Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Legal and Constitutional Affairs
Issue 10 - Evidence for February 22, 2008 - Afternoon meeting
OTTAWA, Friday, February 22, 2008
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, to which was referred Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other acts, met this day at 2:05 p.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, welcome again to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which is examining Bill C-2.
We have the pleasure of having with us this afternoon as witnesses Ms. Lorraine Berzins, Community Chair of Justice, Church Council on Justice and Corrections; Mr. Don Hutchinson, Acting Director, Law and Public Policy, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada; Ms. Angela Costigan, of REAL Women of Canada; and Major Grant Effer, Federal Government Relations Liaison, Salvation Army.
Welcome to you all.
Lorraine Berzins, Community Chair of Justice, Church Council on Justice and Corrections: I bring you greetings from the Church Council on Justice and Corrections, CCJC, where I have worked for 24 years, after working for 14 years in a federal corrections system.
CCJC is an ecumenical coalition of 11 founding national Christian church denominations, but our membership also includes multi-faith groups and other community partners, like-minded individuals and organizations who want to join us in efforts to bring about a fundamental change in the way Canada handles the issue of crime.
Our non-governmental organization, NGO, was founded 35 years ago by people of faith who also understood very well how our criminal justice system works and what it is about the way it works that is very damaging to life in the community and Canadian society. Our primary role is to help our fellow citizens understand this better and push for initiatives and changes that can make a difference. When people are harmed and traumatized by crime, be they victims, offenders, families or those around them, we have learned they need help to recover and heal far beyond what the state's system of legal justice can provide. We know this, and we work to get our communities and churches involved in taking their own responsibility to help with this. However, we also know that how the state carries out the responsibility that it has can make a big difference, for the better or for the worse.
The laws that one enacts, the financial resources that one is accountable for, the public messages one sends out with actions and statements, all of these can either assist our community efforts, or they can undo community initiatives by giving the problems we already have with crime a twist for the worst.
My main point is to tell you that there are several areas in our current criminal justice system that are already very destructive, and we believe that now, in addition, there will be impacts from several features of Bill C-2, which you are about to pass, that will worsen those very things.
You are hearing about many of these issues from witnesses far more expert than we are about the technicalities, so we do not want to needlessly go over again what you already know. Instead, I would like to take a step back from the detail and describe for you some impacts that will really matter to people's lives and have us think about that for a moment.
It has been said, for example, that this bill speaks for victims. However, if you each think for a moment about any situation you know of, more personally, that has involved a criminal charge and a court case. What do we want and need when victimized, if ever we get a chance to really think about it?
I have been a victim of a serious crime myself. I was a hostage in prison when I worked there. I have spoken with many other victims. I can tell you that from everything that I have learned about this, as victims we want to be safe; we want emotional support; we want assistance and whatever care is required to heal and recover. We want information about many aspects of what happened. We want the offender to be held accountable, but even better, we wish that person would take responsibility, realize the harm that was done, the wrongness of it, try to do something to repair or make up for it, show remorse and some desire to compensate in some way, and we want to know what type of person would do such a thing; and what can be done so it does not happen again.
Many victims are concerned about prevention. They want us to learn something from their experience that can help us all go on with life in greater peace. They need to believe again that life can be good, safe and worth living despite everything. I know this sounds surprising, but this is what many victims tell us, even in the most unexpected circumstances. Real life goes on after court, and these are the factors that become important for survival.
These needs are harder to meet because of the way our justice system works. It is adversarial. It is all about the legal case, and many offenders are encouraged not to take responsibility or show remorse or reveal any information that could damage the legal case, even when their own moral instinct is to want to. The victim is a pawn of legal strategies and is cross-examined in traumatizing ways. The system is so overloaded that plea bargaining happens frequently to save time, and out the window go the other needs. Shorthand reasons for sentencing happen frequently too, or no reasons given at all. Out the window go more of our needs.
I am not even mentioning here all the impacts of this on offenders and their families, which matters greatly for their future in our communities. The stigma is so strong, but there has to be a way back in among us. Is that not the type of society we want to be? Instead of talking about that, all the human, real-life elements get squeezed into Criminal Code slots of legal jargon, and it is the legal jargon slots that move along the assembly line. The human element does not count.
With the adversarial process, those slots also get polarized into two extremes, and if we are not one extreme, we can only be its opposite extreme. I would like to take a couple of minutes to tell you how we illustrate that.
The Chair: Ms. Berzins, we have your brief, and it is actually quite a gripping graphic. However, we have three other witnesses who will need to make statements, and then we want to be able to ask everyone questions.
Ms. Berzins: I will certainly deal with that in questions later because we have ways of illustrating that leave a powerful image.
We already have a criminal justice process that makes it hard to get at the areas we really need to address, and that is really what will matter the most for safety and well-being in our community. We at the Church Council on Justice and Corrections help people with this in other ways, with programs and services; we have many examples to cite. As I said, Bill C-2 will make this harder, and for no valid reason. There is no trade-off of pain for gain because there is no gain as far as all the research tells us.
You know that already, and I will not repeat it. I have listed in my brief, and can deal with it in questions, on page 7, the negative impacts of reducing judges' sentencing discretion, increasing sentence severity, increasing the adversarial nature of the court process, more plea bargaining, less transparency, fewer ways of meeting real victim needs and the cost implications of courts, prosecutors, legal aid, prisons and psychiatric services. I have not heard anyone talking about that. I do not know if it has ever been before you. It is certainly not before the public. There is no provision for funding community programs with all the money going to these other investments.
There is a great lack of positive impacts, which we know from the research. I have listed that in my brief. There is really, on the whole, no evidence that it will reduce recidivism. In relation to mandatory minimum sentences, we know from the experience in the U.S. that it has been a policy fiasco. It is now being documented that it has led to a disaster in terms of the policy situation in California, for example.
Before closing, I would like to give you our recommendations. Our preferred recommendation would be that you refuse to pass Bill C-2 until you ensure that the following is put before you: a fiscal accountability check, insist upon a cross-analysis of the impact of these proposals before passing this legislation; and an independent, non-partisan effectiveness check, require that the impacts be assessed by a specialist panel — and I have listed the types of expertise needed.
I know you will probably not do that, so our second-best option would be to ask you to amend Bill C-2 before passing it, as follows: Make mandatory sentences presumptive, not absolute, and make a provision for other funding that needs to be provided for victim services and for community programs that are more effective and cheaper.
You probably feel you cannot do that, and so our final recommendation, regardless of all of the above, is that one or more of you may see fit to take a special interest in these issues in your work as senators, and the issues we have raised about the need for fundamental change in how we deal with crime in Canada. Take leadership and become a champion on this issue. Could you consider establishing a Senate committee to fundamentally review government accountability for criminal justice legislation and policy results? Should we be moving ahead without evaluating the results?
If you do that, we at CCJC will be delighted to collaborate with you, and we know that you would find many other partners in the community. If you build such a process, they will come.
Don Hutchinson, Acting Director, Law and Public Policy, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada: The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, EFC, is the national association of evangelical Christians. The EFC's affiliates consist of 40 denominations, 89 ministry organizations — from Billy Graham to World Vision — 35 post-secondary education institutions and over 1,000 individual congregations. In general, there are estimated to be over 3 million Canadians who are evangelicals. The EFC has long advocated the protection of the vulnerable, particularly children. We were interveners before the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Sharpe, contributing to the court's decision to uphold the child pornography provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada.
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has made submissions to the Department of Justice Canada and to the justice minister on matters of child pornography, child prostitution and the age of consent, and to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on several bills dealing with the protection of children; most recently in March of last year, on Bill C-22.
Our concern for the protection of children stems from the biblical mandate to care for the vulnerable. Our belief that God has created all people in His image and loves every person is the foundation for our belief in the worth of each human being. Flowing from this respect for human dignity is our desire to treat all people as persons with inherent worth and not as objects or playthings.
Children are among society's most vulnerable persons. They need adults to protect, guide and provide for them. For this reason, legislation across Canada and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Canada is a signatory, define a child as every person under the age of 18 years. Canada's child pornography law confirms a child to be under the age of 18 years.
Children's smaller size and their developing impressionable nature make them vulnerable to abuse. A child's sense of personhood is inherently damaged when treated as nothing more than an object to fulfill an adult's sexual desires.
The Public Health Agency of Canada's paper entitled Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse reports on experiences of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, demonstrating that the damage caused by such abuse can have lifelong consequences.
Canada's current age of consent to sexual activity with adults is low in comparison to the United States and other countries. This lower age of consent facilitates an increased level of risk for our children. With the age of consent now set at 14 years of age, Canada has become a destination for people who want sex with children.
The EFC therefore applauds the intent of the proposal to raise the age of consent from 14 years of age to 16 years of age. We believe raising the age of consent will offer increased legal protection to Canadian children and youth.
We regard the introduction of Bill C-22 and the subsequent inclusion of its provisions in Bill C-2 as a strong commitment to protect Canadian children from those who would view and abuse them as sexual prey — both foreign and Canadian predators.
As Christians and members of churches, we long to see a society that avoids the early sexualization of our children. Pastors and counsellors across Canada have numerous experiences of counselling young people after early sexualization has occurred and know the damage it causes from a personal, frontline perspective.
We strongly believe that sexual expression is most fully and properly experienced within the security of a lifelong marriage relationship, and we will continue to promote the role of parents and their spiritual communities in sharing the values that shape youth, including an understanding of their sexual identity from a Christian perspective.
At the same time, we appreciate the complexities children encounter growing up at this time in history and recognize that the close-in-age exemption expressed in the bill provides guidance to the courts about sexual relationships between youth.
There are some who have expressed concern about the possibility of criminalizing relationships between young people that would otherwise, in the opinion of those concerned, be perfectly healthy and legitimate. A Maclean's magazine article from July 4, 2006, quotes Peter Dudding, the executive director of the Child Welfare League of Canada, as saying, ``When we deal with arbitrary cut-offs, we lose the flexibility to apply the law in a much more specific and individualized kind of way.''
We note that all federal and provincial age-related legislation include what some have called arbitrary cut-offs, whether it is the age to obtain a driver's licence, the legal age for consumption of alcohol or the age at which one can purchase cigarettes.
These age-related restrictions exist because, as a society, Canadians recognize the responsibility to protect our children.
At what age is a person mature enough to engage in activities that may have lifelong consequences? There are health and safety risks as well as questions of maturity associated with each of these activities, which is why we have age restrictions.
It is worth noting that Statistics Canada reports that first intercourse at an early age increases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, STDs. With Canadian government studies reporting the increased risk of STDs and other potential damage of early sexualization of our children that have the potential for lifelong consequences, it is quite reasonable that, as a society, we recognize there must be limitations on child and youth sexual activity. This bill addresses that concern.
Why raise the age of consent? A society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Statistics Canada notes that in 2003, ``although they represent only 21 per cent of the population, 6 out of every 10 sexual assaults reported to police involved a child or youth.'' We, as a society, need to do more to protect our children.
A recent news story involved a teacher in the U.S. who was convicted of sexually abusing a 15-year-old and was offered two sentencing options: jail in the U.S. or three years in exile in Canada, where an adult relationship with a 15- year-old is currently legal. Clearly, there has to be more equity on this issue between these two bordering countries.
The day before we appeared in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in regard to Bill C-22, the Ottawa Citizen reported the arrest of a Vanier man hunting for sex with young girls over the Internet. He was arrested when police were alerted to his efforts to meet with a particular 13-year-old girl. If the man had waited only a few months, under the current state of the law, there would have been nothing the police could have done to protect her.
A May 2002 Pollara survey found 80 per cent of respondents expressed a desire for the age of consent to be raised to 16 or even higher.
The EFC is addressing only those sections of this bill that deal with raising the age of consent for sexual activity with an adult from 14 years of age to 16 years of age. We commend the intent of this bill to protect our children from adult pedophiles and predators of pubescent youth, believing these provisions are a good step toward making Canada a safer place for our children.
Angela Costigan, REAL Women of Canada: REAL Women of Canada agrees that the thrust of this legislation is to protect our young people from pedophiles, not only locally but also from cross-border pedophiles who can so readily lure vulnerable young women, particularly if they are from negative backgrounds. They attempt to lure them with gifts and other niceties. Of course, once successful in luring the child, they have the defence that the child had the right to consent to the sexual activity.
When we think of someone at the age of 14, we are likely thinking of a young girl in grade 9 in our local school system. By virtue of this legislation, we are inviting our young women to free themselves from the risk of unwanted pregnancy, STDs and AIDS, at least until they reach the age of 16 years.
As of this date, the freedom a young woman experiences when she is not involved in sexual activity at a young age, not only from the risks of various diseases but also the risk of each month wondering whether or not she has an unwanted pregnancy in her life, has not been emphasized.
It is hoped that somehow the maturity that can occur between the ages of 14 and 16 years will help the young woman make healthy decisions about whether or not, even at that age, she wants to persist in sexual activity.
Another major benefit that is perceived for the young woman is that if sexual activity is illegal until the age of 16, she is alleviated from the very pressure her peers might put upon her while she is growing, from age 14 to 16. It is estimated that the amount of peer pressure to participate in sexual activity these days, even at the age of 14, is overwhelming for our young people.
It is stipulated that the public desires raising the age of consent. According to a Pollara poll released in May 2002, 80 per cent of Canadians support increasing the age of consent from 14 years to at least 16 years, again because of the deep concern to protect children from adult predators.
Further, a recent Leger Marketing poll in June 2006 found that 61 per cent of men and 65 per cent of women believe that sex under the age of 16 is wrong.
I am about to make a further submission that may not totally receive an open ear here, but REAL Women of Canada considers that the age of consent might be healthy at 18 years of age.
For instance, what would be your response if I said, at the conclusion of this hearing, ``I will pick up a couple of 16- year-old high school kids and suggest that we go out for a beer and a cigarette''? I imagine you would say to me, ``How dare you make such a suggestion? How dare you lure these young people into such conduct that is so contrary to their health?''
It is put forward by REAL Women of Canada that protecting children — or at this point, young adults — until the age of 18 is no different than protecting them from the danger of alcohol or tobacco because surely STDs, AIDS and unwanted pregnancies are every bit as much undesirables as are tobacco and alcohol.
With respect to the current law, and again, with respect to the age of 18, at the present time, where there is an atmosphere of trust or dependency, then, in fact, the age of consent is age 18 under the current law. If one did not have to prove in court this element of dependency or this element of trust and put the young person through the horror of cross-examination, it might be of benefit that consensual activity be raised to the age of 18.
Surprisingly enough, there are studies that indicate that young people themselves support raising the age of consent. Innovative Research Group Inc. found that 54 per cent of young adults aged 18 to 24 years support raising the age of consent. This survey was commissioned for The Globe and Mail, La Presse and CBC. Only 36 per cent believe that the age of consent should remain at 14 years of age and only 2 per cent believe that it should be lowered.
With regard to the age of consent for homosexual activity at 18 years of age, Mr. Hnatyshyn made a statement that the reason there would be no change in that is because the particular activity associated with homosexual activity, being anal intercourse, is an extraordinarily risky activity that can result in the transfer of AIDS. The University of California at Santa Barbara, which is in no way opposed to homosexual activity itself, indicated that even a miniscule tear during anal intercourse is like a superhighway for viruses such as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. We recommend that there be no change in that provision.
I repeat that, in this whole discussion, the freedom that a woman experiences when she is not involved in sexual activity at an age when she cannot support the natural repercussions of such activity is often forgotten.
I support this bill on behalf of REAL Women of Canada. I am a criminal lawyer with 27 years of experience.
On firearms offences, I will be very brief. As you know, in Toronto it is common for us to awaken in the morning to learn that there has been another killing — although knives are a popular weapon these days. You also know that in the commission of these crimes with guns, a number of innocent bystanders have been killed. We totally support anything you can do to curtail the use of handguns. We also support the dangerous offender provisions that have been brought forward and totally support the new procedures to assist police officers in administering drug tests in order to deal with drug-impaired driving.
Major Grant Effer, Federal Government Relations Liaison, Salvation Army: Members of the committee, the Salvation Army is an international organization that is currently active in 113 countries around the globe. Since its inception in 1865, the Salvation Army has been committed to meeting the needs of the poor, the marginalized, the disadvantaged and the vulnerable members of society. The Salvation Army believes in the importance of caring for the whole person — body, mind and spirit — without discrimination. In a world where discrimination against race, colour, creed, gender, social status, language, physical and mental health and even age is rampant, the Salvation Army welcomes the opportunity to share our opinions on Bill C-2, which has the potential of affecting the lives of all Canadians.
Based on over 130 years of first-hand experience in helping those who have been marginalized through such discrimination, the Salvation Army has earned the respect to speak compassionately, yet strongly, about public policy.
Canada is among the most affluent and progressive nations in the world, yet examples of discriminatory treatment make headlines almost every day. These headlines refer to both the victims and perpetrators of crime. There is a line drawn between those who would be sympathetically embraced by society and those who would be shunned by the same society.
Doctrinally, the Salvation Army believes in the inherent good of all individuals and, as such, believes that those who have crossed the lines of moral and societal acceptability can be rehabilitated into productive members of society and embraced.
Biblically, Jesus Christ challenged the people of his day who pronounced judgment on the women caught in the web of sexual immorality by confronting the people with their own shortcomings to demonstrate the place of appropriate judgment. His intent was not to dispel the judiciary of the day, but rather to ensure that those in need were rehabilitated and treated with respect in the process.
The Salvation Army made a submission to the House of Commons in April 2005 with respect to Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act. That submission recommended that MPs support Bill C-2 based upon the belief that it provided increased protection for the vulnerable, specifically children.
We do not wish to reiterate verbatim that submission with respect to the literature cited or the research referenced. However, the position of the Salvation Army is unchanged and is as follows:
Protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation, and prosecuting and rehabilitating those who sexually abuse and exploit children are important public policy objectives.
An effective strategy includes prevention of sexual abuse and exploitation, individual treatment programs for offenders, adequate support for victims and community engagement in addressing the needs of offenders, victims and their families.
Increasing the age of consent to sexual activity, in addition to the reforms proposed in Bill C-2, is one way of providing added protection to children and preventing child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Good public policy demands both denunciation of criminal conduct and attempts to rehabilitate offenders for the sake of the offenders, victims, prospective future victims and society at large.
There is evidence that treatment programs have been effective at reducing recidivism among child sex offenders.
Early opportunities for treatment within and outside of the criminal justice system, links between correctional facilities and community-based programs that provide treatment to offenders while incarcerated and following release, and community-based support and accountability groups that provide support to offenders following release are important components of reducing recidivism and should be actively explored and supported.
We believe that the current Bill C-2 goes a step beyond its predecessor by specifying an increase in the age of consent from 14 years of age to 16 years of age. While the Salvation Army advocates for an increase in the age of consent to age 18, the proposed legislation is a positive step forward, which we are pleased to support.
In addition to the Criminal Code amendments with respect to the age of consent, Bill C-2 has four additional components: minimum mandatory sentences for serious firearms, formerly Bill C-10; drug-impaired driving, formerly Bill C-32; bail hearings for offences involving firearms or other regulated weapons, formerly Bill C-35; and dangerous offenders, long-term offenders and recognizances to keep the peace, formerly Bill C-27.
Whereas the Salvation Army believes that judgment is the privilege of God, and whereas God has allowed the establishment of the government structures and processes we know today for the purpose of effecting a just and moral society, and since the Salvation Army believes in the inherent good and potential for rehabilitation of all people regardless of the crime committed, our response to the remaining four components will be brief and somewhat probing rather than prescriptive.
Given the research lacking to support the notion that incarceration is an investment in future deterrence, and given the research to support the early intervention of treatment and rehabilitation programs in reducing recidivism rates, the Salvation Army must support the questioning and criticism of other sections of Bill C-2 by other organizations. Therefore, the Salvation Army supports the recommendation for the review, research and amendment of these provisions of Bill C-2.
The Salvation Army's position with respect to age of consent has been stated for over 100 years. I offer an excerpt from the history of the Salvation Army with respect to the British Parliament:
The Army was largely instrumental in bringing before the notice of Government the fact that a number of girls of tender years were being exposed to grave moral danger through being sent over to the Continent for dancing and theatrical engagements. In this instance a small private Bill to provide for supervision under license of all such engagements, prepared at the instigation of The Salvation Army (1908) was backed by Members of all parties . . . . The result was that the Government presented a Bill of its own (1910). This was crowded out until 1913, when by agreement with the Opposition it was passed.
Proponents of the age of consent legislation, formerly Bill C-22, seek protection for the vulnerable. The close-in-age provision provides for appropriate non-exploitive sexual choice for those less than 18 years of age. As such, the proposed sections of Bill C-2 are not specifically about removal of consent but, rather, addition of protections for the vulnerable. As such, the currently proposed legislation is more appropriately termed ``age of protection'' and should not be, in the context of the currently proposed legislation, viewed as controlling and discriminatory.
The Salvation Army, therefore, recommends that all MPs and senators should support the age of consent provisions in Bill C-2 as a progressive and long-sighted improvement toward the betterment of Canadian society; the government should implement and support early opportunities for treatment of victims of sexual exploitation; and, finally, the government should implement and support early opportunities for treatment within and outside of the criminal justice system, links between correctional facilities and community-based programs that provide treatment to offenders while incarcerated and following release, and community-based support and accountability groups, such as COSA, that provide support to offenders following release as important components of reducing recidivism.
In conclusion, I thank your committee members for the opportunity to contribute to the valuable process of determining and crafting legislation that would protect our Canadian youth and ensure the provision of resources for the treatment and rehabilitation for those Canadians in need, regardless of which side of the criminal justice line they stand.
The Chair: Thank you all. We will now go to question period, beginning with Senator Oliver.
Senator Oliver: Thank you for your excellent presentations. I listened to your words carefully, and I appreciate them coming from you and coming from your organizations. For the most part, the support you have for Bill C-2 and its attempt to give more protection to young children and strongly supporting the extension of the age of consent to 16 years is important, and I appreciate your evidence.
Your presentation gave me some concern, Ms. Berzins. You talked about legal jargon and about other matters in your presentation that concerned me a bit. Some of what you said does not properly belong in a bill that is trying to combat violent crime. You based it on the fact that you were a victim of violent crime, and that was the basis upon which you wanted to say it. I, too, have been the victim of a very violent crime. The perpetrator in my case got 25 years in prison. A number of the measures that you say that victims such as us would want do not, in my opinion, belong in a criminal bill such as Bill C-2. They should go in legislation in relation to help and education, and so on. A number of those are provincial matters.
I do not see anything wrong with Bill C-2 insofar as it is designed to protect victims. There is adequate protection there. However, a number of measures take place in each of our provinces that cover much of what you said victims want. I would like to hear your reaction to that.
Ms. Berzins: First, I was not just speaking on my own behalf. I have met with many victims who have spoken candidly about their experiences after the court case is over. I am sure not everyone has the same experience, but many do. It is surprising because if we have not been there, we do not believe it is like that. However, it is like that.
I am not saying that Bill C-2 can provide those measures; I am saying that those features of the criminal just system made worse by Bill C-2 will make it harder for those measures to be provided, even from other places.
Senator Oliver: I do not believe that at all.
Ms. Berzins: I am basing that on many courtroom observations. I do not know how many of you have had a chance to observe what happens in a courtroom. The minute we have the experience ourselves, we realize that, as persons with needs, it is not what it is about. It is the legal industry that takes over and deals with the issue in a way that limits what can be done and forces many elements underground. It prevents people from talking about what needs to be talked about out of fear of what will happen to the court case. The courtroom is not a safe place to deal with issues that people need to deal with when they have been through a crime. We have to ensure we provide other places. We have a mess on our hands because of the way the adversarial system works. The increasing number of acts being criminalized, because we believe that is the answer to deal with social problems, puts a great overload on the system.
I will not try to persuade you of that; I know it. If you speak to many others, you will find that, too. If you speak to judges, they know that they are overwhelmed by what comes before them, and the ways in which they have to work do not deliver what will help the community in the long run.
My point is not that you need to legislate that. My point is this: Please do not do something that will make it worse.
The goals that I have heard said here — even from people who differ from my view — are definitely ideals and goals that I value. We have many of the same objectives. The tools for reaching those objectives, we know from experience, will not achieve what you are trying to accomplish, will cost so much money and use up resources that will then not be available for the other areas that could be affected. That is our concern.
Senator Oliver: Thank you for that. I have a better understanding of your position.
Senator Cowan: Mr. Hutchinson, on page 2 of your brief, at the end of the second last paragraph, the last sentence says, ``With the age of consent now set at 14, Canada has become a destination for people who want sex with children.'' That may well be. That is not something I have heard before. Where did you get that information? Do you have a study to that effect? Are there statistics that support that position?
Mr. Hutchinson: When we appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, we appeared with representatives from the Toronto Police Service Sex Crimes Unit and the RCMP National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre. They confirmed at that time — their testimony is in the minutes of the meeting held on March 22, 2007 — that they were dealing with sex tourism traffic now in Canada where ephebophiles, those attracted to pubescent youth, were grooming 12- and 13-year-old girls over the Internet and then coming to Canada shortly after their fourteenth birthday; they were dealing primarily with girls, so that they could meet with those young girls and engage in sexual activities. They identified that those people were coming primarily from the United States and Europe.
Senator Cowan: I see we have Detective Sergeant Scanlan from the Toronto Police Service Sex Crimes Unit, Child Exploitation/Special Victims on Monday. Perhaps he will be able to answer that question. Is that the basis of the evidence?
Mr. Hutchinson: Yes, she was present. We also had representatives from the Canadian Police Association present at that meeting.
Senator Andreychuk: I want to follow up with Ms. Berzins' comments. First, I share your view that if we could attack the problems earlier, deal with them and find alternatives, we would not need to go to court.
Second, if we paid more attention to treatment as offenders go in and integration treatment when they come out, we would be better off. That is a broad philosophical point that, perhaps, you and I share.
However, you are saying that Bill C-2 will make it worse. It would make it worse because it is one more piece of legislation. Every time we add something to the Criminal Code, it brings on the judicial system the need for resources, more institutions and so on.
We heard testimony yesterday, which I was rather taken by, from the prosecutor who was dealing with the repeat violent offenders. That is what much of this bill is about. He said that if we had the new system in place in Bill C-2, we would be better equipped to do risk analysis and assessment of the offender to get the help he or she needs.
Have you looked at the bill to that extent to be able to tell me whether you agree that it would be a much more, all- embracing assessment, that it would be helpful for the offender, the victim and society; or do you disagree with him?
Ms. Berzins: I am afraid I disagree. I have also discussed this with prosecutors myself. I believe that when we look at how the system works in practice and what the history has been with the existing dangerous offender provisions, they are very time-consuming. To increase their use will tie up many more resources that will cause more litigation probably because the risks are higher for the offender. We can expect more plea bargaining to happen. Many more unintended effects that make the system work even less openly and less humanly will occur.
I believe there are definitely some offenders from whom we really need protection. No one would quarrel with that. None of us wants to be at risk when we can do something about it.
However, the provisions that we have are sufficient, in the experience of people with whom I have spoken. I am sure you have heard that from other witnesses as well. We have provisions and, by and large, they have been working. There is no reason why we cannot continue to work within those provisions to achieve what we want to achieve and put more care into ensuring that we do it competently and thoroughly.
I have consulted with people who say that we can expect much more litigation, resistance to pleading guilty or plea bargaining to occur, which will make everything go underground, and it will become even more difficult to deal with the real problems you are talking about.
Senator Andreychuk: With respect to the whole system, in the way you characterize it, you could say that about a first offender or a repeat offender. This legislation is designed to get at that very narrow band, namely those who have repeated dangerous offences. We are told that about 90 per cent of them are repeat sexual offenders. We do not end up with one victim; we end up with two, three, four or five and the offender has not changed their habits.
By broadening the reverse onus and other provisions, we are getting at that very narrow band, where we have not succeeded before or were not involved with them, and it is the extremely dangerous and repetitive offenders. We are not talking about a wide spectrum of offences.
I still have some concern that the system is not long and elaborate. It has built-in safeguards for the offender, which is what our system is built on. We do not want to trap within the system people who do not belong there. With respect to necessity, therefore, there will be stages and steps that will take longer. I feel that is in our interest.
Equally, there are stages and steps of assessment that may get them to understand and encourage them, I believe as stated in the Salvation Army brief, to take responsibility and be part of the treatment. Whether it accomplishes that — I have been in the system as long as you, except I have a certain amount of cynicism — that is the objective being proposed. Do you disagree with that?
Ms. Berzins: I do not disagree with the objective. You are talking about selective incapacitation, the ability to appropriately deal with those who pose the greatest danger.
Senator Andreychuk: That is right.
Ms. Berzins: However, the tools proposed, in our experience, will not be capable of doing that. I believe you will be meeting with Mr. Anthony Doob on Monday, and that would be a good question to ask him.
Researchers, such as him, with whom we have consulted tell us that the research indicates that we are simply not capable of reliably identifying those who pose the greatest danger, and there are too many other false positives. The problem is that we have a very blunt instrument, namely a category of offence rather than an individual assessment in terms of bringing the application and having the onus on the offender to have to disprove and then reverse that onus.
The adversarial way those psychiatric assessments work is not taken into account. I know we would all like to believe it does not work that way, but it does. There are psychiatrists for the defence and for the Crown. They are human and get caught up in the adversarial ``we-will-do-a-good-job-for-our-side'' battle. That court battle does not necessarily come out with the result we are looking for. It injects a process that distorts what we are trying to do.
Senator Andreychuk: I have studied other systems. When we get to that last resort, namely those repeat and violent offenders, we cannot just decide to lock them away; we have to go through some process. An adversarial system is part of our judicial system. What are you advocating? How would we protect society if we do not use the judicial system?
It seems that the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and I could list probably all the nations in the world, have some form of judicial system. By nature, it takes time; by nature, it is unwieldy; by nature, we should continue to criticize. However, what is the alternative is if it is not to try to improve the existing system?
Ms. Berzins: I am not for doing away with the system altogether. I may sound like an anarchist, but I am not one. We need good, solid legal procedures to help us when we really need them. They are over-applied and over-relied on for much less serious matters. This means that when we come to the serious matters, we do not have the time and resources to do a good, quality job of it.
We need places around the adversarial system that offer a possibility of proceeding with an offender and a victim in a way that is safe for them to openly talk about what really happened and what the problems are. It is possible to accomplish that.
The gentleman from the Salvation Army talked about circles of accountability and support. That model is used with people coming out of prison who are high-risk and high-need pedophiles. However, because it provides support as well as a challenge and supervision in a way that is safe for the offender to reveal what he or she is going through so that we can deal with them, research has shown that it has reduced recidivism by 76 per cent compared to people who do not go through this process.
The model being used in a certain place in the system, but the type of approach that it represents is something that could be integrated into many other phases of the system. It is the only way that we will really create human safety and not just drive dangerous people underground, hiding from us what we need to know about them.
Senator Andreychuk: I will leave it at that.
Senator Merchant: We believe that the Senate serves a very good purpose in that it gives a voice to women and minorities, who are under-represented in elected offices — not just in the federal Parliament but also in provincial and local governments — women in particular.
We have heard from many people while studying this bill that ``getting tough on crime'' may just be a political statement. It is less about governance and how things really work.
For those who would wholeheartedly support Bill C-2, we must listen to the voices we have heard, First Nations people and minority groups who say that this bill discriminates against them. They have talked about racism and the inability of minorities and First Nations people to understand our judicial system and their rights.
They will sometimes plead guilty without realizing the implications. You have in this bill the dangerous offender legislation. Consider that incarceration does not make for safer communities because we are not doing anything to help the incarcerated people to be able to live in society in a better way. For those of you who wholeheartedly support this bill, I would like to hear how you feel about the points that I have raised, please.
Ms. Costigan: I sincerely regret that we have abhorrent conditions in the case of the state of livelihood of our Aboriginal peoples. I do not feel that this bill adds to that state of affairs. The fact, if it is true, that they do not get proper legal counsel at the time of the occurrence of the criminal offence or at the time of the procedure in court is not something that Bill C-2 can solve. Its solution has to be from other areas of legislation. It has to come from the number of duty counsel provided. It has to come from, perhaps, the number of legal aid certificates that are provided in the area; and there has to be, in my respectful submission, a desire of the Aboriginal people to elevate themselves to a condition where these facts are no longer true.
Senator Merchant: I am not here to dispute with you. I only simply ask that you put on the record the way you feel because we have heard from others, so the record will speak for itself. If anyone else has something to say, I would like to hear it.
Mr. Hutchinson: The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada addresses only the component of the bill that was previously Bill C-22. In the nation of Canada, we perceive that the requirements are culturally neutral, that identifying the impropriety of an adult engaging in sexual activity with a child is culturally neutral. Therefore, we would still continue to endorse and fully support the increase in the age of consent, which is still within the range of childhood.
Senator Stratton: It is interesting to hear your perspectives on this subject. I do not have much to add except to say that this bill is really about condemning adult sexual behaviour and not the youth. This is not condemning the sexual behaviour of kids between the ages of 14 and 16. This is about sexual predators, straight and simple, with respect to age of consent.
With respect to sentencing, much of what was talked about is education, social concerns. Those are true but have nothing to do with this bill. This bill is about justice.
Ms. Costigan: You will have difficulty persuading youth, who understand that the age of consent to sexual activity will be raised from 14 years of age to 16 years of age, that the bill does not concern them. One will need a little persuasion in that regard, and in that regard I would hope that, as part of it, there would be a belief and an acceptance that it is in their best interest that this bill pass; not only to protect them from predators but also to allow them the freedom to grow up at least until the age of 16. At that age, they can decide upon the wisdom of sexual activity, given what can happen if one is promiscuous at a young age or an old age. To persuade them that it has nothing to do with them is a bit of a task.
Senator Stratton: I am not disagreeing with that. My point was that essentially 14- and 15-year-old kids will not be affected by this bill in that sense that they will go to jail if they have sex with one another at that age.
Ms. Costigan: I understand.
Senator Stratton: This bill tries to address the sexual predators that go after those kids at that age. There is a fundamental difference.
Ms. Costigan: Absolutely, and I believe that is clear in the bill.
Mr. Effer: That is our understanding of the age of consent portion of this legislation, hence, why we referred to it as an age of protection rather than an age of consent. We also recognize that the youth may view it as being something that would be constricting on their freedoms, but we firmly believe that this age of consent portion is really age of protection. Therefore, that is why we support this section of the bill. We hope our youth see the freedom this provision allows them and also addresses, as you say, the adult predators, the adult exploitation of youth and that our youth would see the positive side, that indeed this legislation is aimed at protecting them, not restricting their freedoms. I agree, yes.
Mr. Hutchinson: Ms. Costigan has touched on something that I have noticed in the testimony over the last several days; the question of education and how our young people feel, pure and simple. I am, as you can see, slightly removed from my high school years. I do recall, however, that it was clearly taught to us at that time that, as it was described, for a female of previously chaste character — under the age of 18 years at that time, and certainly it was at least the age of 16 years — to engage in sexual activity with an adult was illegal. It was something that we, as teenagers, were well aware of.
My daughter, on the other hand, is a bit closer to having completed high school. She is 20 years old, and she tells me — and certainly told me when she was a little younger — that what they started learning from grade 8, when she was 12 years old, was the age of consent for them to engage in sexual activity. They started learning that in health class. When she took an introduction to Canadian law course in grade 11, they were taught very clearly what the Criminal Code had to say about engaging in sexual activity. Her great concern expressed to me was, at 15 years of age, how I would feel if she came home with a 25-year-old boyfriend. As a parent, I was not too excited. Also as a parent, my answer to her was perhaps politically correct. I said, ``Honey, I would still love you, but I would feel very uncomfortable with the power imbalance, because a 25-year-old, even earning slightly more than minimum wage, seems to have a small fortune compared to a 15-year-old who is not working at all.''
On the education issue, our young people will find out in school what the law is fairly quickly. While there may be a small number who have great difficulty with the idea that they might have to give up older boyfriends or girlfriends, or fantasies about having older boyfriends or girlfriends, it will not be too long before our youth culture adjusts to understanding that the age of protection is set at 16 years of age.
Ms. Berzins: I could really understand that several of you have a particular section of the bill with which you agree. My concern is that you seem to be boxed into a situation, if I understand correctly, where you have to go for everything or nothing.
You are saying, no. Good, I am glad that I have misunderstood because that has been my understanding, that there could be no amendments. I find it difficult to accept all the negative aspects that will go along with the positive aspects that you are trying to accomplish. I have grave concerns about whether the positive aspects that you are accomplishing outweigh all the negative aspects that you will bring about at the same time.
Perhaps I have misunderstood the political reality of today. I hope so.
Senator Stratton: Thank you.
The Chair: I will not even go there.
Senator Ringuette: I welcome the comments made by Ms. Berzins, Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Effer in regard to the need to put more emphasis on rehabilitation for victims and offenders. That is the way to go.
We often hear from politicians and others in the business community that the best social program is a good economy. I also believe that the best justice program is having a good economy and a good social program. That speaks loudly, from my perspective, to what the three of you have to say.
I am somewhat concerned about Ms. Costigan's statement in regard to antipodes: One is protection from predators, and the other one, to quote you, is ``the desire of the Aboriginal people to elevate themselves.'' That speaks loudly to good economic policy and good social policy. It also speaks to the fact that if we White people had not been predators maybe we would not be facing the incarceration rate that we have in Aboriginal communities right now. If we had not put them on reserves, maybe they would have a better chance of having a good education, a better chance of exploiting their own natural resources and human resources. If we had not put them in a protective schools environment, perhaps there would not be as many Native offenders or Native people in jail.
Ms. Costigan, I took some offence from your comments, and I hope that some White people will elevate to the challenge facing our Aboriginal communities.
Thank you.
Ms. Costigan: Senator, in my early years in law, I worked very closely with the Native Canadian association in Toronto, and devoted a great deal of my time to the advancement of that association. My wish is that there could be a betterment of the conditions in which the Aboriginal people find themselves definitely.
The Chair: My first question would be to Mr. Hutchinson, Ms. Costigan and Mr. Effer, and it has to do with the existing section in the Criminal Code that deals with the sexual exploitation of young persons.
This was only adopted two and a half years ago. That is not a very long time for a new section of the Criminal Code to be used, to become familiar to the police, Crown and courts, and for us, collectively as a society, to figure out what difference it has made.
On what basis do you believe — because I gather you do all believe — that that section of the Criminal Code is not sufficient, and that we need to pass this portion of Bill C-2?
Mr. Hutchinson: The difficulty with the sexual exploitation section is attaining evidence to prove that there has been sexual exploitation. Some of that difficulty will be removed, certainly for those up to the age of 16 years, if this provision is passed.
You have Detective Sergeant Scanlan coming here on Monday; however, the reality I heard in the testimony during our appearance before the House of Commons committee was a very clear indication that sexual predators are prepared to take the time to groom their victims. The question of exploitation is removed from the table when the victim grants consent to engage in sexual activity.
As far as additional use of the exploitation section, that might be a question more appropriately addressed to the police in regard to their experience with the justice system. It is very difficult to adduce that type of evidence when a young person says, ``I have consented; I have these wonderful gifts that I am grateful for. I am not being exploited.''
The Chair: As I read that section, one would not have to be deterred by that.
Ms. Costigan: I agree with my friend that it is the evidentiary problem. One would have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that there was this situation of trust or dependency in order to succeed under this section. I agree with Mr. Hutchinson that it is not an easy duty to fulfil.
Mr. Effer: I do not have the expertise to comment on the judicial system. However, as both a parent and a person who has worked with youth in a variety of settings, our whole bent on advocating for an increase in the age of consent comes from a knowledge of the maturity level of youth in that age bracket. It is all over the board.
If we look at Canadian society in general, we will have youth in the 14-year-old range who are perhaps more mature than some of us. There are youth in the 16-year-old range who are less mature than a 12-year-old. Considering the maturity level of our youth in those age ranges, anything we can do to provide additional protection to them in those formative years of learning about what decisions and consequences are and about their right to say, yes or no, is a positive step forward. Anything we can do to help them in provision of Criminal Code language to give them that extra few years to gain maturity through the education system or through family education, and anything we can do to provide them with extra protection in that age range, we should do.
The Chair: This question will be for Ms. Berzins and Mr. Effer. The other two witnesses are welcome to pitch in, if they wish.
This is not about the age of consent. We have been told by just about everyone that passage of Bill C-2 will result in an increase in the population of prisons in Canada. There is some debate about how much of an increase, but a significant increase.
We have also been told repeatedly — and this goes to some of what you were talking about, Ms. Berzins — that simply warehousing people in prisons is not the way to go if we do not have proper programs to support, counsel and re-equip them for re-entry into society at large.
What we have been told about the programs is perhaps a little hard for me, at any rate, to settle into a coherent picture in my mind. On one hand, we have been told that Canada's programs for prisoners are respected around the world; they are viewed as among the best there are. Other people come here to find out what we do. It was quite obvious to me when we had witnesses from Correctional Service Canada that there was real pride in the dedication to try to get it right and do the right thing by the Canadians in their custody.
We have also been told that the budget for the programs has been dropping, that the programs are inadequate on a number of grounds, that they are not available in maximum security institutions — which is where one might imagine they would be most needed — and that the programs are inadequate or non-existent for Aboriginals in particular and possibly also for members of other minorities.
We heard some very interesting testimony yesterday to the effect that — and again, I believe, this morning — the existing programs do not take into account a wide range of physiological problems: everything from attention deficit disorder to neurological problems, brain injury and all types of conditions.
I am not quite sure where the truth may lie, but if we are about to pass a law that will result in more people being sent to prison, I would like to have a greater understanding of what people who have experience on the ground feel is happening now and is likely to happen.
That is why I put it to you because it is clear that you had experience in this, Ms. Berzins, and the Salvation Army also does a great deal of work with the people who will be affected most by this bill. Can you help to clarify those matters?
Ms. Berzins: Good programs have been developed by very competent researchers, who have done their work very competently. Access to them, as you have already said, is very difficult. For a number of reasons related to the prison environment, bureaucracy and administration context, there are many offenders who do not access these programs in the way that our common sense would tell us should happen and in a way that would make it safe in the community.
The researchers who we have consulted with, some of whom developed these very programs, have always said that they are able to do them effectively in prison, but that is despite prison. They are far more effective when delivered in the community. The fact that there are good programs in prison is no reason to put someone in that environment when the same can be done cheaper and more effectively with a managed situation that is much more community-based.
That is very important. It would be important to get some good estimates of just what the impact will be on this because all your intuitive predictions are probably bang on.
The Chair: We have been trying to get those estimates, but they are fragmentary as best.
Ms. Berzins: That to me speaks of a lack of accountability and transparency on the part of government.
Mr. Effer: When you refer to the variety of people in the prison system and the difficulty of providing them with successful programs for rehabilitation speaks purely to the individuality of people in general.
Rehabilitation is not a cookie-cutter approach. That would deny the individuality and personality of each of us. There is no doubt that in the variety of professionally developed and tested treatment programs that exist, there are success rates in a variety of situations.
In our presentation today, I indicated that we believe Bill C-2 should be amended pending that further research into the efficacy and costs of additional and lengthier incarceration rates and pending government support for the implementation and support of early opportunities for treatment.
It is not in the best interests of this country or the people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law that we just drive full steam ahead and assume that incarceration rates, which have been shown not to be a successful deterrent for future criminal behaviour of people, should be increased. Economy alone is a negative rationale for moving forward with increased incarceration rates; just the sustainability of funding for the system.
From our perspective in dealing with the population that needs rehabilitation, again, whether it is in the prison system or upon removal from the prison system, early intervention is an absolute necessity. This committee should wholeheartedly look at an amendment of this legislation that would say that we need more research into the efficacy of treatment programs and the sustainability of the proposals with respect to greater incarceration rates.
Ms. Berzins: With respect to the age-of-protection provision, we should have a reality check here. I understand fully the sentiments that would want to protect children at a different age of maturation. However, the reality is that the legal process does not offer protection; the reality is that the victim who we are trying to protect will go through a courtroom cross-examination that will be so traumatic that if she or he was not traumatized by the offence in the first place, she or he definitely will be after that. We need to remember that that is the way it works. If it really protects, yes, we are all in favour. However, that tool does not work that way.
The Chair: It is not easy to protect your children against broken hearts and broken lives, is it?
Ms. Berzins: No, but I do believe that when parents discover what their children will go through in court, many parents will not want to have them put through that process. You will find many people not disclosing what has happened.
The Chair: I thank you all on behalf of the committee. We really appreciate the various perspectives that you have brought to us and are grateful for the time you have been willing to give us.
We now have the pleasure of welcoming, from the African Canadian Legal Clinic, Mr. Miller, a policy research lawyer with the clinic. He is here to talk about Bill C-2.
Richard Miller, Policy Research Lawyer, African Canadian Legal Clinic: Thank you very much for inviting me and, more importantly, the African Canadian Legal Clinic, who I represent, and, even wider than that, the African- Canadian community throughout Canada.
I will tell you a bit about the African Canadian Legal Clinic, ACLC. The African Canadian Legal Clinic is a specialty legal clinic under Ontario's legal aid system. We specialize in doing work dealing with systemic racism and discrimination in the province of Ontario. Much of our work involves test case litigation, and we have appeared before all levels of court, up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The ACLC plays major role in monitoring legislation and engaging in advocacy and legal education, with a primary focus aimed at eliminating racism and, in particular, anti-Black racism. Clearly, in this instance, criminal law issues and racism and discrimination in the justice system are central to the ACLC's mandate. That is one of the primary reasons I am here with you today.
The African Canadian Legal Clinic is pleased to have the opportunity to make submissions on Bill C-2. In particular, I will speak about the issue of gun violence in the African-Canadian community and then look at the importance of setting up clear and effective strategies to address the problem. Recognizing the problems with gun violence in the community, the community has specifically called for strategies to address the root causes of gun crime, with a focus on preventing gun crime rather than on punishment.
The ACLC's submission is that the proposed Criminal Code amendments will not be effective because they fail to address the complexity of the problem of illegal guns. The African Canadian Legal Clinic submits that the proposed amendments will not be effective in this instance.
Under the category of mandatory minimums, first, I will discuss the loss of judicial discretion and the transfer of discretion to police and prosecutors; second, the removal of persons for extended periods from families and communities; and third, the loss of safety in communities.
I will then address the other issue, the reverse onus. Under this particular area, I will look at the creation of an added barrier for African-Canadians and the importance of due process.
There is no dispute that there is systemic racism in Canada. A simple quote from the R. v. Spence decision from the Supreme Court of Canada illustrates this. The Supreme Court of Canada said:
Racism, and in particular anti-black racism, is a part of our community's psyche. A significant segment of our community holds overtly racist views. A much larger segment subconsciously operates on the basis of negative racial stereotypes. Furthermore, our institutions, including the criminal justice system, reflect and perpetuate those negative stereotypes.
When we are looking at the impact of mandatory minimums for firearms offences on African-Canadians, there are many reports that have already addressed systemic racism in the justice system. There have been reports from Ontario, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Alberta. Mandatory minimums for firearm offences will increase disproportionate representation of African-Canadians in penal institutions. As a result, African-Canadians will be further marginalized in Canadian society and face greater inequality.
When we look at these types of issues, I want to elaborate on the importance of stereotypes. Stereotypes affect decision making at various points in the criminal justice system, resulting in racialized peoples, such as African- Canadians, being more likely to be stopped, arrested, charged, denied bail, convicted, denied parole and even being subject to community-based sanctions. Mandatory minimum sentences will exacerbate this problem by shifting the discretion from judges to police and prosecutors.
In considering police discretion, we must to look at the phenomenon of racial profiling. Many studies have been done on this issue. One done in Kingston, Ontario by Scott Wortley found that Blacks were stopped at least three times more than Whites. Many studies have been done on this, and case law shows that this phenomenon is a significant problem.
Federal incarceration rates of African-Canadians are three times higher than for Whites and over nine times higher than for Asians. African-Canadians represent over 6 per cent of the federal prison population, although they comprise only approximately 2 per cent of the Canadian population.
Furthermore, the Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System found that African-Canadians are most overrepresented among inmates charged with weapons possession, among other offences. Given these facts, it is extremely likely that mandatory minimum prison sentences will only increase these numbers, making the problem of disproportionate incarceration rates significantly worse.
Prosecutors are a major issue with the mandatory minimum situation and the transfer of discretion. Many African- Canadians are likely to avoid the possibility of a hasher mandatory minimum sentence by plea bargaining with prosecutors. This part of the system clearly lacks transparency. Individuals who are innocent or less culpable may plead out in order to avoid hasher mandatory minimum sentences. They may well have been a victim of racial profiling or some other form of racial discrimination in the system. The only way to critique issues such as this is before a court of law. When someone pleads out, a judge does not hear the evidence and cannot look at the issues that led to the arrest and the detainment of the individual.
Judges will not be able to consider the unique circumstances of an African-Canadian accused. The judge may want to look at issues of extreme poverty, or perhaps the accused was a ward of the state. More important, the judge will not be able to consider specific facts or the individual's role in an offence if he or she is constricted by a mandatory minimum sentence.
A major concern is that many African-Canadians are on the lower rung of many criminal enterprises. However, with mandatory minimums, they are just as vulnerable, if not more so, than those higher up, because they may not have enough information to get a good plea deal from a Crown prosecutor. We need to consider that reality.
Finally, due to lower socio-economic status and rampant poverty, African-Canadians often cannot afford to access the best or even competent counsel to assist them in defending their interests or with a proper plea bargain.
Mandatory minimum sentences are problematic for a number of other reasons as well. The impact on African- Canadian families and the African-Canadian community is a major problem. With the incarceration of an African- Canadian male under a mandatory minimum sentence, which will be much longer, women will lose a partner and a child will lose a father and a male role model. Poverty among African-Canadians is more than three times the average for White Canadians. A 2006 study by Michael Ornstein found that, in Toronto, 10.6 per cent of White families live below the low-income cut-off compared to 36 per cent of African-Canadians. This shows the financial impact that the incarceration of even one member of that family will have. With mandatory minimum sentences, where there is no discretion, it will be much longer before these people will be back with their families and in the community making contributions.
There is significant gross overrepresentation of African-Canadian women in the justice system as well. African- Canadian women represent 2.3 per cent of the Canadian population, but 7.6 per cent of the female prison population. Ninety per cent of single-parent households are headed by Black women, and just over 55 per cent of Black children live below the poverty line. Therefore, when a Black woman is incarcerated under a mandatory minimum sentence, the impact is felt again. A child may have to be placed in foster care. The woman's income is lost, and there are many impacts on the dignity of those individuals.
We must ask whether mandatory minimum sentences will have a disproportionate impact on the African-Canadian community, be it the males or the females. Both of these groups are already significantly overrepresented in our prisons.
Community cohesion and stability is lost when there is overincarceration of African-Canadians. A number of American studies have found that in communities where there are higher levels of incarceration, the levels of crime increased and remained persistently high over a period of time. This does not support a hypothesis that incarceration causes crime, but it may support the view that major incarceration contributes to a community's decline. This is another factor that the African-Canadian community will face as a result of mandatory minimum sentences. There is already significant overrepresentation, and with this many individuals will be imprisoned without the opportunity for a judge to lower sentences under appropriate circumstances.
Another impact of mandatory minimum sentences is overall safety. These sentences will result in the incarceration of many African-Canadians for a longer period of time, during which they will be exposed to hardened criminal elements. When these individuals come back into the community, they will be lacking job skills and education. A criminal record significantly impacts the ability to obtain employment and, having been exposed to significant criminal elements, they will have a high likelihood of re-offending. That is very much a concern in terms of whether it is in the interest of safety to these communities to be incarcerating these many African-Canadians for a longer period of time.
With respect to the reverse onus on bail for firearms offences, the clear point here is that this in conjunction with mandatory minimum sentences will increase the disproportionate representation of African-Canadians in penal institutions. They already experience significant racial inequality in bail decisions. African-Canadian accused are more likely to be denied bail and help pending trial, with numbers of 30 per cent compared to 23 per cent of Whites accused. That is from the Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System.
Reverse onus places an added barrier in front of African-Canadian accused. We already have statistics that say that they are more likely to be held. It is known that a reverse onus is a much harder threshold to get around. This added barrier to African-Canadians can potentially result in, again, higher probability of overrepresentation with respect to incarceration.
The second point on reverse onus is that accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Clearly, there is an issue with due process here. When we look at African-Canadian accused, we must consider the equality provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. African-Canadians who are disproportionately denied bail relative to other accused must be afforded adequate protections. Reverse onus in these situations must be informed by the reality of the African-Canadian accused and the fact that they are disproportionately denied bail. Not to do so would essentially try to look at this reverse onus provision in a vacuum. Quite frankly, that is in violation of the equality provisions.
When we look at all of these situations, based on this, the ACLC recommends the following: first, the Criminal Code amendments proposed in Bill C-2 pertaining to mandatory minimum sentences and reverse onus on bail not be enacted; second, if the Criminal Code amendments proposed by Bill C-2 pertaining to mandatory minimum sentences and reverse onus on bail are enacted, with respect to mandatory minimum sentences, the amendments must include an escape clause giving judges the discretion to decline to impose a mandatory minimum sentence when, in their opinion, it is contrary to the interest of justice; third, the federal government provide substantial funding for community-based programs for young adults and, in particular, young African-Canadian males between the ages of 18 and 24 who are especially vulnerable to participation in either gang activity or other criminal activity; fourth, the federal government retain the Canadian firearms registry in its entirety; fifth, the federal government immediately implement effective strategies to control and reduce the flow of illegal guns across the Canadian and United States border; sixth, the federal government hold gun manufacturers accountable and prosecute manufacturers, where necessary, for negligent marketing and sale of firearms; seventh, the federal government study and report on the impact of mandatory minimum sentences and reverse onus on bail within three years of the implementation of the legislation, if it is, in fact, implemented.
For African-Canadians, systemic racism in the criminal justice system is a reality. The adoption of new and harsher mandatory minimum sentences will only serve to exacerbate the inequality and further marginalize African-Canadians by increasing disproportionate representation in prisons and weakening social bonds in these communities.
The government must work on strategies and policies which help to eliminate systemic racism in the criminal justice system, not promote it.
It is clear that a multi-faceted approach is necessary in this instance, and we need to address the root causes of gun violence. Measures, such as limiting the illegal flow of guns across borders, can be helpful. Mandatory minimum sentences are not the answer.
I deliberately focused on the impact of this legislation on African-Canadian communities. You must have heard from many others, and there is an abundance of research that says that mandatory minimum sentences do not deter and do not result in selective incapacitation.
At the end of the day, when you are looking at this, you also need to consider the equality provisions and the fact that we will end up discriminating against a group that has already been significantly marginalized in Canadian society.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Miller.
Senator Cowan: I hope that Senator Oliver will have a chance to ask some questions because he has spoken very eloquently on this issue many times in the Senate and outside. I am sure he and Mr. Miller will be able to exchange some views on that.
I want to have clarification. As I was making notes of what you were saying, I missed this point. I heard the statistics about Blacks being 6 per cent of the prison population and 2 per cent of the wider population. You then mentioned African-Canadian women. I believe they are 7.1 per cent of the population or something similar.
Mr. Miller: They constitute 2.3 per cent of the Canadian population.
Senator Cowan: Do they represent 7.6 per cent of the prison population?
Mr. Miller: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Cowan: Were the numbers of 6 per cent and 2 per cent men and women?
Mr. Miller: Yes, the 6 per cent and 2 per cent were the wider perspective. I went down on the microscale to focus on the impact on African-Canadians.
Senator Cowan: Did you say that 90 per cent of the single-parent families in this country were led by Black women?
Mr. Miller: Yes, that is the figure.
Senator Cowan: That is an astounding figure. You said 90 per cent in this country. Is that correct?
Mr. Miller: Blacks are shouldering the burden with 90 per cent single-parent households, but in the Black community.
Senator Cowan: Oh, it is 90 per cent of Black households.
The Chair: Do you know the trend in the disproportion of African-Canadian inmates as compared to all other inmates? I ask this because we have heard that for Aboriginals, who, we are told, are also overrepresented, it is getting worse, although I do not have the charts. Do you know if it is getting worse for African-Canadians?
Mr. Miller: I do not have any definitive statistics, although the inference would be, with the focus on guns and gangs, that it is getting worse. The inference for that is drawn from the situation south of the border in the United States with the problems they have there and in other jurisdictions. However, I do not have any exact statistics on that point.
The Chair: Do you happen to know the proportion of people who have been designated ``dangerous offenders'' who are Black?
Mr. Miller: I do not have those statistics.
The Chair: Maybe there are none.
Senator Merchant: I worked with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for six years, so I am aware of the systemic racism that exists in our society.
Once one is within the prison population, there is much violence. Do you know whether systemic racism is a factor there? Have you any statistics at all as to what happens to Black inmates in jail?
Mr. Miller: I do not have those statistics with me, although the African Canadian Legal Clinic would have access to those. I do not want to stray into too much anecdotal information, but racism is clearly an issue within the prisons. Often it is far more direct in those instances, such as slurs and harassment of African-Canadian inmates and so on.
Senator Merchant: Violence also exists in prison. Is that right?
Mr. Miller: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Merchant: I was just wondering if you had any statistics at all.
Mr. Miller: I do not have any with me.
Senator Oliver: Thank you very much for your presentation. I found it articulate, clear and very revealing.
It was important that you come here because we have had a number of witnesses from various groups and organizations talk about the overrepresentation of Aboriginal Canadians in the criminal system; those who are incarcerated. When I asked many of those witnesses about the position of Blacks or visible minorities, they had no statistics or numbers and did not even know there was, in fact, an overrepresentation of Blacks in the prison system in Canada. I am delighted that someone with your clarity and objectivity could come and present the figures and facts to us in a very persuasive way. Thank you very much for that.
A number of the factors that you spoke about, which are the result of the incarceration of Black men, relate to the effects on families, children and on the communities and so on. However, a number of those, if they relate to education, health care and social services, are really very much a provincial matter rather than a federal matter or a matter for federal legislation.
You are saying that there are provisions of Bill C-2 that are in federal legislation that could impact negatively on some of these factors. Notwithstanding that, I would like to know whether or not you and your organization have been doing any work with the Province of Ontario as far as providing more support in the areas of health, social services and education?
Mr. Miller: The African Canadian Legal Clinic has a program, the African Canadian Youth Justice Program that assists young African-Canadian offenders in navigating the justice system. There are reintegration social workers who assist them in that regard, and there are actually court workers as well.
Frequently, we find that many African-Canadians do not know where to go to fill out forms, how bail works, et cetera. Once in the justice system, they do not know how to deal with those elements. Often, a court worker from the African Canadian Youth Justice Program can answer some of those questions and ensure that they are able to get a lawyer who understands some of the unique circumstances of an African-Canadian accused and some of the difficulties there.
Hopefully, that answers part of your question, in a broader sense, about social services and education. The court workers in that program and to a lesser extent the reintegration workers do make efforts to assist in that. The goal there is obviously rehabilitation and also preventive measures to ensure that minor interactions with the law do not eventually result in larger problems down the road.
Senator Oliver: Senator Fraser asked you for statistics about violent offenders who are Black and in prison now, and you did not have that number. Could you make a check somewhere and see if you could find out those numbers for us?
Mr. Miller: I certainly will.
Senator Oliver: I would be particularly interested to know, as well, the percentage of Black inmates in jails and prisons in Toronto and their representative numbers.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Oliver. Actually, I had asked for the statistics on dangerous offenders, those who have actually been designated. However, violent offenders would be interesting as well. If you could take queries for both of us on board, that would be a good.
Senator Campbell: You have testified that there is a clear correlation between the deterioration of Black families and communities with incarceration of either one or two of the adults in a family, or both of them. Is that correct?
Mr. Miller: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Campbell: Would this be in keeping with what we already know from looking at the experience in the United States?
Mr. Miller: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Campbell: My concern is that, currently, we are at a rate of 300 per cent higher incarceration rates for a Black male and about the same for a Black female versus a Caucasian in this country. My biggest worry is that we somehow reach the level of the United States, which is at 6.2 times or 600 per cent higher versus Caucasians.
Instead of incarceration, what steps can we immediately take to deal with the violence we see within the Black community? I would like to preface that by saying that I am from Vancouver, and I see the same violence in the Indo- Canadian community involving young men of the same ages with guns. I do not know the answer to this. Perhaps you have some way that we could deal with this other than incarceration.
Mr. Miller: Often many of the social programs that are set up to assist in reducing violence in the communities are effective. Although when I use the term ``social programs,'' I would really like to add that often these programs today are very culturally specific in the sense that many of the people working with young African-Canadians are African- Canadian themselves, or there is an effort to inform them about their history and make it relevant for them. You must have heard that a cookie-cutter approach never works.
In ACLC's view, part of the way to cut down on the immediate violence is to look at a variety of different programs in these communities that are culturally specific and culturally relevant for them. I believe that would go a long way.
Part of the difficulty is that, when we look at the history in this country, there has not been as much research and effort to do that until recently. Fortunately, research with the Aboriginal and First Nations communities have been very helpful in assisting them reach the level of preventing many of these issues and getting to the culturally-specific needs of that community.
In ACLC's experience, that is something only now emerging for the African-Canadian community. We would certainly submit that more of that is needed, not only the programs but more efforts to get that research done and to ask people what works.
I know about the African Canadian Legal Clinic, and I do not want to digress from it. We have a youth advisory committee, and no one on that committee is over the age of 25. These are young people in the communities who know what works and what does not work for them.
I could not even pretend to tell you exactly what will work for someone who is 16 years old in that sort of situation. However, I know that those are some of the real, practical and effective ways to begin curbing the violence we see in these communities.
Senator Campbell: Has any consideration been given to, perhaps, mentorships and positive role models? I offer Senator Oliver as an example of a positive role model. Is there any or has there been consideration of that aspect?
Mr. Miller: In the ACLC's experience, there has been and is consideration of that. We are dealing with a lack of funding for many of these programs. The mentorship and the positive role models that will often meet with young African-Canadians to assist them with homework, or sometimes just to do something in leisure, et cetera, are programs that do not have enough funding to be in operation for a 10-year period. Programs run for two years and then run out of funding.
The funding is very sporadic. Often with these systems and programs, we apply by way of grant. Therefore, we get a grant for the program, it works for two years and then we have to reapply. However, now, unfortunately, the priorities have changed by the granting organizations, so we no longer receive that funding, and the program falls by the wayside.
In ACLC's experience, that seems to be a big part of the problem. Therefore, in answer to your first question, yes, that has been tried and is currently being done, but the consistent funding, quite frankly, is just not there.
Senator Campbell: After Senator Stratton mentioned the Maclean's article on Dan Hill yesterday, I went and read it. It is quite horrifying. It is tragic that people find themselves in that position.
Senator Andreychuk: Following up on Senator Campbell's question — which I believe is an important issue we have to deal with here — am I correct that you have come today and have pointed out the situation of your constituency in Canada? You are saying that there is not enough research and that we are not factoring it in, that there is racism, lack of attention and lack of treatment. Are your comments about the justice system as a whole, not particular Criminal Code sections? It is how justice is applied, in your opinion, to African-Canadians.
Mr. Miller: My submissions were a bit more focused hopefully on the impact on the mandatory minimum sentences. It is generally understood that there is systemic racism against African-Canadians present within the Canadian criminal justice system. Numerous reports in addition to the Supreme Court have said that.
Today's focus was to say that these mandatory minimum sentences will only result in further inequality, discrimination and marginalization of African-Canadians by increasing the numbers of African-Canadians entering the criminal justice system and, therefore, create a further disproportionate number of African-Canadians within the Canadian penal system.
Senator Andreychuk: The mandatory sentences being proposed in the bill that we are studying is increasing some of the levels, but mandatory sentences were put in place before, and particularly in the 1990s. Do you have any statistics on those and how they may have impacted the community?
Mr. Miller: I do not have any specific statistics on how those impacted on the community. We already see the disproportionate number of African-Canadians within the justice system, and we have the statistics from the Ontario commission on incarceration for weapons offences, et cetera.
I would hope that in some ways without the statistics — which is sometimes because some of the research might not have been done — we can still draw, if not an inference, then an educated guess or a hypothesis that something is amiss.
Senator Andreychuk: Senator Campbell touched on the article in Maclean's and pointed out the violence there. On that issue, you are talking about mandatory sentences, but you have not made any comment. If we have repeat violent offenders, irrespective of who they are and where they come from, and if the rest of the system has failed to avert them or perhaps we have not given the attention to them that we should, we end up with repeat violent offenders — 90 per cent of them we are told are sexual cases — where they repeat victim after victim.
Given that you are saying that it hits your community disproportionately, what would your answer be for those from your community who are repeat violent offenders today? I am not speaking about the ones that we could prevent, but the ones that are already at the point where the courts and the communities have to deal with them as repeat and violent.
Mr. Miller: In those instances, first, part of the focus has been to emphasize, again as a starting point, the anti-Black racism present within the criminal justice system and to look at the decisions of police to stop and charge these individuals, which introduces them into the system, where they are incarcerated and exposed to a situation that is even more severe before being released again. The hope is that there would be other options for those who are repeat offenders in an attempt to curb that behaviour.
With African-Canadian communities, or quite frankly any other community, clearly the solution is not just another reincarceration because that will not deter or incapacitate that individual, or deter anyone else seeing that individual's situation. We, as a country, have to try something different to curb that because we know that if we lock them up again, it will not do anything.
Senator Andreychuk: That justification would apply to all repeat and violent offenders, had we done something earlier.
Within every community, we have to deal with repeat and violent offenders for the safety of the public, for the fact that we should not make innocent people more vulnerable than they need to be. There is a risk we take in dealing with offenders, and we weigh their rights and responsibilities. However, equally, we have to look at the rest of the justice system.
Are you saying that if we stop today, there will be some repeat and violent offenders who we simply do not know how to deal with? What do we do with them, if it is not the answer that continuous governments have struggled with on violent and repeat offenders?
Mr. Miller: Again, for the African-Canadian community, we always try to pull it back to what is happening in some of these situations, whether it is racial profiling or stereotypes that caused people to be introduced into the justice system; and now they are out and known to police, so it becomes a vicious cycle.
The focus of these provisions in the bill is not to introduce abject poverty and racialization of poverty, so I will not go there. I want to make sure that was clear in terms of what is happening to the community when it starts in that vicious cycle.
The decision of what to do with repeat and violent offenders is a challenge for legislators and the country. The option to lock them up is not doing anything for us. Maybe it means we need a combination of programs: lock-up, but during that time, have culturally specific programs to assist, then deal with release within the community. That is not my area of specialty, to know all of the different options.
We do know that, for African-Canadians, a big part of the problem is the introduction into the justice system, which stems from systemic racism at the outset; and that deterrence and incapacitation through lock-up, in this country and south of the border, has not worked.
To go back and try that again will get us back here in another few years saying: What will we do?
Senator Andreychuk: You gave us some startling statistics. About 90 per cent, you say, of the households, are single- parent households.
Mr. Miller: No, it is 90 per cent of single-parent households in the Black community are headed by Black women.
Senator Andreychuk: Understanding the load that those women must carry — looking after their children, themselves and all of that — is startling to me. I knew it was high, but I did not know it was that high.
If you have an actual statistic on that, it would be helpful — not just with this but with other issues.
I am familiar with Toronto and the community. There are some good and positive signs within the community of what is happening to deal with these issues. Can you give us some of those so that we have some idea of how the community is helping itself, other than awareness by your coming here today? What are some of the programs? Toronto was seized with violence in the last couple of years. We have heard of leaders coming forward to say that they have a part to play in solving this.
It would be good to have those on the record from your perspective.
Mr. Miller: I just want to clarify; statistics on which programs?
Senator Andreychuk: You are involved with young people in delinquency situations or who have difficulty in school or who may be involved with arms and gangs, et cetera.
What are some of the new initiatives coming out of the community to address these? I know they are there.
Mr. Miller: I can speak most accurately about the African Canadian Legal Clinic programs. As I mentioned earlier, the African Canadian Youth Justice Program has court workers and reintegration workers who work with young accused — some have not been convicted — to understand the situation and ensure they have proper lawyers. There are also those who, once they have been convicted or have extrajudicial sanctions, EJS, a reintegration social worker will work with them to find out what the issues are and assist them to ensure they become productive members of society.
The key with those social workers is that they listen to them and are actually saying, ``Okay, you and me, we are similar, and this is what is happening.''
The African Canadian Legal Clinic has another program called the African Canadian Justice Program, which works with adults with minor offences. There are a variety of programs that assist with reintegration, informing people about victims' rights, what happened in those instances, measures they can take to improve their situation and why situations happened the way they did.
That program is a bit smaller than the African Canadian Youth Justice Program, which has court workers and reintegration workers. The programs are very much culturally specific. The message is to not be ashamed of their history: There was slavery here, understand these things, and here is your history.
It is giving people something that often they might not have in school, instilling a sense of self-worth in many instances. Some programs they might not understand because they are not relevant to them. I hope I have answered your questions.
There are other programs. However, I would not want to misspeak, so I speak only about the programs I know the clinic is running.
The Chair: Mr. Miller, do you feel that Bill C-2 is constitutionally sound, or is it open to Charter challenges?
Mr. Miller: From what I have read in the media from a variety of criminal lawyers, I know it will be challenged. In particular, criminal lawyers will likely be lining up to test the reverse onus provisions.
Much has been said of the Supreme Court and the reverse onus for the drug offence a number of years ago and the fact that that upheld constitutional scrutiny. I am not necessarily convinced that with a second go around, with the right set of circumstances and the right facts, it will hold up this time.
When ACLC does its test case litigation, much of our work is Charter, and we utilize section 15 to its fullest extent.
As I alluded to in the reverse onus, in many instances for an African-Canadian accused, we might be looking at equality provisions, due process and consideration of the fact that disproportionately African-Canadians are denied bail, and whether there needs to be a consideration of section 15 in that analysis.
In a word, it is hard to say. I know lawyers will try.
The Chair: What else do they do?
Mr. Miller: It depends on the facts of each particular case and on who the particular judge is in that instance. As we all know, a case such as that will be appealed right to the top.
It will be challenged, and, with the right facts, there could be some changes.
The Chair: We have talked in depth — not just with you but with many other witnesses — about core programming in prisons, post-release programming and other programming. There is some programming for African-Canadians in the prison system; however, I do not know how good, effective or widespread it is. Can you give me any better fix on the reality of that?
In addition, it occurs to me that, as you said, there are no cookie-cutter solutions, and the Black population of Canada is as close to being diverse as the whole population of Canada. Comparing someone who came here last year from Haiti, a Muslim from Northern Nigeria and a member of one of the traditional Canadian Black communities that has been here for 200 years or more, how can you have a program that will address the specific cultural needs? You talked about a specific cultural program that will address all of that. What do you do? This is a population that does have special needs. I am trying to wrap my mind around how much we can realistically expect the correctional services to address those needs effectively.
Mr. Miller: With respect to the extent of the programs available, as matter of fact, one of my colleagues made a presentation to the corrections panel a number of months ago. Although I cannot comment on it because that area is not within my immediate knowledge, I do know that the African Canadian Legal Clinic does have information on what is being done on that. It is back at my office.
Concerning the second question, I wholeheartedly agree with you. The African-Canadian community is not monolithic. There are many people from the diaspora. Part of the understanding, especially when we look at systemic racism and what is happening with issues of racial profiling and Crown discretion, at the end of the day everyone is just seeing them as Black, no matter what. No one is asking, ``Are you from Nigeria or are you from here?'' It is as if they are saying, ``Your skin is black, you might have caused a problem.''
Having said that, there is the need for many different members of the community, who are interested in corrections, to come together and have a working group to develop strategies on that. In some of the work that ACLC does, the focus is on the fact that the diaspora is here and a common history; there is the slavery legacy, but there is also more about a history that African-Canadians know. Sometimes African-Canadians, although from different parts of the world, have a common experience when it comes to their interaction with the criminal justice system. I am quite certain — and I will go out on a limb on this — that if we speak to people they may say, ``I do not speak your language, but the last time I walked down the street, that happened to me.''
The crux of some of these programs is to look at the treatment people from the diaspora have faced and find that common base to try to work it out from there. As you mentioned many times, we need people with different languages so that we can speak and communicate effectively. When we start doing this on a concerted, consistent and committed basis, we really will need to have a working group to begin pulling out some of those issues because the African- Canadian community is not monolithic.
The Chair: In particular, I would like to thank you for your infinite patience with our varying timetable. Not all senators may realize that Mr. Miller had his time of meeting with us bounced around. He has been infinitely cooperative in meeting our requirements. We thank you for that as well as for your extremely interesting, helpful and informative presentation.
Senator Oliver: Before you adjourn, might I ask about witnesses for Monday? Will we be getting that list?
The Chair: I thought that list had been provided to you yesterday. We are expecting to hear from the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness, the Toronto Police Service, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. It will be a full day.
Senator Oliver: At the end of the day, will we be moving to clause-by-clause study?
The Chair: The Steering Committee has not met, but I would be surprised if we did that at the end of such a long day on Monday. It has normally been my practice in committee not to go immediately from witnesses to clause-by-clause consideration.
Senator Oliver: Tuesday at 10 a.m., is that the plan?
The Chair: The steering committee has not met, but that is obviously an option that is open to us, which we will be looking at.
Senator Oliver: Okay. That is good.
The Chair: Perhaps we could allow Mr. Miller to leave at this point. If we are getting into committee future business, that is something that is usually discussed in camera.
Senator Stratton: For the record, we have now heard from 47 witnesses. With Monday, that will take us up to 55 witnesses. That completes the list that we had. I would expect that we would go to clause-by-clause consideration Tuesday at 10 a.m.
The Chair: You would, would you?
Senator Stratton: Yes, I would. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Stratton.
Colleagues, does anyone wish to raise any other points?
If not, then I thank you all. This has been three very intensive days and very helpful to all of us, I am sure.
The committee adjourned.