Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  On the specific issue of long-term offenders who meet the dangerous offender criteria, it's really not possible to give a definitive number, because you'd have to actually look at the reasons for the actual designation. Certainly I've taken a hard look at all the cases that hav

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  On a procedural issue, especially post-Johnson, we heard a number of crowns in our consultations suggest that a new strategy used by defence counsel in dangerous offender proceedings was beginning to manifest itself. Specifically, if the offender chose not to participate actively

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  No.

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  When we began consultations a number of years ago, we tried to listen to what the concerns were of all jurisdictions and we heard different concerns, depending upon the jurisdiction. Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta typically have a very high rate of applications relative t

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  In the first place, the vast majority of dangerous application defences are actually conducted under provincial legal aid programs, with some federal funding. So the impact of resources of these changes would actually be borne—a very large majority—by the provinces themselves, wh

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I believe you will be hearing from Mr. Jim Bonta of the correctional directorate at Public Safety Canada. He has a great deal of expertise in this area and is much better able to answer those types of questions than I am. I would add that Correctional Service Canada is perhaps

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  There's a fine line sometimes. You break and enter, you steal something, you might commit a sexual assault, and there might be a robbery. There might be a number of primary designated offences in those acts, but if they were all connected they would only be able to count as one o

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Again, given current jurisprudence regarding the issue of retroactive/retrospective application of current law, if an individual was, for example, charged prior to the coming into force of this legislation, these provisions probably would not apply. But if a person committed the

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Yes. As long as the trial started after coming into force, I don't think there would be any question. There might be some question if the trial started before coming into force but he wasn't sentenced until after coming into force. So there might be a gap, and that'll be for the

Bill C-27 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  We actually do have some data we can provide. It's a little bit rough, because we're looking at the number of offenders who committed one of the primary designated...and then is there another one, and is there another one? It's sometimes a little bit difficult, because they can s

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  As the minister has already stated, the broad scope of the reform to the dangerous offender legislation is to respond to the case of R. v. Johnson. In fact, R. v. Johnson laid out a bit of a different landscape from what was there previously. It suggested that even though an indi

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  Just that one of the issues raised was how this compared to U.S.-style legislation. Again, in the U.S. there are three offences that automatically trigger a life sentence. This does not do that. This is designed very deliberately to narrow the scope towards the target individuals

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I can confirm that to my knowledge there has been a successful DO application brought against a woman. I know of one. There may have been others, but I can't confirm that. As to current dangerous offenders in the system, we can undertake to contact Correctional Services and mak

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I have the same answer on that: no, we haven't done that analysis. I think there's a potential for that type of analysis to come forward, because certainly we'd have to cross-reference the number of women who have been convicted of a sexual offence over a given time period. Throu

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 2nd Session) committee  I can only suggest that from my perspective it is not specifically an issue. The number of women who have been subject to dangerous offender applications is quite low. There's a very small handful. I know of one as being successful. If there were a concern that women were someh