Public Safety Committee on Dec. 6th, 2018

[Jim Eglinski]

If I happen to be a person who was fairly active when I was young and got myself into a little bit of trouble several times, but none of them were indictable, I going to ask you for a pardon. Then my friend over here is a lot better behaved than I am. He did only one thing wrong. I'll give you an example.

On graduation night, my son-in-law decided that he was going to put Loctite in the lockers—a last little prank in high school. He got caught and he got charged. He got a criminal record. I helped him put the application in a couple of years ago.

To me, I would think that your costs should vary. To do a simple one-time offence is much different from doing somebody with a multitude of offences, if they were not indictable. You're going to have to do a lot of extra checking. Why is there such an unlevel playing field?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Pierre Paul-Hus]

Thank you.

[Jim Eglinski]

I'm out of time.

At least it's on record.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Pierre Paul-Hus]

Thank you, Mr. Eglinski.

Mr. Dubé, you have seven minutes.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is an important matter, and it is related to one of the questions that I wanted to ask. Here is my position, my political party's position. With first offences that are non-violent, and even with some minor crimes, there could be an automatic pardon or the record could even be automatically expunged. I am thinking specifically about a current issue, such as possessing a tiny quantity of cannabis for recreational use.

You listed the various factors that make up the cost. What would be the cost of expunging a minor offence, something along the lines of the example that Mr. Eglinski has just provided?

I understand that you cannot take a position on that, but, if there were a cost, would it be higher or lower than the current cost of administering the system?

[Daryl Churney]

I would defer to my colleague from Public Safety for part of this, because it really goes to the policy intent of the government and the legislative scheme that's in place. All I can really tell you is that the board is obligated to implement the legislative scheme as it exists right now. We do not have discretion to waive the fee or modify it, and it's certainly not that we as an organization are unsympathetic to some of the challenging cases we see. I see those cases. We see the correspondence.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I fully understand that the fees you charge are set by the legislation. In the case of the $631, that legislation goes back to 2010. My question was rather about a new system that would be modified as a result of the committee’s recommendations and of studies in the future.

Would we be saving money if a system automatically pardoned someone who may have committed a non-violent crime as their first offence and who would not even have been incarcerated in the first place? Would there be a huge cost to that?

I am not talking about the existing system, but about a hypothetical situation, although I know that it is a slippery slope. I am not sure if you are grasping what I mean by my question.

[Daryl Churney]

Yes, I do. Fundamentally your question goes to the level of effort on the part of the PBC to process any particular file, and obviously, presumably, some files are more time-consuming and difficult to process. Notionally, there's some alignment here with the service standards. Right now, the service standard for processing a summary conviction offence is six months, whereas for processing an indictable offence it's 12 months. That was really constructed as a reflection of the fact that, generally speaking, indictable offences would take more time to process. They're generally more complicated, and there may be more material to review and that kind of thing.

I certainly appreciate the premise of your question, and hypothetically I would agree with you that conceivably there could be a scheme whereby there would be some kind of sliding scale of cost, depending on the nature of the offence. Fundamentally, though, that's for the government to determine.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Do you any data on the typical profile of those who go through all the steps that the system requires to try and obtain a pardon?

[Daryl Churney]

I would defer to my colleague.

[Brigitte Lavigne, Director, Clemency and Record Suspensions, Parole Board of Canada]

Generally, the people who apply to us have not been incarcerated. It is often a summary conviction, people who have made a mistake along the way or who have a more significant record. They are often people who have been convicted for impaired driving or for drug offences. That is the typical candidate, but they come in all unique shapes and sizes, just like the Canadians with a criminal record. Basically, that’s what we see.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Okay.

I am asking these two questions because I am trying to find out if we can make up for the loss of income caused by reducing the cost of a pardon application. I’m looking for a way to subsidize the cost of the system. If a number of those individuals had already been pardoned or had their records expunged, they would no longer have to apply because the application would already have automatically been made in the system. That could make up for the losses caused by the fees going back to $50 or $150, for example.

[Brigitte Lavigne]

I would like to clarify something. When we check the fines associated with the convictions, we do it manually. Even though the national registry or the conviction specifies the type of offence and the corresponding penalty, we have to manually check whether the people in question have paid the fees and the fines specific to the conviction.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Okay. Can that be an automatic requirement at the time inmates are paroled?

[Brigitte Lavigne]

As I said, the people we see do not come from a penitentiary and so are not on parole

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Okay.

[Brigitte Lavigne]

These are people who have been in conflict with the law and who have been convicted, sometimes fined. The checking is done when we ask them to produce court documents to prove that the fine has been paid in full.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I had one more question for you but I see that I have no time left.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Pierre Paul-Hus]

Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

Ms. Sahota, the floor is yours.

[Ruby Sahota, Brampton North, Lib.]

I just want to get my first question out of the way, which is about the waiting period before you can apply.

Has that recently been changed? If so, when was the law created to make it five years for a summary offence and 10 years for an indictable offence? Has it always been that way?

[Daryl Churney]

That's been the case since the Criminal Records Act was last amended, in 2012.

[Ruby Sahota]

Okay. It was recently changed. What was it changed from?

[Daryl Churney]

There are three schemes at play here. Prior to June 29, 2010, the scheme was such that a person had to wait three years for a summary conviction offence and five years for an indictable offence. After June 29, 2010, legislation was passed. It was Bill C-23A, which increased the waiting periods to a mixture of three years, five years and 10 years, with a considerable number of criteria depending on the nature of the offence and whether it was a sexual offence or not. I have a one-page summary of these three schemes, and it might be easier just to submit it to you through the committee clerk rather than reading through every permutation.

[Ruby Sahota]

That would be great. Thank you.

[Daryl Churney]

The third scheme, which is what we have in place right now, is the five- and 10-year waiting periods that came into effect after March 13, 2012: five years for a summary conviction offence and 10 years for an indictable offence.