Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking to Bill S-12 today, as it would address one of the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights report entitled “Improving Support for Victims of Crime”, which was tabled in the House in December 2022.
When the justice committee began its study on victims of crime more than a year and a half ago, the member for Victoria brought to my attention the bizarre and unjust situation that survivors of sexual assault face in their current circumstances, which is that survivors regularly suffer from restrictions on their ability to talk about what happened to them and sometimes even suffer penalties for violating court-ordered bans on the publication of information that would identify their own names. It is important to note that these bans are routinely imposed in sexual assault cases across Canada. Anecdotally, we know it approaches 100% of the time. It is also important to note that most of the time, this happens without survivors' being aware that the publication ban is in place.
Bill S-12 would fix that by requiring notification of survivors. There are many reasons a survivor might choose to or inadvertently violate such a ban. Some feel that such publication bans inadvertently protect the perpetrators by the necessity of protecting their identity in circumstances where the publication of the perpetrator's identity would identify the victim. Others feel the idea of publication bans itself is based on an archaic and misogynist idea that sexual assault victims are somehow responsible for what happened to them and should be ashamed.
To be clear, some survivors do want their privacy protected by having publication bans in place, but others believe that public safety requires them to let family, friends and members of the public know of a risk of sexual assault they might face, by identifying the fact they were assaulted and who the perpetrator was.
At this point, I want to express my thanks to the survivors of sexual assault, and in particular those from the group My Voice, My Choice, who risked retraumatization by coming forward to committee and talking in public about their own personal experiences, in order to get the legislative change they need, in the hearings before the justice committee on victims' rights that began in October 22, more than a year ago.
Again, I want to thank the member for Victoria, who brought this situation to my attention and then introduced a private member's bill on the topic in order to try to get the House to act. In addition, I want to thank the member for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the former minister of justice, who decided to include measures to restore agency to survivors of sexual assault by including it in Bill S-12.
The government did not choose a path, using a Senate bill, nor did it choose a timetable, at the last minute, that New Democrats might have chosen. This has left us with little time to meet the deadline for passage of Bill S-12 and therefore with little time to consider all of the important amendments suggested by My Voice, My Choice, without endangering the fate of this bill as a whole by causing a to and fro between the House and the Senate. Now, we have a bill that, had it been on a better path and a better timetable, could have been even better in meeting the needs of survivors of sexual assault. However, we still have a bill before us that, I am assured, would make the necessary fundamental changes to restore agency to survivors and to ensure that there would not be prosecutions for violating bans of those whom they were supposed to protect.
Let me turn briefly now to the other half of Bill S-12, which provided the original impetus for the bill. The Supreme Court of Canada decision requires revisions to the sex offender registry. The Supreme Court found that automatic lifetime registration for those convicted of listed offences was overly broad, and as a consequence, was capturing some who were very unlikely to reoffend. I know some argue that all must be listed, but it is important to remember that if we list people who are at very low risk to reoffend, we waste public resources that might better be used to monitor the higher-risk offenders.
Instead, Bill S-12 would meet the Supreme Court's challenge by implementing the presumption of registration of those convicted. This would mean that a very small number of those convicted of listed offences could ask a judge to use their discretion to exempt them from legislation. The estimates are that it would be probably far fewer than 10% who could ask for that exemption.
The bill would also strengthen the sex offender registry in a couple of important ways. Most importantly, to me, it would add the offences of non-consensual distribution of intimate images and so-called sextortion to the list of offences that would result in registration as a sex offender.
In our modern world of overuse of social media, overuse of the Internet and overexposure of everyone to everything, these offences sometimes may seem trivial. However, we must remember that with non-consensual distribution, intimate images last forever on the Internet, and I think those who perpetrate this need to understand that these offences will be taken very seriously and that they will be monitored as sex offenders on the registry to make sure they do not engage in this kind of behaviour again.
I would like to conclude with thanks to all the parties that have worked together to get this legislation here today in time to meet the Supreme Court of Canada's deadline. I know that some parties still have reservations and I know that some of the victims would like to have had more amendments made to the bill. However, I do believe that we have it in a form in front of us today that will help restore agency to survivors of sexual assault in the future. I think that is a very important reason for us to act promptly.
