Mr. Speaker, it is my honour this evening to speak to Bill C-54. It is also my honour to be the chair of the justice committee, which has recently dealt with the discussion on this piece of legislation.
I want to thank the committee for its work. We had extended hours. We invited a number of witnesses from all sides of the debate on this particular issue. The committee worked very well together and very hard at hearing everyone out. We had a number of interruptions with bells and a number of other votes that happened within, but we were able to get through the presentations in a very respectful way as a committee. We heard from all sides, whether they were victims, victims' family members, those representing the mental health side of the equation, such as associations, legal opinion and health care workers in the mental health area. It was a very good discussion.
I also want to thank our clerk, Jean-François Pagé, who did a fabulous job on very short notice, making arrangements for very balanced panels for us to see. Also, the analysts and the legislative clerks helped us.
I also want to thank the leader of the Green Party who joined us at committee with a number of amendments. It does not happen that often. It is some sort of a new process for committees to have independents sit at the table with us when we go through legislation and contribute to the discussion on amendments that they bring forward. I appreciate that.
I do appreciate the professionalism of the committee in dealing with a number of amendments. I believe there were 52 or 54 amendments in front of us. We did accept amendments. One came from the government side, one from the New Democratic side and one from a Liberal member. They were accepted and in fact there was some crossover between the two opposition parties.
Let me take just a few minutes to review exactly what Bill C-54 actually would do. There is lots of rhetoric about what the bill would do; we heard some of it this evening. I want to be as factual, as clear and as precise as possible on the changes to the NCR regime that now exists. These would be amendments to an existing not criminally responsible regime, which we think are needed to make our system better. It is not to change, to stigmatize, as we have heard from others tonight. It is actually to improve the justice system.
There is nothing wrong with improvements to the justice system. There is nothing wrong with improvements to any system. That is why we are here as legislators. We look at what is happening. We see what is actually happening on the ground after we make laws. Sometimes we do not get it completely right. Sometimes, over time, things change and we need to make changes. That is all we would be doing. We would be making some amendments to this to deal with a few high-risk accused situations.
Bill C-54 would create a new application process to obtain a finding from a court that an NCR accused is a high-risk accused. The high-risk accused finding would result in the disposition requiring detention of the accused in a hospital until the court revokes the findings.
Let us be clear about this. There is an NCR regime at present. A court can find someone not criminally responsible at present, or NCR. They do not go to jail. That is what NCR is about. They need help. They have a mental issue through no fault of their own. Based on the evidence that is provided, a court can make a judgment that this individual is not criminally responsible for the actions he or she has taken. Some of them can be very horrific, some at a different level, but it is still their mental capacity that has been the issue.
Do they go to jail? What the previous speaker said, that the system would send them back to sort of rot in jail longer, is not the case. In the present regime, someone who is designated NCR gets help. He or she gets hospitalized, basically.
At present, there is a review board to see how they have done. It is an annual review. The victims would have to come and listen to the progress the individual has made, and a review board would decide whether the individual needs to continue treatment. It is not punishment, it is treatment.
All we are doing is, first, saying that in some very specific situations, some NCR-designated individuals are of high risk, both to themselves and to the public. We are defining a different and added category in this piece of legislation. Would it apply to everyone who is designated NCR? Absolutely not. That is not what it is designed for. That is not how we expect it to be used. There was some discussion about a burden on the courts system. That would not be a result. There would be very few cases in Canada annually. In fact, I hope it would never be used, to be honest. It would be great if the high-risk designation in NCR were never required. However, it may be required and we need to have the legislation in place to provide that designation for a court to determine.
The application would have been made by the prosecutor before an absolute discharge could be ordered. That means that the government prosecution would have to decide whether someone really is high risk, so there is a burden of proof in terms of whether the individual is high risk before a prosecutor could bring it forward.
The high-risk accused finding would only be available in cases involving serious personal injury offences that resulted in a verdict of NCR. Therefore, they need to know that the person has been found NCR already. As well, it is what we call an “incident”, not a crime that leads to jail, because these people need hospitalization. The incident would have to be an offence that involved serious personal injury and the accused would be 18 years of age or more. Therefore, it would not be used for children or young offenders, it would be for adults. We need to ensure that everybody understands that.
To determine a finding of high-risk accused, the court would have to be satisfied that there is a substantial likelihood that the accused would use violence that could endanger the life or safety of the public. The safety of the public would become paramount in this high-risk category. I would suggest that also safety of oneself would also have some consideration. At committee, we did hear it stated that, based upon actual court cases in the past, public safety is a priority. All this legislation would do is codify that and put it in the legislation, not just by jurisprudence of what has happened in different court cases.
The court could also make the high-risk accused finding if it were of the opinion that the acts that constitute the offence were of such a brutal nature they would indicate a grave risk of harm to another person. Therefore, an individual is found NCR and based on the evidence the court has determined that the individual needs hospitalization and needs help with the mental illness that has caused this serious offence. It is not just any serious offence, but one of a brutal nature that would cause the court to look at whether the high-risk category should apply. The court would consider all relevant evidence, including the nature and the circumstances of the offence, any relevant pattern of repetitive behaviour, the accused's current mental condition, the past and expected course of treatment and the accused's willingness to follow treatment, as well as expert opinions.
We heard in the last speech about the committee not accepting the amendment on medical experts. Based upon the input we got on that amendment, we had a full discussion on that amendment. Experts from the ministry of justice were there. They indicated that by putting medical experts as an amendment it may limit who we could ask on this and that not everyone who may have expertise on determining some of these criteria would be a licensed medical individual. There could be others involved, from a social services point of view, from other areas, who would be able to help in determining some of these circumstances and the nature of the offence, the pattern or premise, who may not have a medical designation. That is why we wanted to leave it open, so that all expert opinions could be sought. They would still have to be experts. We would not just be asking anyone.
If the court makes the high-risk accused finding, a disposition requiring detention of the accused in a hospital must be made. I think that is an important thing to indicate.
We are not talking about removing the hospitalization aspects and sending people to jail because they are high risk. It is determining that they go to a hospital that would handle their NCR issue if the offence were brutal in nature and that there were a high risk it may reoccur or that they could hurt themselves, so it is still a hospitalization. This does not remove that aspect of NCR and send them to jail but give them help.
No conditions permitting absences from the hospital would be authorized unless a structured plan was prepared to address the risk to the public, and only with an authorized escort.
If we were to go down my street in Burlington, Tuck Drive, and told people that, at present, somebody who has committed a brutal offence and has been found NCR, within the year, without a structured plan, would be able to go on an unescorted release, I would say the people on my street would be shocked that is what the law is at present.
All this is saying is that for those who are found NCR and then high risk, there would be a structured plan to address the public aspects and authorized escorted release. That is not saying they would not get to go out in public. We would try to help them with their plan to be reintegrated, but not on their own at that particular time as a high-risk NCR individual. They would have to be escorted so we could review what they were doing.
I think that is common sense. I do not think the public would be upset that those escorted absences were only a decision-making process and could impose a non-communication, non-attendance condition in order to ensure their own safety.
It just makes sense to me that we would have that ability, that condition in this bill, and it is surprising that it does not exist at present.
I want to talk briefly about what the bill does not do. Bill C-54 does not seek to punish individuals who have been found by the courts to be not criminally responsible on account of their mental disorder. It is not jail time. We want to make sure that is there.
I can tell members the witnesses we heard from were all excellent witnesses. They all brought an expertise to the table, whether a victim or an individual representing the legal field or the mental health field. However, when questioned on the specifics of the wording of the bill, of the different clauses, it was interesting to see that this is what they thought could happen but it was not actually the wording of the bill.
Nothing in Bill C-54 would affect the access of mentally disordered accused persons to mental health treatment. There is no prohibition to their getting help. With this bill, accused persons would still be NCR. They would get a high-risk designation and they would still be hospitalized. The government would be there to help them overcome the mental illness that caused the serious and brutal actions to take place. The government wants them to get better and to be integrated back into society. We have a responsibility as a government to make sure that high-risk individuals get the treatment they need.
Bill C-54 does not seek to stigmatize the mentally ill. The bill does not suggest that mentally ill people commit crimes or are dangerous. The bill does not say that. People came to see me in my office. I agree that the messaging from all of us here is that the support in this bill does not suggest that we are stigmatizing mental illness.
We know people need help. We know that happens. As a government, we put together the mental health strategy, and the high-risk category does not apply to everyone who has a mental illness. It would apply to very few individuals. The new high-risk NCR accused finding does not create the presumption of dangerousness. Rather, it focuses on a relatively small group of NCR accused persons who qualify for the high-risk finding.
The other item that is important to understand is twofold. One, the review board still exists and the review board is still required to provide information on how individuals are progressing through their treatment. The review board change is simple. Right now it is every year that victims attend to hear how the perpetrators are doing. They are re-victimized over and over again. The bill would make it up to every three years. We are adding two years. The review board could make a decision of up to three years.
The only other major change, which was highlighted by a question from my colleague in the Conservatives, is that a judge would determine whether a person is high risk. I have faith in the court system, and if that happens, a judge would decide, based on the evidence, including the review board evidence, whether individuals have accomplished what they needed to do in that high-risk designation, at which point the NCR designation can be removed and people can be reintegrated into society.
Those are two of the changes. If a judge determines that someone is high risk and NCR, that judge has the ability, the authority and the responsibility to determine when those designations will be removed.
