Madam Speaker, at the outset, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the member for Sudbury. I am thankful for the opportunity to join today's debate relating to the criminal justice system, focusing on bail and repeat violent offenders.
I would like to thank the hon. member for Fundy Royal for his motion and his long-standing commitment to public safety. His motion provides me with an opportunity to discuss recent reforms to the Criminal Code, specifically former Bill C-75, and reflect on what is happening in my community and what we are doing in Richmond Hill.
Bill C-75 was introduced on March 29, 2018, in the House of Commons and subsequently received royal assent on June 21, 2019. The changes enacted by the bill came fully into force in December 2019.
While the reforms were enacted principally to address delays and criminal justice system efficiencies related to the concerns raised by the Supreme Court of Canada in its 2016 Jordan decision and 2017 Cody decision, they also modernized and streamlined Canada's bail regime. These reforms represented the most significant changes to Canada's bail regime since the Bail Reform Act of 1972. Bill C-75 also reflected the reasoning of Canada's top court in the 2017 Antic decision. It was a product of significant consultations with the provinces and territories. It was a thoughtful and broad-ranging reform.
With respect to the bail amendments in Bill C-75, they were designed to specifically streamline the bail process by increasing the types of conditions police can impose on accused in order to avoid sending unnecessary cases to court and to reduce the need for unnecessary bail hearings, and by no means were they designed to reduce the conditions assigned during bail; codify a principle of restraint to ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention when appropriate, and I will go into detail on that later; provide guidance so the bail conditions imposed are reasonable, relevant to the offence and necessary to ensure public safety; and finally, require that the circumstances of indigenous accused and of accused from vulnerable populations be considered at bail to better address the disproportionate impact that the bail system has on these populations.
My colleagues suggest that Bill C-75 has broken Canada's bail system, that its reform forces judges to release violent repeat offenders back onto the street, and that receiving bail is easier now than ever for violent repeat offenders. By no means does the data support this. These claims are, at best, ill-informed and, at worst, very misleading. We have the data to prove that.
In the past 15 years, more than half of the admissions to adult provincial and territorial facilities were for remands to await trial instead of admissions to sentenced custody. A lot of people were waiting to be sentenced or were waiting to be heard. According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of admissions to remand has increased from 54% in 2006-07 to 67% in 2020-21, despite a constant decrease in the number of adult admissions during the same period.
This increase in the remand population has disproportionately affected indigenous people and persons from vulnerable populations. As a result, Bill C-75 enacted in the Criminal Code a requirement that the circumstances of indigenous accused and of accused from vulnerable populations be considered at bail in order to address the disproportionate impact that the bail system has on these populations.
The amendments in the bill sought to reduce the imposition of bail conditions that are unreasonable, irrelevant and unnecessary, which was also a codification of the rules developed by the Supreme Court of Canada. However, the criteria for when accused persons can be released by police or justices were not changed. The law remains clear that detention of an accused person is justified if it is necessary to protect the safety of the public.
We hear so often about the repeat offenders. It is in the hands of the justice system to ensure that it has the tools to be able to detain them. We have not changed that. Moreover, police are required to detain an accused person if there is a risk of reoffending.
The Bill C-75 amendments significantly expand protection for victims of intimate partner violence, particularly within the bail regime. The bill created a definition of “intimate partner” that applies throughout the Criminal Code to clarify that it includes a current or former spouse, common-law partner and dating partner.
It also created a reverse onus provision in the Criminal Code for an accused person charged with an intimate violence offence if the accused has a prior conviction for an offence involving violence against an intimate partner. This reverse onus applies regardless of whether it is the same partner, a former partner or a dating partner. What this means is that the presumption that the accused should be released pending trial no longer applies. The accused, not the prosecutor, would have to justify their release to the court. All the tools needed to prevent recidivism are there.
The change to impose a reverse onus reflects what we know about the heightened risk to safety that victims of intimate partner violence face. It also signals to bail court the seriousness of the alleged offences, as well as the increased risk of reoffending in this context.
Bill C-75 also added two new factors a judge must consider before making an order to release or detain an accused person. First, in an important change, bail courts now have to consider an accused's criminal record, something that may have occurred but was not mandated by the legislation. Second, the court needs to consider whether an accused has ever been charged with an offence that involved violence against an intimate partner. These two factors help ensure that courts are better informed and have a more a complete picture of prior history of violence that could threaten the safety of a victim or the public at large.
As a result of these changes, bail courts are now required to take these factors into account when making a number of different possible bail-related determinations, including the decision to impose an order not to communicate with a particular victim, witness or other person, a detention order or an order to release the accused on bail.
If the accused is to be released on bail, the court would have to consider whether the alleged offence was against an intimate partner in determining whether bail conditions are necessary and, if so, what type of conditions are appropriate, such as a condition prohibiting contact with the victim.
Requiring bail courts to consider the safety of intimate partners before releasing an accused on bail affords increased protection to victims of intimate partner violence. Bill C-75 made changes to the bail system that respond to guidance on bail-related charter rights of the accused as found in the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. These changes aimed to help address the overrepresentation of indigenous people and vulnerable populations in the criminal justice system, while also increasing the efficiency of the bail system.
I emphasize that Bill C-75 did not change how the bail system should respond to violent or repeat offending, and it made some admirable changes to bail for those charged with offences relating to intimate partner violence.
In closing, contrary to the hon. member's suggestion, Bill C-75 has strengthened our bail system and helped protect victims of intimate partner violence.
