Evidence of meeting #37 for Public Safety and National Security in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was restitution.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much, Mr. Garrison and Dr. Waller.
We'll now go to Mr. Leef, please, for seven minutes.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Waller. That's quite a dossier and CV you have. We appreciate your experience on this bill.
I don't know how many more questions now we can ask. We've asked a number of other witnesses about this, and I'm gathering your position, really, is that while this might be a positive signal in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, we probably need to look at other ideas, other solutions, and other bodies of legislation or policy development to really hit the nail on the head with this. I'll ask you a couple of points, maybe, just out of curiosity, to help shape this and future discussions that our committee is bound to have.
The $83 billion that's borne by crime victims—is that measured by direct victimization, or do they take into account indirect? What I'm getting to is how we create a determination of claimants so that it doesn't go from the reasonable to the ridiculous when you have claimants coming forward looking for restitution, and also how we can get full perspective on whether or not in this country we're measuring that number properly and giving it its true weight.
Just to give an illustration of it, if somebody breaks into a pharmacy and disrupts the operation of that pharmacy and the business has to be closed, you create a number of victims after that point—the people who can't access those services, who might be in desperate need of those services. Arguably we would include them in a victim picture. That might not be where that $83 billion starts to be calculated.
Maybe I can just get your thoughts on whether that would be a reasonable calculation to include in that number a certain level of indirect clients. Do we do that, and to what degree do we do that?
4 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
The $83 billion comes from work done by Justice Canada. It's used a lot by Minister Nicholson, and I think it's good use of data.
It is limited in some ways. It's based on really two core bits of information. One is what's called, by me, the “victimization” survey, which is the general social survey that basically talks to a sample of some 25,000 adult Canadians about whether they've been the victims of eight or nine specific crimes. Those include the common violent crimes and the most important property crimes, but they don't include fraud, for instance.
They then multiply the estimates of those crime levels by estimates of what a civil court would pay an average victim. It doesn't include companies and it doesn't include the sort of secondary victims that you're talking about.
I think it's about at the limit of our current methodological sophistication. In my book I use American data because it's a bit better than ours, but it comes basically to the same conclusions. My stuff also includes drunk driving, which is where more people are killed than in homicide in Canada and where people get injured.
But, you know, it's a ballpark figure, and if you started including these others, you would increase that figure. I'm not against somebody doing it.
I want us to use the $83 billion because it has recognition by our current federal government and I think it's good.
4 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Thank you.
If this steps outside of your area of expertise or specialty, there's no problem.
We haven't had a lot of criticism, necessarily, in the direction we're going with this one specific thing, other than, as I said, the fact that there's encouragement to try to do a bit more generally. But to focus right back on the bill, the only criticism I think we've heard is the concern that forcing—for lack of a better word—an inmate to pay or make restitution takes away their choice or their rehabilitative improvements to make the right choice and to seek reward and growth from that experience. I have my own opinion on that, which is that if anybody in the free world in society has to make those payments regardless of choice, then we should all be treated equally.
But from a purely rehabilitative perspective—and from your studies, if you have those—does that seem to make sense? If we're forcing a judgment upon an inmate to make restitution and payment because of a court judgment, would you see that as impacting on or interfering with their ability to achieve rehabilitation or to achieve a higher level of their own decision-making, which would affect them when they're released into the greater society?
4 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
You didn't hear this, but I wrote a major book on the effectiveness of the prison parole system. It's somewhat dated, but the data is used on the website of the Correctional Service of Canada, and I've certainly stayed in touch with the material on what is effective in terms of reducing recidivism.
My major point is that we have to start with the reasonable needs of victims. I think it's reasonable to go the way that the U.S. is going or the way the European Union is going in saying that victims basically have a right to restitution, and we have to work out the best way to do that restitution from the offender.
In addition, you may.... I don't think your other witnesses have referred to the evaluations of restorative justice. Now, restorative justice sounds like a soft option, but you have many parents of murdered children in Canada who see that as the right way to deal with the issues.
I'm a researcher. I look at the evidence. Yes, I have a particular interest in the victim issue, and the evaluations of restorative justice show that when you do it right, not only is the victim happier, because they're more empowered and have all sorts of options to ask for things—to get information, to get truth, and to get a feeling of what's going on—but it also reduces recidivism.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you, Dr. Waller.
We'll now move to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please, for seven minutes.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
So the $83 billion figure, this is the cost to victims of crime...?
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
Adult victims.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
Well, maybe I can just clarify. What they do is look at the number of victims in a year and then look at the harm for those victims, the loss of quality of life over their lives.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
But unless you bring the crime rate down, which we're actually not doing in Canada—despite the police statistics—it's basically $83 billion every year.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Right, so it's almost like the present value, really....
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
Yes, if you're a victim of an aggravated sexual assault, or what the Americans would call a forcible rape, your loss of quality of life.... So there are some small payments that you make for the sexual assault nursing examiner and some payments you may make in short-term trauma counselling, but your loss of quality of life is over a much longer period.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Right.
On the surveys of victimization, those are used to ensure that the figure is accurate or...? They're also to keep track of what kinds of crimes are being committed and who's being harmed, I guess.
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
Well, in countries like England, the United States, or Canada, there are two ways we measure crime. One is from some sort of survey: the national crime victims survey in the United States, the British crime survey in England, and a general social survey in Canada. The other is what the police record. What you have to remember in Canada is that we have an extraordinarily low rate of reporting of crime to the police, and that rate has been going down over the last 20 years.
So whereas between 40% and 45% of victims in the United States or England report their crime to the police, in Canada we're at 31%. Just to put this in perspective, if you compare that to the province of Ontario, which has very limited victim services and rights and so on, you're looking at 30% reporting. Quebec is generally much more advanced, with much higher payments from compensation and other things, and there you're at 40%.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
The surveys of victimization being done are meant to find out the true rate of victimization versus what's reported. Is that it?
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
It is what's reported and recorded. That's correct.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
You seem to be saying that the main obstacle to making things right is that we don't tell judges to order restitution in all crime cases. Is that correct?
4:05 p.m.
President, International Organization for Victim Assistance
I think it's a bit more complicated. That's what the federal ombudsman told you. What you have to do to get restitution ordered is make sure that the victims have clarified what they want and what's justifiable and have requested it. You see that in those states in the U.S. where it's most advanced.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
In Canada, judges are not required to order restitution. Is that what you're saying?