to assess that.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Would it be a good idea to combine them to better help the victims with respect to the payment of restitution?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

Again, I'm just going to refer to the two sentencing principles when you're looking for restitution. One is for reparation of harm to the victim, but the other is very much around the accountability and responsibility on the part of the offender.

So, yes, we do need to be looking at better frameworks to ensure that there is that accountability, one that recognizes that when the offender goes back into the community and is earning again with a longer term view.... For example, we have recommendations in our report that they reasonably be able to look at Correctional Service Canada and gather some of the money while they're in prison.

What we need to look at is a framework that's going to allow us to look with a longer-term lens at the ability of offenders to be accountable for that reparation of harm, and for their own responsibility as well.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Could the expertise of the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime respond to an increased demand for intervention if this bill leads to a greater number of victims having your help available to them?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

What I can tell you is that we're looking at the increase. Right now, we have the resources we need in our office. We are a fairly new office, having been created in 2007, and so as we move forward part of our goal is to make sure that Canadians are aware of our office and what we do.

I will tell you that I hope that we will increase our ability to serve Canadians. I can tell you, just looking at the number of open files, that we've seen a big increase since last year. That's good news for our office. It means that we're reaching Canadians and that we're able to serve them and provide them with information about the federal resources that are available to them, but also about any complaints they may have, and those kinds of issues in our mandate.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Practically, when victims come to your office and need your help, how much time does it take to have their appeal heard?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

Every one will be unique.

Some of them are more complex and complicated. Some of them involve more than one or two issues, so they might be multifaceted. It's like anyone who looks into complaints that people have. Some of them are easily resolved. Some of the issues....

One of the things I would like victims of crime to know is that as a result of many of the complaints that have come forward from them, we have made the recommendations we did in our report. It's because these have come from the victims of crime in this country who have seen those challenges. Some of them will require legislative changes and some an administrative process. It depends on the nature of the complaint that comes forward as to how long it will take to resolve that.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Do you think that a number of them will withdraw the appeal because they don't want to punish the criminals again? We often hear that criminals are the victims' immediate family members or relatives. With this bill, do you think that some victims who will feel obliged to file appeals will instead withdraw them because the sentence will only be increased as a result?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Go ahead and answer.

[Susan O'Sullivan]

Every victim has different capabilities in terms of whether or not they want to engage in making change. It can be on a daily basis. I can tell you that recently, during National Victims of Crime Awareness Week, I had the privilege of attending many different events. There were people and victims of crime who were doing things on a daily basis that you'll never hear about, and who are making a huge difference in their community. You will hear people who are on the national stage who have chosen to do that, and you'll hear more about that.

You have victims of crime across this country who want to participate in making a difference. I will give you one example I saw last week at the symposium of the Ending Violence Association in British Columbia and the B.C. Lions. Their mantra was “Don't be a bystander.” We all own all that can be done by Canadians to prevent crime from happening when it does happen, and we put in place the supports to help victims of crime deal with what has happened to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. O'Sullivan.

We'll move to Mr. Aspin, please.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Ms. O'Sullivan, for your appearance today before the committee.

When the sponsor of this bill, Guy Lauzon, appeared he said that the bill was basically a no-brainer. In large part, I agree with him. Do you see any negative aspects of this bill whatsoever?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

I would think most Canadians would already think this is happening, that if there is an award, it would rightly go to the outstanding debts per the priorities that are set here. I see this as very much about meeting the two sentencing principles: reparation of harm, and the accountability and responsibility of the offender.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Do you see this bill as making things right for victims?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

I think it's one step. As I said, I think we need to be looking far more broadly than just this bill if we're going to truly deal with some of the reparation of harm and the costs of crime, including the intangible costs. The report that makes those recommendations contains more steps that we can take in this country to provide supports for victims of crime.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Do you see this bill as important for the healing process?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

What I have learned is that every victim is unique. From what Mr. Toller presented, there are 573 restitution orders, 1,035 fines, and 725 federal surcharges that are outstanding. When we look at the costs of crime—and here I'm going to go back to $99 billion in tangible and the intangible costs—I think this is one more positive step that recognizes that victims need to have those supports. This should help with that. I still say that there's more that we need to be doing to truly look at how we're going to address the tangible costs of crime for victims. It is definitely a positive step.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Aspin.

Maybe I'll just ask a question here—and I'm sure it's one that Mr. Norlock has been waiting for.

I am not certain if this question should be posed to you or to Mr. Toller, but do you have any idea of the average amount in those offenders' accounts?

[Susan O'Sullivan]

That would absolutely be a question for Mr. Toller.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We know they have two accounts: We know they have a savings account, and we know they have a current account. It would be a concern to suddenly find one offender with a massive amount of money in one of those accounts. Mr. Toller suggested that he would find out from other offenders if someone had received a payout. If all of a sudden one offender were granted a payout from a court and had a high account balance, I can see that there could be some danger, even within the institution, of his having that much money in his account.

They are allowed to take out up to $500 up to four times per year, right? If they take out more than $500, it goes into a process with CSC. You have said that you don't believe this goes far enough. Right now, the offender earns up to $6.90 per day. You would like to see some of those earnings from the $6.90 per day given to victims, back to child support, or back to the spouses of those offenders, but specifically to the victims. But that's not the law.

You think that Mr. Lauzon's bill is very moderate and doesn't go far enough. Even if his bill is moderate, it does open the door for the Correctional Service of Canada to give out more money than what they are permitted to give out without special permission of the commissioner. I don't know if that makes any sense to you.

If all of a sudden someone gets a big amount of money, and he wants to put it in one of those two accounts, there are all kinds of potential dangers that could arise from the inmates knowing that he now has that much money.

[Susan O'Sullivan]

I would defer to Mr. Toller on the offenders' accounts and the issues around that.

I do want to say that I am here in support of Bill C-350, because it will help to ensure that offenders are held accountable for their monetary debts.

In looking at the bigger issue of restitution, I won't go over the recommendations; you have copies of the report, and they're there. I think we do need to be taking a bigger picture.

I did find some data. It's not my data, but I did find through the director of parliamentary relations at the CSC some data that looked at these awards—although the data clearly indicates that CSC does not keep statistics for claims against the crown paid to inmates where they are less than $1,000. Again, the data is not comprehensive, but I was able to see, for example, that from 2006 through 2007 the claims against the crown totalled $2,500,000. Of that, $279,000 was paid to inmates in 26 cases. So there is some data out there, but again, it's not comprehensive and it's not my data.

I tried to find from Statistics Canada all the guilty cases in adult criminal courts in relation to restitution orders, but these weren't specific. They were lumped together—federal, provincial, and territorial. For example, in 2009-10, there were 6,000 offenders. It says here, “The following statistics represent all guilty cases in adult criminal courts in Canada, including offenders for restitution.” It looks like there were close to 7,000.

I was looking at the data and what it means. Part of the issue around restitution is of course that in many cases the courts aren't ordering it. There are many reasons for that.

I mean if you're a victim of crime and you want restitution, it has to be done at the time of sentencing. That means, and I'm going to use an example, if I suffered a property loss or I was injured in an assault and lost two weeks' pay, I would have to prove how much that loss was at the time of sentencing. You won't know to do that unless somebody tells you to do that. You have to be able to prove that with receipts and bills. Then you have to have the crown attorney ask for that restitution.

There are huge issues. I know you've got limited time here, but I wanted to paint a bit of a picture for you.

Even if a restitution order is given, if the offender doesn't pay it then the victim has to go to civil court to try to figure out how they're going to get money from the offender. We need to be doing a better job at how we are dealing with restitution in this country and putting in place some of those frameworks to do that.

Thank you.