moved that Bill C-27, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (dangerous offenders and recognizance to keep the peace), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I am certainly pleased to speak to Bill C-27, an act that amends part XXIV of the Criminal Code regarding the dangerous offender provisions in section 810.1 and 810.2 of the peace bonds.
I wish I could be as happy with respect to Bill C-22, in which the NDP voted against sending this to committee and not supporting the age of protection bill. I am very concerned about that, and I think Canadians will be too.
Bill C-27 is a significant step to strengthen the existing provisions of the Criminal Code that target the most dangerous and high risk offenders in the country. It follows through on our commitments to tackle the very real problem of dangerous repeat predators who are released into our communities without adequate sentencing and management. This is common sense legislation.
Canadians have told us that steps must be taken to deal with these individuals. I am standing in this House today to let Canadians know that Canada's new government agrees with them. Our government cares deeply about safe streets and security. The government is going to stand up for Canadians by making it easier for crown attorneys to get dangerous offender designations on those who deserve them.
This bill places the onus on predators who have committed two prior serious violent sexual crimes to convince the court why they should not be designated a dangerous offender and by lengthening and strengthening the terms of peace bonds made pursuant to section 810 of the Criminal Code.
Simply put, our government is going to the wall on an issue that matters most to Canadians. Getting things done for families and taxpayers means keeping our most dangerous criminals off the streets and behind bars. Canadians want, and deserve, nothing less.
These same concerns have been expressed to us by all provincial attorneys general, by police, by victims and, most important, by individual Canadians from all walks of life. However, I want to make it clear from the beginning that these reforms were very carefully tailored. This bill would achieve a proper balance between the rights of Canadians to be safe from violent and sexual crimes with the fundamental rights of individuals facing lengthy prison terms.
The bill focuses on reforms in two areas of the Criminal Code. First and foremost, we are proposing several significant amendments that would provide crown prosecutors with enhanced abilities to obtain dangerous offender designations where it is justifiable to do so.
Second, we are proposing a number of amendments to the specific peace bond provisions that target high risk sexual and violent predators, doubling their duration to two years and clarifying the extent of conditions that may be imposed by a court.
Currently, the dangerous offender designation in part XXIV of the Criminal Code is arguably the toughest sanction available in Canadian law. As the law now stands, each and every time an individual is designated as a dangerous offender under section 753, the sentence imposed is indeterminate, with no opportunity for parole for seven years.
In reality, very few of these individuals are released. Most live out the rest of their lives behind bars. Dangerous offenders, on average, are imprisoned for even longer periods than individuals serving a life sentence for murder. That is why the Supreme Court of Canada has referred to the dangerous offender application as the harshest sentence available in Canadian law, reserved for the worst of the worst.
That being said, the Supreme Court of Canada has held that the indeterminate sentence that goes with the dangerous offender designation is constitutional where it is the only reasonable way that we can protect the public.
The Lyons decision was the first challenge to the Supreme Court of Canada on the dangerous offender designation after the 1982 entrenchment into the Constitution Act of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court indicated that the provision was constitutional primarily because the sentencing judge retained discretion to refuse to impose the indeterminate sentence.
In 1997, a decade after the decision in Lyons, Parliament proclaimed significant amendments to the dangerous offender provisions. Prior to 1997, where an individual was declared to be a dangerous offender, the court had the choice of sentencing the individual to an indeterminate sentence, with no parole for three years, or to a determinate sentence of any length suitable in the circumstances.
The 1997 changes removed this discretion of the court and made the indeterminate sentence automatic for every dangerous offender designation while lengthening the duration before the first parole application to seven years.
The 1997 amendments also created the option of the long term offender designation where the individual did not meet the onerous standards for dangerous offender designation. This new instrument allowed the court to impose, in addition to a regular sentence of imprisonment, a court ordered period of post-release community supervision of up to 10 years.
In 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its first ruling on the constitutionality of the 1997 changes to the dangerous offender designation. The case was the Johnson decision, an appeal from the British Columbia Court of Appeal. At stake was whether the 1997 changes requiring the indeterminate sentence with no discretion had gone too far.
While the Supreme Court of Canada in Johnson upheld the 1997 changes as constitutional, it also held that in fact the sentencing court did retain its ultimate discretion in the matter. Specifically, the court said that even where the Crown had fully discharged its burden to prove that the offender fully met all of the prerequisite criteria of a dangerous offender designation under subsection 753.(1), the sentencing judge still had a duty to exercise his discretion by determining whether the risk the offender posed to the general public could be successfully managed under a lesser sentence.
The court indicated that before a sentencing judge could impose the indeterminate sentence, it had to explicitly consider the specific issue of whether the individual's risk to society could be successfully managed under the long term offender designation or any other sentence.
While this decision was consistent with the court's previous decision in Lyons and reflected longstanding principles of sentencing, the impact of Johnson was felt across the country. There was a flurry of appeals filed by existing dangerous offenders who argued that the sentencing judge had failed to consider the long term offender sentence option as required by the Supreme Court.
In the 18 months subsequent to Johnson, over 30 such appeals were argued, resulting in 20 orders for a new dangerous offender hearing because of the error. The number of annual designations was halved from about 25 per year to about 12 designations due primarily to confusion in the sentencing courts of how to apply the principle in Johnson in practice.
Following Johnson, the Crown's success rate of applications fell well below 50% whereas the traditional rate was about 70%. Those individuals who previously would have faced dangerous offender applications simply were not subject to that any more as a result of the Supreme Court of Canada decision.
It was in this context that the new government committed to develop a policy to respond to this unacceptable situation. Throughout this process we were all encouraged by the support of provincial and territorial ministers of justice. This legislation is an effective and coherent response to the changes brought about by the court decision in Johnson.
I would like to outline the changes that are contained in this bill.