Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, committee members. It's a great pleasure to be here. I want to thank you very much for seeking the views of the John Howard Society on Bill S-205.
As a charity, we're committed to effective, just and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime. The John Howard Society is concerned about preventing crime, and about appropriate and effective consequences for having committed crimes.
Preventing intimate partner violence is a shared goal, but our assessment is that there's very little in Bill S-205 that would make a difference in preventing violence.
Bill S-205 amendments really pertain to two areas. One is the judicial interim release provisions, or bail provisions, and the other is the new category of recognizance orders relating to the fear of domestic violence.
In terms of the judicial interim release provisions, there is a heavy reliance, as the other witnesses have mentioned, on electronic monitoring as a condition of pretrial release if it is sought by the Attorney General.
We would first point out that the research on electronic monitoring has been inconclusive in terms of its effectiveness in preventing crime.
Second, the technology is very expensive, and it is important to note who would be paying for the device and for its monitoring. Given that it is the AG who is seeking it, can we safely assume that it would be the AG who is paying for it? That's not always the case; often, individuals who are released on bail or on community sentences are being asked to pay for the monitoring. This actually worsens a class bias in the criminal justice system through which the affluent are more likely to benefit and the marginalized and impoverished, including members of the indigenous and Black communities, are more likely to be denied.
The reverse onus provisions that are being proposed in paragraph 515(6)(b.1) mirror the contentious provisions that were included in Bill C-48, which make prior discharges equivalent to convictions, triggering the reverse onus provision for bail for prior intimate partner violence offences. Many witnesses appearing before the Senate on Bill C-48 cautioned that including discharges would raise charter concerns.
There is almost a retroactive application to this provision, which is troubling. Many accused, including women who are also often charged when it is unclear who initiated the domestic conflict, might have agreed to plead guilty to an offence that might otherwise have been successfully contested at trial on the understanding that the discharge would have no future negative criminal justice implications for them. Now it would.
In any event, the equivalent of this section will have already been accepted or dropped in Bill C-48, making this section duplicative or possibly inconsistent with the will of Parliament.
The second major area is the recognizance orders. Our view is that the proliferation of section 810 orders to reflect the fear of certain types of future crimes is unnecessary and bad policy. Existing sections 810 and 810.2, which specifically refer to intimate partner violence, are adequate to cover those fearing domestic violent offences.
It should be noted that the proposed intimate personal violence recognizance in this bill is triggered by a fear of a personal injury offence, yet section 810.2 recognizance is triggered by a fear of a “serious personal injury offence”. This indicates that the latter category applies to persons who pose more of a threat of serious harm, yet Bill S-205 proposes much harsher treatment of the former for the 810 order than for the 810.2 orders, and this will create a sense of a disproportionate, unfair response based on the severity of the risk posed.
There are also some amendments to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, but I won't get into those for fear of running overtime.
