Status of Women committee  I'm certainly not an expert in this, but I think marginalized communities are less likely to be reliant on police. If they start to get into a disagreement or an argument, there may be a tendency to want to fight back themselves, which will certainly lead to the dual charging in

Status of Women committee  You know, I would like to see us deal with that current mess, but I think we would get no legislation passed at all if we had to wait for the systemic racism issues to be addressed. I think we have to chip away at it and be mindful of the implications of any piece of legislation

Status of Women committee  I am not sure of the extent to which this bill or others are actually protecting survivors. Frankly, I think recognizance and the section 810 orders stand a good chance of keeping apart people who are aggressive with each other, because there is a legal order that they stay apart

Status of Women committee  I have not examined that report, no. I'm unfamiliar with it.

Status of Women committee  There already is a Victims Bill of Rights, which is supposed to be giving victims a voice in all decisions being made by the criminal justice system. There's already something on paper. If that's not resulting in people getting access and having an opportunity to give voice, then

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Sure, I can do that. I actually used to contribute to help someone pay for their electronic monitoring.

Status of Women committee  I think the mandatory charging policies, though well-intended, have led to a lot of people who are more likely to be victims than perpetrators being charged with the offences. There are attempts made to try to correct that by giving people discharges, right? They get an absolut

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, yes.

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much. I don't have much to add, except that I think that what has been proven successful in terms of reducing intimate partner violence—and more work needs to be done—is working on preventing repeat offending, and my hat's off to the government's initiative on the

Status of Women committee  In conclusion, the John Howard Society of Canada urges the committee not to pass Bill S-205 at this time, as the House has unanimously passed Bill C-48 and the bill is now in the Senate, which gave attention to the issue of intimate partner violence during the bail process and al

Status of Women committee  Well, I think there are technical reasons as well as substantive reasons for not proceeding now with Bill S-205. The primary one is that Parliament has already looked at almost the exact wording of the provision in the judicial interim release reverse onus provision, so it will a

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, committee members. It's a great pleasure to be here. I want to thank you very much for seeking the views of the John Howard Society on Bill S-205. As a charity, we're committed to effective, just and humane responses to the causes and conse

Justice committee  No. We're very fortunate when governments choose to do this. I think it's economically to their advantage, as someone pointed out, in terms of the costs of detaining someone in custody. The programs are much less expensive than detaining someone in custody.

Justice committee  It's extremely disruptive for people. I think there are even greater levels of anxiety and mental health challenges for people prior to a conviction than before, because they don't really know what's happening. Some of them have had little to no exposure to the criminal justice