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.