Mr. Speaker, I listened to you very carefully. I was concentrating and I will follow up on the comments of my hon. colleague. Although it rarely happens, the Bloc Québécois will be voting in favour of a justice bill. The Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of Bill C-25, which we are debating here today.
As an experienced criminal lawyer, I can talk about this bill and the mistakes that have been made. What exactly will happen in reality? Consider this example. Someone is arrested and presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. However, the basic principle that has emerged, and has been confirmed and put into practice by the Supreme Court in recent years has been the release of the offender.
When an individual is brought before a justice of the peace to face a charge laid against him, the prevailing principle is that he must be released. As members know, in our judicial system, the general rule that an offender must be released pending trial has evolved over the years. The accused is released, and often the trial is not held for six months, a year or even two years. Because of the complexity of the evidence, such as evidence of fraud or even often in murder cases, it can take one, two or even three years before the accused stands trial. If he is released in the meantime, the damage is lessened and the court will have to take this into account in handing down a sentence if the accused is found guilty.
Section 500 of the Criminal Code, which I will not go over in its entirety, provides for statutory release. However, when the accused is at risk of reoffending or has no fixed address, for example, he may be kept in custody pending trial. There is a whole series of legal provisions and court decisions, right up to the Supreme Court, that cover and provide a framework for this right to release or the obligation to remain in custody pending trial.
I have made a lengthy digression to get to the point at issue. What happens once the decision is made to keep the accused in custody pending his trial? That is when all the principles of Bill C-25 come into play. This is what happens. The accused is held pending his trial. Under the rules that have been established, the accused is not held in the same wing or the same place as convicted offenders. Why? Because he is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Until his trial takes place, if the court decides to keep the accused in custody, he is kept in preventive custody. In legal jargon, this is known as being in remand. After the preliminary hearing or before the trial, the accused can ask to be released.
I have some specific examples. Let us say the accused was kept in custody because he had no fixed address. He can come before the court a week after being remanded in custody and prove to the court that he now has an address. He will therefore be released because the overriding principle is the right to be released until it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty.
What happens when someone is kept in custody? If the trial takes place in one month, two months, three months, six months, one year or even two years and the accused in kept in custody, that time counts double.
That is the legal jargon. The Supreme Court and the appeal courts—confirmed by the Supreme Court—have said that since the accused does not have all of his rights, since he does not have the same rights as someone who is put in custody after being sentenced, he therefore has the right to have time spent in pre-sentencing custody counted. Customarily, that time has counted two for one, or at least it did before Bill C-25.
So what happens? For example, an accused is found guilty on 12 counts of breaking and entering. He was held in remand for one year while he was waiting for the case to be sorted out and to appear before a judge. I speak from experience, since in the past I have represented accused persons who were going to plead guilty in their case. So what did we do? Some individuals had been rather busy and had committed crimes all over the place, in several legal jurisdictions. So, while the authorities were sorting out the case, the accused was held in remand. The judge was then told that since the accused had been in remand for six months, the judge should apply the two for one rule. For example, if the court had decided to sentence the accused to one year in jail, and he had already spent six months in pre-sentencing custody—multiplied by two—he would be released immediately.
That has outraged citizens. Those listening realize that, in some cases, there may be excesses. We cannot prejudge, we cannot force them to say so but there have been fortuitous coincidences. Repeat offenders, criminals, decided that they would remain in prison, that is in remand for six months, a year or two years. It happened just a few months ago in Quebec. An alleged mafia leader was kept in preventive custody for two years for drug trafficking, importing and gangsterism. The court told him that it intended to impose a four year sentence. Since he had been in remand for two years—two years times two equals four—the person in question, even though he was accused of very serious crimes, was released because he had spent two years in preventive detention, thank you very much.
Bill C-25 will set limits—which I believe is a good thing—on this right. It will remain but it will no longer be two for one, that is one day in remand will reduce the sentence by two days, or one month by two months, or one year by two years. This bill sets limits and requires the judge to give reasons. The sentence will be reduced by a maximum of one day for every day spent in detention. That is the principle that will prevail with Bill C-25. What will happen? The accused, and therefore probably his lawyer as well, will want to go to court quickly. When a lawyer knows that his client wants to go to trial he may try to do so quickly. We have one concern about this aspect of the bill, which we discussed in committee. Governments must provide the means for courts to move quickly.
At present, the accused quite often has to wait many months to go to trial. That is a fact.
There are, though, a number of places in Canada where an individual charged has little choice but to let his trial drag on for months. I will provide some examples. The court that travels to all the villages along the shore of James Bay and Ungava Bay—Salluit, Puvirnituq, Inukjuak and Kuujjuaq—is called an itinerant court, or a circuit court. Unfortunately for a person charged and in custody there, the court does not travel there every week. And so in the individual's case this can be mentioned, as provided in the bill, and the court can take the conditions into account. It cannot give credit of more than a day and a half for each day of custody.
Let me explain that. If an individual who has been charged has been in custody for three months, the court must take a month and a half into account. If the court wants to impose a six month sentence, for example, it can subtract a month and a half from the punishment of detention and then impose sentence accordingly, explaining it correctly.
There is only one problem with this bill, but we think it is a sizeable one. This bill will pass of course, because the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the present government support it. It was all very well for the government to want to have this legislation passed, but I have misgivings about the programs that should be put in place and the help that should be provided to the legal system so that cases can go to trial sooner than they do now.
It is no secret that there is currently a huge backlog of trials. Throughout Quebec's court districts and in those I am familiar with in Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, here in Gatineau—or Hull, if you prefer—in Abitibi and in La Tuque, anyone wanting a quick trial has to wait 6 to 12 months.
For instance, a person arrested for impaired driving today, June 8, has very little chance of going to trial before early 2010. It is practically impossible, given the backlog in the courts. This backlog, it must be understood, is not due just to the efforts of lawyers trying to delay cases. It is not due just to the efforts of the accused who want to take their time, are in no hurry and are adding to the number of procedures. It is not that at all.
At the moment, there is a backlog in the courts because there are not enough resources or judges. Judges who have retired or are preparing to retire are not being replaced. There is a real shortage. I am obviously talking about the situation in Quebec, which I know well. In Quebec, at the moment, there are clearly not enough crown attorneys for charges to be considered and pressed within the time frame.
As this problem is part of my background, I can talk about it. There will be a problem with legal aid. We asked the minister whether there would be additional funding to the provinces. It must be understood—and those watching us must also understand—that the administration of justice is a provincial matter. The provinces administer justice. Obviously, circuit court trials are not held every week. In certain judicial districts, a trial may be held only every two or three years, but that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about trials before the Court of Quebec, criminal division. I say, with all due respect, that the current time frame is 6 to 12 months.
Going to trial quickly would not be possible, even if we wanted to, because of a shortage of judges and crown prosecutors. Often, in the cases we are talking about, the accused get little representation, if any. We do not have enough defence and legal aid lawyers anywhere in Canada. There are too few of them to provide the services to which accused persons are entitled.
I understand, as the Conservatives will no doubt remind us, that they are concerned about the victims. I agree, but at the same time those who are accused must not become the victims of a rigid and cumbersome judicial system that is no longer able to administer justice because it is clogged with too many pending cases. That is what this bill deals with. That is why it includes a provision allowing each day spent in custody to count for up to one and one-half days.
We have to be careful, though. Individuals must not have been held in custody because they have a record or for breach of bail. Conditions do apply for each day spent in custody to count for one and one-half days. The individual must not have a record or be detained because of a breach of conditional release. Let me explain this last point.
The general rule is that the accused is released pending trial. Pending trial, the accused has the right to be released. The individual may be released under conditions like abstaining from consuming alcohol, from frequenting certain bars or from driving a motor vehicle, if charged with impaired driving causing bodily harm or death. The individual will be released, but if the court-imposed release conditions are breached, he or she will be held in custody, and the two-for-one or 1.5-for-one rule will not apply.
It is recognized that, in some specific and exceptional situations, it can be appropriate to subtract the days spent in custody before and during a trial from the sentence. I have some examples. The public must understand that an individual in pre-sentencing custody does not have the same rights as an individual who has been sentenced. I had the Minister of Justice acknowledge that none of the programs in Quebec remand centres apply to prisoners in pre-sentencing custody. While awaiting trial, the accused person watches television and plays cards.
The Department of Justice and the Department of Public Safety must absolutely set aside funds so that we at least provide some services. Someone who is in custody on a sixth charge of impaired driving causing bodily harm may have a problem with alcohol. Now, the person in custody receives absolutely no services. We would like the government to set aside money so that remand centres can at least help these people start some kind of rehabilitation.
In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois will support Bill C-25. However, I must note that the government will have to be aware of the problems it could cause. We could end up with overcrowding in remand centres.