THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 20, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs met with videoconference this day at 11:31 a.m. [ET] to examine Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: I’m Senator Boisvenu from Quebec, and I have the pleasure of chairing this committee today.
[Translation]
I’d like to introduce the senators who are with us right now. Other senators will be arriving later.
[English]
Senator Francis: Senator Brian Francis, Prince Edward Island.
[Translation]
Senator Clement: Senator Bernadette Clement, Ontario.
Senator Dupuis: Renée Dupuis. I’m an independent senator from Quebec representing the Laurentides division.
[English]
Senator Pate: Senator Kim Pate, from here on the shores of the Kitchissippi, the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg, otherwise known as Ottawa, Ontario.
Senator Simons: Senator Paula Simons, Treaty 6 territory, Alberta.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I’m pleased to see that we have a majority of women in committee this morning.
Today we will continue considering Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
I will now go over instructions for the meeting again.
[English]
Witnesses, you have five minutes to present your testimony.
[Translation]
Senators will have four minutes for questions and answers.
I remind you to keep questions and answers short. If you don’t, it will cause frustration because I will have to interrupt. I therefore ask that you be disciplined when you speak.
A senator has just arrived. We will give him time to get seated and he can introduce himself.
Senator Dalphond: Senator Dalphond, Quebec.
The Deputy Chair: We now welcome our first witness, the Honourable Murray Sinclair.
You have the floor, Mr. Sinclair.
Hon. Murray Sinclair, former senator, as an individual: Thank you very much and good morning, everyone.
[English]
I am going to give my remarks in English, and you will tell me, of course, what the timing issue is for questions. I have provided written remarks to the interpreters, and a copy of them will be available to you as well afterwards.
In the aftermath of the horrific James Smith Cree Nation stabbings, members of that community are calling for treatment, healing, forgiveness, support, autonomy and prevention. They are not calling for harsher punishment or longer sentences. The people of the James Smith Cree Nation are painfully aware that the traumatic legacies of colonialism and residential schools are at the root of this kind of horrific event, and are exacerbated by the criminal legal system and the prisons it supports.
The community’s responses echo the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In Call to Action 21, we called upon the federal government to provide sustainable funding for existing and new Aboriginal healing centres to address the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual harms caused by residential schools. In Call to Action 35, we called upon the federal government to eliminate barriers to the creation of additional Aboriginal healing lodges for those who are criminalized. These Calls to Action are key to prevention and healing. The urgent need for these programs could not be clearer.
The federal government is taking steps toward acknowledging the devastating impacts of colonialism on Indigenous peoples in this country, and toward recognizing the importance of Indigenous perspectives in responding to those impacts. I have lauded the appointment of the Honourable Michelle O’Bonsawin, an Abenaki member of Odanak First Nation, to the Supreme Court of Canada as an important milestone. She brings deep knowledge to these issues, and hers will be an important voice. Her PhD thesis was on the topic of utilizing Gladue principles in dealing with cases involving the mental health of Indigenous people.
But we need many more Indigenous voices and perspectives, including many more Indigenous judges at every level of court. And all judges must be given the freedom to fully draw upon their histories and experience as they apply the laws of this country.
On this point, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, called upon the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to allow trial judges, upon giving reasons, to depart from mandatory minimum sentences and restrictions on the use of conditional sentences. That’s Call to Action 32. This recommendation has been widely supported by Indigenous and Black organizations, women’s groups and other expert bodies. Mandatory minimum sentences and the restrictions on conditional sentences are used more frequently and egregiously against Indigenous and racialized peoples, and have a much harsher impact on these groups.
Bill C-5 will be considered by the Senate in coming weeks. The government committed to repeal mandatory minimums, reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous and other racialized people in the criminal legal system and every cabinet minister is mandated to work toward reconciliation.
In its present form, Bill C-5 would repeal 20 of the mandatory minimum sentences currently in the Criminal Code — that is one third of them. The remaining mandatory minimum sentences would continue to restrict the freedom of trial judges to impose the sentence they think appropriate and warranted in the specific circumstances of the case and the individual before them.
As a strategy to reduce the overincarceration of Indigenous and Black peoples, Bill C-5 does not go nearly far enough. Indigenous women are now 50% of the female federal prison population and are a significant proportion of the women serving life sentences for responding to violence with their own lethal force — too often as a result of their efforts to defend themselves or others in their care.
The government has provided no data to justify its piecemeal approach to the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences, nor have they explained why they have rejected TRC Call to Action 32 with respect to the mandatory minimum sentences Bill C-5 leaves in place. I urge the government to reconsider and fully implement Call to Action 32. We need to move away from a simplistic, punitive, one-size-fits-all response, and we need to trust and allow our judges to do the job they have been appointed to do.
Thank you.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Mr. Sinclair.
We will now go to the next witness, Ms. Niman.
Go ahead, Ms. Niman.
[English]
Sarah Niman, Legal Counsel, Assistant Manager, Legal Services, Native Women’s Association of Canada:
Hello, honourable senators. I am Sarah Niman, Assistant Manager of Legal Services for the Native Women’s Association of Canada, or NWAC. NWAC’s head office is located on the traditional, unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. Meegwetch for inviting NWAC to appear today.
Canada’s laws have told Indigenous women disparaging stories about themselves. As Canada’s national organization responsible for advancing Indigenous women, girls, two-spirited, trans and gender-diverse people’s equality rights, NWAC hopes today’s submissions help shift the narrative. Honourable senators, as you study Bill C-5, NWAC hopes you will be alive to its possibilities to advance reconciliation.
Throughout colonization, Canada imposed laws that have told Indigenous women they were not equal. The Indian Act told Indigenous women their identities were not as valuable as Indigenous men’s when passing on lineage.
Canada’s laws told police they could threaten and jail Indigenous mothers who tried to protect their children from residential school. Canada’s laws told Indigenous women they were not good mothers and scooped up their children to be placed in non-Indigenous homes. Canada’s laws told Indigenous children they were not as worthy as other children when it underfunded Indigenous child and family services. Canada’s laws told the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls that their losses were not as important as other people’s.
Today, Canada is learning to do better and is committed to reconciling with Indigenous people. Canada’s promise extends to the laws it enacts and its relationship to Indigenous women. Canada said it would address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action. Canada also said it is committed to responding to the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ 231 Calls for Justice.
Indigenous women are working hard to reclaim their power and places. Today’s laws must value and treat Indigenous women with substantive — not formal — equality to make good on reconciliation’s promises.
Bill C-5 is an opportunity to apply reconciliation principles to criminal sentencing reform. Bill C-5 seeks to repeal some mandatory minimum sentences. Honourable senators, you heard from many witnesses who have described a failed “get tough on crime” experiment that perpetuates great harm against Indigenous women. The Office of the Correctional Investigator tells us they now account for more than half the federally sentenced women in prisons.
Bill C-5 addresses one way the law can shift this narrative. Instead of treating Indigenous women who commit crimes as bad guys, Bill C-5 empowers trial judges to meaningfully engage Gladue principles, and recognize that most of the Indigenous women who appear before them are, at first, victims before committing offences. As you study Bill C-5, the Supreme Court of Canada is preparing to issue its ruling on the Sharma case. This case addresses whether section 742.1 mandatory minimums are constitutional.
NWAC intervened in that case at both the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada levels. As we submitted in Sharma, repealing mandatory minimums promises to restore a more balanced approach to sentencing.
Section 718.2(e) — or the Gladue principles — advances substantive equality for Indigenous women. Breathing life back into the Gladue principles at sentencing also aligns with Canada’s promises to Indigenous people contained within the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — the domestic act and the international human rights treaty.
NWAC asks the Senate to be ambitious. We ask you to seek to repeal all mandatory minimum sentences, not just those addressed in Sharma and Bill C-5 because a piecemeal approach to repealing mandatory minimums dilutes their legal harm, but does not fix the situation.
Alternately, NWAC supports amending Criminal Code section 718.3 so judges can first consider alternatives to incarceration on the remaining mandatory minimum penalties. This is in alignment with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Call to Action 32.
NWAC sees mandatory minimums as creating two distinct harms. For one, they prevent trial judges from using their discretion to craft meaningful sentences that reflect an Indigenous’ woman’s full social context. This includes the criminal justice system’s own role in perpetuating her suffering. Second, mandatory minimum penalties close the door on Indigenous community-based conditional sentences. This infringes the right of Indigenous people to exercise their own customs, traditions, rules and legal systems. In other words, sentences that engage Gladue principles make legal space for Indigenous communities to engage restorative healing practices.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Niman, can you please wrap it up?
[English]
Ms. Niman: Yes. In other words, many of the Indigenous women coming out of federal prisons today are not coming out whole, healed or restored. The criminal justice system is failing them, and we ask you to do your part in remedying that harm.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. I now invite Ms. Webster and Ms. North to take the floor. Your presentations must be very concise because you need to share the five-minute period.
[English]
Cheryl Webster, Professor, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you for the kind invitation. I’ll be sharing my time with my former PhD student who has worked in the B.C. courts for 30 years and whose doctoral work focused on conditional sentences. On behalf of both of us, let me simply say that it’s an honour to be on the same panel as the Honourable Murray Sinclair.
We were very pleased to hear the minister describe this bill as part of a larger strategy to reduce the overrepresentation of marginalized groups in our prisons. Certainly, with respect to Indigenous overincarceration, the situation can no longer be described as simply a crisis. Rather, Mr. Rudin properly used the term “mass imprisonment” in his submission. While he stole my thunder by presenting data from Jane Sprott, Tony Doob and I, the magnitude of the problem bears repeating.
On the world stage, Canada’s overall imprisonment rate is low for most English-speaking nations. We’ve been celebrated internationally as one of the few countries able to maintain relatively stable imprisonment rates for over a half-century. But such celebrations are short-lived when we break down this overall rate by Indigenous status. In 2019, the non-Indigenous rate was 79; the Indigenous rate was 677. The magnitude of the difference is shameful, exceeding even that of the U.S. as the quintessential mass imprisonment nation in the world.
To say that the fulfilment of Bill C-5’s objective to reduce this mass imprisonment is urgent is a gross understatement. But here lies our concern. In reviewing government data on the potential impact of the repeal of the mandatory minimums in Bill C-5, the findings are not especially encouraging for Indigenous offenders in federal custody. While Black people might disproportionately benefit, the overrepresentation of Indigenous people appears unlikely to change as a result of this bill.
Clearly, getting rid of some mandatory minimums may well reduce imprisonment overall, but our estimates suggest that the relative overrepresentation of Indigenous people in our penitentiaries will not change.
While these findings suggest that a reduction in mandatory minimums may be at least a partial strategy for Black Canadians, it needs to be extended to provide an equal benefit for Indigenous people. As such, we encourage the Senate to amend the bill in one of two ways. One, repeal all mandatory minimums, thus ensuring the elimination of those which are, in fact, disproportionately impacting Indigenous peoples. This, then, would allow them to equally reap the intended benefits of the bill. Or, two, add an escape clause such that judges can use their discretion to determine the appropriate sentence for Indigenous offenders under section 718.2(e).
I’ll now turn to my colleague to discuss conditional sentences.
Dawn North, PhD graduate, as an individual: We were equally pleased to see that the Minister of Justice is proposing the removal of the restrictions that have limited the availability of conditional sentences. My research suggests that judges will indeed welcome this change. Many spoke of the need to have more tools in the toolbox so that they could craft individualized orders that respected the principles of restraint and proportionality, and allowed them to comply with the direction of section 718.2(e).
This measure is likely to reduce overall admissions to provincial prisons, and there is value in that. Notably, however, research suggests that the populations targeted by Bill C-5 will not experience a proportionate benefit, in part due to concerns around their ability to comply with the onerous conditions of the typical conditional sentence, and partly because appropriate community supports are not consistently available. As such, this reform will probably have a greater impact on non-targeted populations.
We would offer two additional cautions. First, this legislation assumes that lifting restrictions will unleash the full potential of conditional sentences as prison alternatives, while ignoring multiple evaluations that suggest that even when broadly available, the sanction struggled to have a meaningful impact on incarceration rates. Unless the challenges of conditional sentencing are addressed, there is little reason to believe that the sanction will now contribute to significant prison reduction, especially for Indigenous peoples.
Second, the lifting of restrictions should be accompanied by a sustained public education effort and trigger a review of conditional sentences in terms of their purpose and value. Ideally, the latter would occur within the context of a broader review of sentencing policy and principles.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. North.
I now invite Mr. Hrick to take the floor.
[English]
Pam Hrick, Executive Director and General Counsel, Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund: Good morning. My name is Pam Hrick, and I am the Executive Director and General Counsel of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, also known as LEAF. I am grateful to appear before you today from Toronto, or Tkaronto, which is within the lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt covenant. LEAF is a national charitable organization that advocates for the substantive equality of all women, girls, trans and non-binary people. We do this through litigation, law reform and public legal education that is feminist and intersectional.
We applaud the government for putting forward Bill C-5. We know mandatory minimums and restrictions on the availability of conditional sentences contribute to the mass incarceration of Black and Indigenous people. The amendments contained in Bill C-5 represent an important first step to combating systemic discrimination in Canada’s criminal legal system. However, Bill C-5 does not go far enough. This is why LEAF collaborated with the Black Legal Action Centre and the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies to prepare a brief for this committee. In our brief, we urge you to adopt five recommendations. I won’t read those to you, though I ask you to carefully consider them. I want to focus my opening remarks on two recommendations.
First, we recommend the removal of all mandatory minimums from the Criminal Code. Evidence shows us that mandatory minimums do not deter crime. At the same time, though, they contribute to the significant incarceration and over-policing of marginalized communities, specifically Black and Indigenous communities. If this committee is not willing to go so far as to amend Bill C-5 to remove all mandatory minimums, or even just those that have been found unconstitutional, I urge you to at least grasp the low-hanging fruit. I urge you to adopt a recommendation to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 32. As you have heard, this would allow trial judges, upon giving reasons, to depart from mandatory minimum sentences and restrictions on the use of conditional sentences.
Call to Action 32 recognizes and responds to the reality that where mandatory minimums and restrictions on conditional sentences remain, injustice will inevitably result. Call to Action 32 enables judges to pass sentences proportionate to the circumstances of the offence and the degree of moral blameworthiness of the person before them.
Professor Debra Parkes provides the example of an 18‑year‑old Indigenous teenager who kills her abusive drug dealer. This teenager could be convicted of second-degree murder and face a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole for at least 10 years. This would be so regardless of the constellation of Gladue factors that might be present in her life. That could include trauma related to the atrocity of residential schools or the Sixties Scoop, as well as other experiences of racism, childhood abuse, violence or addiction. With the implementation of Call to Action 32, however, a judge would be able to meaningfully consider the systemic factors bringing this teenage woman before the court and the type of sentence that might be appropriate given her Indigenous heritage.
Part of the context for Bill C-5 includes the fact, as you’ve heard, that Indigenous women now constitute over half of all women in federal prisons, despite making up less than 5% of the female population in Canada. The mass incarceration of Indigenous women is a national injustice, and we need more than incremental change to address it. At the same time, the proliferation of mandatory minimums has also not improved the situation of Indigenous women who experience nearly double the rate of violent victimization as Indigenous men and close to triple that of non-Indigenous women.
It’s important to note that Call to Action 32 is not limited to Indigenous people, but is broadly worded to be applied to reduce all incarceration. This is particularly relevant for Black men, women and gender diverse people. Sentencing judges considering the impact of race and racism on an individual may reasonably conclude that the only fit sentence is one that departs from a mandatory minimum or restriction on a conditional sentence.
It has been now over seven years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 Calls to Action. The lack of progress on the 76 recommendations directed to the federal government is shameful, with independent sources finding that only seven to eight have been implemented as of this year.
It’s within this committee’s power to force the issue — to insist that Parliament not defer and delay the implementation of yet another of the Calls to Action. Implementing Call to Action 32 is low-hanging fruit, and I urge you to grasp it.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. I have a question for the Honourable Senator Sinclair. We know that this bill provides for conditional sentences, particularly with respect to sexual assault and domestic violence. Doesn’t it concern you to know that in Indigenous communities, the victim and abuser often have a very close relationship and that following a trial, people return directly to their community? Aren’t you concerned that this could cause an increase in recidivism?
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: If I understood you, senator, your question is whether trials within the community for sexual offences would become a normalized thing. Is that what you asked me?
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Exactly. Like for sexual assault or certain cases of domestic violence, where the judge could give a suspended sentence so the individual wouldn’t have to go to jail and would go right back to the community. Since the victim and the abuser are often in very close proximity, aren’t you concerned that will cause increased recidivism?
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: There are two different issues there, and I’ll deal with the latter part first.
I don’t think that sexual offences will ever become normalized. I think, to a certain extent, they were normalized by virtue of the fact that in the past the way that police and prosecutorial authorities dealt with them discouraged female complainants from coming forward with regard to sexual offences that occurred to them or involved them. As a result, the number of offences far outweighed the number of actual complaints that people were making.
I think what will happen with an approach in which the community is participating in the sentencing and perhaps sentencing circles or tribunals are utilizing Gladue principles would itself not normalize the offence. In fact, it would tend to normalize the approach that would be taken to sexual offences, and that approach would be more along the lines of addressing the problem that led to the offence to begin with.
There are some sexual predators out there who will continue to be dealt with harshly. The amendments that are proposed by this bill will not reduce the possibility that individuals will still be sentenced to lengthy prison sentences if they are predators, if they are offenders against young children or if they are involved in brutal and serial sexual offences. What it will do is ensure that the courts are allowed to get access to those principles that Gladue calls for them to consider as part of their sentencing.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Sinclair, I need to cut your response short so that other senators can ask questions.
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: It will allow the sentencing judge to utilize an approach that is more healing in nature and will therefore encourage family members to support both sides coming forward with respect to the offence.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. I now recognize the bill’s sponsor, Senator Gold.
[English]
Senator Gold: Thank you to all of the witnesses for attending. Senator Sinclair, it’s nice to have you back in the Senate. Thank you.
I would like to pose a question to Ms. Niman. One of the key questions we’ve been grappling with is how we predict the effect this legislation would have on the overincarceration of marginalized populations in Canada, such as Indigenous women and others. Your brief to the House Justice and Human Rights Committee says that by repealing mandatory minimums and expanding access to conditional service orders, Bill C-5 will “. . . immediately begin decreasing Indigenous women’s overincarceration rates.”
Your organization is more familiar than I am, certainly, with the realities of Indigenous women in Canada. Can you explain a bit and share with us why you’re confident that the bill will make a meaningful difference?
Ms. Niman: Yes. Native Women’s Association of Canada is aware that there are statistical experts who will have more of a prediction as to numbers and outcomes. What the Native Women’s Association of Canada knows is that when a sentencing judge gets to look at an Indigenous woman before them as a whole person and consider all of the relevant factors that have shaped this offender’s story right up until the moment they stand before them, that’s the kind of crafting they are legislatively enabled to do when mandatory minimums are repealed. They can take a wholesome and holistic approach to crafting a sentence that meaningfully considers Parliament’s goals under 718.2(e) to reduce overincarceration by considering those factors and seeking alternatives to incarceration. When we say that the immediate impact will be fewer Indigenous women being incarcerated, what we mean is that immediately this empowers sentencing judges to take a more wholesome approach and begin avoiding incarceration, whether or not tied or frustrated by a formalized approach.
Senator Gold: If I may direct my second-to-last question to Ms. Webster. In your 2019 paper, you and Anthony Doob wrote that one of the challenges faced by the original conditional sentencing regime is that:
. . . It seemingly failed to recognize—and, more importantly, address—the foreseeable public concerns surrounding this criminal sanction as being too lenient.
Essentially, if I understand correctly, you found that conditional sentences were received as being “soft on crime” and therefore, inevitably, a subsequent government would come along and curtail their use. My question — based on that, but a broader one based on your views — is if we’re interested in making meaningful change and lasting improvements to Canada’s criminal justice system, how important in your view is it that there is a degree of public buy-in for whatever it is we do here? How do we go about securing that?
Ms. Webster: Thank you for the question. I’m actually going to split the question in the sense that I’m going to encourage Ms. North to answer the part with the conditional sentence order because that’s more in her area of expertise. However, I am going to use the same notion in terms of how we can “sell” a reduction in mandatory minimums to the public as well, which is another concern certainly raised in these discussions about whether there would be a loss of confidence.
I think there are two mechanisms that are very important to achieving that purpose. Both of them are rooted in the deterrence research, which is, as you know, the basis for the notion that mandatory minimums will deter crime.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Webster, can you wrap it up, please?
[English]
Ms. Webster: We need a very clear, unambiguous message put out for both politicians and the public to eliminate any last lingering notions or doubts that it can be used as an effective means of reducing crime. The second mechanism would involve a very frank conversation with the public in a way that they would also understand or be reassured that crime is not going to increase based on the deterrence literature. Thank you.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: We have 30 minutes left and seven senators wish to speak. If you go over the one- to two-minute limit, you will obviously be infringing on other senators’ right to speak. I repeat the warning I gave earlier about keeping questions and answers short.
[English]
Senator Dalphond: We have four minutes, but I’m not going to have long questions, so I’ll give you the time to answer.
My questions are directed to Ms. Webster and Ms. North. You said, Professor Webster, that you feel these amendments will be good for Black Canadians, but not effect the overrepresentation of Indigenous people. Would you please comment, expand on that and explain what data you have used to come to that conclusion?
Ms. Webster: Certainly. We used 2020-21 data from the Correctional Service of Canada pertaining exclusively to offenders serving a sentence in federal custody for at least one of the offences listed in Bill C-5 for which the mandatory minimum would be repealed. The data are not perfect, but they do allow us to estimate the impact of removing the mandatory minimum penalties on the overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black offenders. In brief, they suggest that the repeal of the mandatory minimums listed in Bill C-5 might reduce, at least to some extent, the disproportionate representation of Black Canadians in federal custody.
In contrast, however, Indigenous offenders generally — and especially Indigenous female offenders — are, relatively speaking, left behind. Specifically, the government’s own data from the Correctional Service of Canada suggests that a smaller proportion of Indigenous Canadians overall — and an even smaller proportion of Indigenous female Canadians — have the possibility of benefiting from this bill. Thank you.
Senator Dalphond: Do you have any kind of data you could provide to us for the result of your analysis?
Ms. Webster: Yes, I do.
Senator Dalphond: Could you send it to the committee?
Ms. Webster: Certainly.
Senator Dalphond: The same question for Ms. North, if you have any data about the conditional sentences. You said that even when available, statistics show no marginal impact. Could you elaborate in 30 seconds about that and send us supporting documents or data?
Ms. North: Thank you. Absolutely, I can provide what data I’m taking into account. The research does suggest that even when conditional sentences were broadly available, Indigenous populations or offenders didn’t proportionately benefit from them. There were instances when they were benefiting, but it wasn’t in the same proportion as other offenders. There’s also data suggesting Indigenous offenders tend to have higher breach rates even when they are granted conditional sentences. This becomes, of course, a problem for overall incarceration rates when they’re imprisoned upon breach. I can provide that. Thank you.
Senator Simons: My question is for Senator Sinclair. I want to appeal to your expertise not just as an Indigenous jurist, but as a former senator. We’re placed in an invidious position here.
Many witnesses have come before us as these witnesses have today, and suggested that we need some kind of amendment to this bill to give judges discretion in extraordinary cases to not invoke a mandatory minimum sentence for offences not considered in Bill C-5. But we’re faced with the practicalities that if we amend the bill in that drastic of a way, it may delay passage or perhaps cause the bill to linger indefinitely. We’re being told by some criminal trial lawyers that they would rather we pass this bill — imperfect though it may be — quickly to make sure conditional sentences are available to their clients as quickly as possible.
You have been here. You know how this works, and you know me well enough to know that I don’t like to be told what I can’t do. I wondered if we could appeal to your wisdom to tell us whether you think this is the opportunity to push for an amendment that would make the bill better and more constitutional, or whether it’s more prudent to take what you can get and then come back to play again the next day.
Mr. Sinclair: By the time the bill gets to a full hearing or full consideration in the Senate, you may have a decision as in the Sharma case that will clarify a number of those issues for you.
The reality is that when you get these Hobbesian choices where you need to decide whether or not something that’s part way there is adequate, I think you need to make a decision about whether or not this is both the opportunity and the right thing to do to go forward, and what is appropriate.
I think short of repealing every one of the mandatory minimum provisions that are in the Criminal Code right now, another suitable amendment would be to give sentencing judges the jurisdiction and authority to ignore mandatory minimum sentences if they provide written reasons — which is what the Call to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report said. I would prefer that approach rather than looking for an amendment or looking to reject the bill because I think the bill is amendable and salvageable, based upon that kind of amendment being included.
Senator Simons: The question is whether that kind of amendment will be approved at the other place.
For Ms. Hrick, then, I would put the question to you. I’ve spoken to some criminal trial lawyers who have told me that they would rather we expedite this bill to give their clients the benefit of conditional sentences rather than fight to make this bill what I think most of us agree it ought to be — a bill with a discretionary clause for judges in extraordinary circumstances. I’m wondering where LEAF — since you represent a wide array of lawyers — falls on that.
Ms. Hrick: I think it’s fair to say we are in agreement with Senator Sinclair on this. This is an opportunity to implement one of the Calls to Action. It’s an opportunity to do the right thing, and I would certainly hope that the response of the House of Commons or of any parliamentarian wouldn’t be that they so strongly oppose reconciliation and so strongly oppose the Calls to Action that they would rather blow up this entire legislation than implement a single call.
I think that’s the message that would be sent to Canadians if what you were suggesting was the ultimate outcome with this legislation, if this committee did the right thing and amended it.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Hrick.
Senator Pate: I’d like to provide an opportunity for Ms. Hrick to continue on with her comment first, and then I will proceed if I have time.
Ms. Hrick: Thank you, Senator Pate. That was the conclusion of my comment.
Senator Pate: Ms. Niman, Senator Gold asked you about a comment in the House of Commons. In the early stages of this bill and its predecessor — which was exactly the same, Bill C-22 — many people were receiving information from the Department of Justice that claimed the numbers of people in prison would be reduced.
As Dr. Webster and Dr. North have indicated, an examination of that data reveals a very different reality. Has your position changed since you presented at the House of Commons?
Ms. Niman: Thank you for your question.
No. NWAC’s position hasn’t changed because when you take an intersectional and a relational approach, and you imagine presenting this bill to a room full of the Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people that it will impact, I would hope that Canada would honour its reconciliation commitments and be able to look them all in the eye and say, “What this bill does is it takes away something we know is harming you so that sentencing judges can treat you as individuals and as humans as opposed to perpetuating the formal equality approach that mandatory minimums ask judges to do.”
Senator Pate: Is that the reason you’re supporting an amendment to Bill C-5?
Ms. Niman: Yes. We think that giving judges the power to look at cases on a case-by-case basis unbinds them from the unnecessary and harmful structure of having to receive information either in the form of a Gladue report or other submissions to understand the totality of an Indigenous woman’s experience and then effectively have to table it to say, “Well, we’re bound. We have to sentence you to a custodial sentence. We have to perpetuate cycles of Indigenous family separation because the law tells us we have to.”
Instead, this bill and the proposed amendment allows judges to be judges, to do the job that we trust them to do and advance reconciliation in the courtroom after Parliament and the Senate have advanced reconciliation through amendment here.
Senator Pate: Dr. Webster, I’m curious, when you talk about the public reaction, can you please expand upon what you know in terms of the public response to the need to allow the kind of discretion you’ve talked about?
Ms. Webster: Certainly. I would start with the deterrence research. Why it’s so important is that it reminds us that it’s going to be crucial to parallel the repeal of the mandatories — or, at least, the addition of an escape clause — with a very frank conversation with the public.
For the past 20 years, they’ve been told that mandatory minimums are going to keep them safer by deterring offenders. As such, public education will be key to reassuring them that crime is not going to increase. It isn’t enough to simply tell the public that the deterrence research shows that mandatories do not, in fact, reduce crime. Rather, we also need to challenge people’s underlying intuitions about deterrence. Who wouldn’t be deterred by a ten-year sentence rather than a five-year prison sentence?
Part of the conversation must involve an exercise in confronting each of the underlying — albeit, incorrect — assumptions supporting deterrence until people on an individual level can understand why it doesn’t, in fact, work.
People are capable of understanding, for example, that for harsher sanctions to work, individuals must be aware of the punishment and that it has changed. Public opinion polls have demonstrated for decades that most citizens are unable to identify the vast majority of the mandatory minimum penalties in our code. Just as the public can understand that most offenders never —
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Webster. I need to go to another senator.
[English]
Senator Francis: This question is for Senator Sinclair.
In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged the importance of section 718.2(e) to deal with what they call the crisis in the Canadian criminal justice system with the overincarceration of Indigenous peoples. This issue has only gotten worse since then.
Can you please tell us how section 718.2(e) can ensure fair sentences for Indigenous peoples who appear before a judge? Can you also tell us how mandatory minimum penalties prevent judges from ensuring such fairness for Indigenous peoples?
Mr. Sinclair: There are two parts to that question. I’ll deal with the first part generally by saying that research showed that when 718.2 was enacted in 1996, it was intended to reduce incarceration, particularly of Indigenous people, and that’s why 718.2(e) said what it said.
Then the research from 1992 — until the analysis done by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, I believe — and into the latter part of the 1990s showed that, in fact, incarceration overall did reduce, but that the proportion of Indigenous people who were incarcerated went up and it’s because non-Indigenous people benefited from those provisions in 718.2. The courts were readily able to defer from using incarceration for those individuals, but not for non-Indigenous people because the factors were not there.
In Gladue it said you have to take a look at those factors very clearly. The problem with the Gladue approach has been that the provinces have to provide the resources to do proper Gladue reports, and they’re not providing the resources. The federal government has not assisted by providing any additional resources so that those reports are thorough.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I have a related question, Mr. Sinclair. We know that Indigenous status in penitentiaries is based on self-declaration; the inmates declare themselves “Indigenous.” Do you support self-declaration of Indigenous status in federal penitentiaries?
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: This is a huge issue in employment circles these days, particularly at universities.
Generally within the courts, self-identification has been accepted as the approach to be utilized. It has occasionally been challenged, but I think the people doing the Gladue reports and doing the assessment of the individual would quickly be able to determine whether or not the history of this particular individual and the circumstances this individual is in relate to his Indigenous identity. That’s really the important thing: What are the factors in his Indigenous history that led to him being in front of the court at this time? Self-identification is a starting point.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Sinclair, I have to shorten your response time again to give the floor to another senator. My apologies.
[English]
Senator Batters: My questions are to Professors Webster and North. I wanted to give you more time and opportunity to expand on your significant research findings based on the very recent years — 2020 and 2021 — that you were discussing earlier on this panel where you stated that eliminating the mandatory minimum sentences as contained in Bill C-5 would actually only have a very minimal impact for Indigenous offenders. I think your data here is key given that the Trudeau government contends that they want to remove these mandatory minimum sentences in large part for Indigenous people.
Please take some time to help us understand this further.
Ms. Webster: As I said, you’re correct. These were the most recent data available from Correctional Service of Canada. I also point out that the data are not perfect in the sense that they are identifying offenders serving a sentence for at least one of the offences listed in Bill C-5 for which the mandatory minimum penalty would be repealed. We know that in many cases people have been convicted of more than one charge, so it’s difficult to be able to piece apart the impact of just the mandatory minimum penalty as a combination with others.
Having said that, these are the best data that we have available to us at this moment, and they do allow us to estimate the impact of removing the mandatory minimum penalties on the overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black people.
How it works, simplistically, is that the analyses we did are really about relative proportions. That is, we first looked at the proportion that each ethnic group currently makes up of the total federal prison population. We then identified the proportion that each ethnic group makes up of all those offenders currently serving a sentence for at least one of the offences listed in Bill C-5 for which a mandatory minimum penalty would be repealed.
To reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous people, there would need to be a higher proportion in the latter group than in the former group. This is not what we found. Rather, of the offenders serving a sentence in federal custody, Indigenous people made up 31% of those offenders. However, they only make up 28% of those who might benefit from Bill C-5. As such, even if every single Indigenous offender benefited from Bill C-5, which is unlikely, their relative proportion in the prison population as a whole will likely increase. That is, they will be even more overrepresented because they will make up a greater proportion of the prison population.
Senator Clement: Thank you to all witnesses, in particular for your careers and your work. Thank you, Ms. Niman, for using the word “ambitious.” Along that note, I have a question for Ms. Hrick and then for Senator Sinclair.
Many Black and Indigenous organizations have come together to support that we be ambitious around Bill C-5. I worry that those communities would be divided on the basis of some data that might potentially benefit Black folks and not Indigenous folks. But I heard you say, Ms. Hrick, that the Call to Action 32 has broad language that could also benefit Black men, for example. That’s the first time I hear that kind of discussion. Can you lean into that for us?
To Senator Sinclair, if we go with an amendment that allows for appropriate judicial discretion, I heard you say that you are supportive of this. What would you say to people who then respond, “But we don’t necessarily trust judges to be able to understand the impact of systemic discrimination and trauma”? What would you say to those folks?
First Ms. Hrick and then Senator Sinclair.
Ms. Hrick: I’ll start by reading the language of Call to Action 32 because it is broadly worded:
We call upon the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to allow trial judges, upon giving reasons, to depart from mandatory minimum sentences and restrictions on the use of conditional sentences.
That language is not limited to Indigenous folks who are charged in this system, and it should be broadly construed. It is, in our view, a good and beneficial amendment to adopt to address exactly what you were talking about and alluding to in terms of the overrepresentation and disproportionate targeting of Black men, women and gender-diverse people by police, by the justice system and the failure — at this point — to fully allow for their circumstances to be fully considered when they are brought before a court, much in the same way — though the situations are certainly distinct in many ways — that those sorts of factors are considered for Indigenous people as well.
This is a broad amendment. It ought to be — in my view, in our submission and in our recommendation — a broadly worded amendment that is adopted to this bill.
Mr. Sinclair: Thank you. That was a good question. To the question of what you say to the public who do not trust judges, my response would be initially to say that there’s nothing you can say to the public who do not trust judges that will make them trust judges more. I think it’s through the actions of judges that they will see.
I believe that judges are not going to change their sentencing patterns significantly. They will be allowed to ignore mandatory minimums, but they will still likely utilize the appropriate principles of sentencing without necessarily incarcerating somebody as lengthy as a mandatory minimum. What you’ll likely see is a change in sentencing back to the way it was before the mandatory minimums were created. We will likely see that the trust people have in the court will be determined by the behaviour of judges, just as the trust people have in the Senate will be based upon how senators behave.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Senator Dupuis: I’d like to welcome the witnesses. One of my questions has already been answered, but I’d like to come back to Senator Clement’s last question. Senator Sinclair, I’d like to clarify Senator Clement’s question. What would you say to the women’s groups we’ve heard here in committee? I’m not talking about the general public, who may or may not like the judiciary. I’m talking about women’s groups who came to testify before us and said they couldn’t afford to trust the system because the system has always failed to serve them or mistreated them.
[English]
Mr. Sinclair: The system has treated women badly generally through the utilization of mandatory minimums, and I think that’s the beginning of the response — that this will now allow the courts to utilize a better approach to female accused who are before the courts. The issue of women who are victims of crime and any concerns they may have that their victimizer might get a reduced sentence is unlikely to occur because the approach to sentencing with regard to males has generally been pretty standard over the years and has not been changing significantly.
It’s the use of mandatory minimums in those circumstances where female victims utilize actions that result in serious offences being brought against them where the victimization continues. I would say that this would likely have the overall impact of benefiting females much more than has been the case in the past.
Senator Gold: My question is for Professor Webster. My understanding is that your data is based upon the federal jurisdiction. People sentenced to less than two years are provincially incarcerated. Has your analysis taken provincial and territorial statistics into account?
Ms. Webster: That’s a great question. No, it hasn’t. We haven’t had provincial data available to us. One of the obstacles, of course, is we’ll have to go jurisdiction by jurisdiction to gather it, which will be much more time consuming.
Also, the data owners need to be able to extract the data on offenders serving a sentence for at least one of the offences in Bill C-5 for which the mandatory minimum would be repealed. A lot of manpower is involved in doing that.
My other comment, if you permit me, although it’s true that there are some mandatories that will affect provincial imprisonment rates, the fact that 70% of our provincial prisons right now are being used for remand, I really question the degree to which the mandatories’ removal — or not — would have much impact. If we are looking at the provincial level and trying to solve the most immediate problems, it would definitely be in targeting the remand population.
Senator Gold: But would you agree that, with regard to the conditional sentence orders, it should have a significant impact on the incarceration of folks in the provincial system?
Ms. Webster: I’m going to cheat and let my partner answer that last question, if you permit. It’s her expertise.
Ms. North: It will have some impact. Whether it will be a significant or substantial impact, we’ll have to see through the evaluations.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I’d like to thank the witnesses. It’s been fascinating.
Honourable senators, we will now welcome the second panel of witnesses. They are Gabrielle Comtois, Policy Issues and Impact Analyst, Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel, and Brian Sauvé, President of the National Police Federation.
The witnesses have five minutes to present their testimony and you will have five minutes for questions and answers. We may have a second round of questions.
Ms. Comtois, you can begin delivering your opening remarks. Thank you very much for being here. You have the floor.
Gabrielle Comtois, Policy Issues and Impact Analyst, Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel: Good afternoon. I want to mention that my colleague Justine Chénier may be joining us along the way. She is experiencing technical difficulties right now.
I will start and Ms. Chénier can take over when she is able to connect.
The Deputy Chair: You can deliver your opening remarks.
Ms. Comtois: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having me today. My name is Gabrielle Comtois and I’m responsible for policy analysis at the Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel.
We are a non-profit feminist organization whose mission is to offer a better response to women and teenage girls who have been sexually assaulted and to provide them with tools to fight sexual violence. Our main goal is essentially to bring together sexual assault help centres throughout Quebec. We currently have over 20 members working in three distinct areas: prevention, direct assistance and mobilization.
The group’s main objectives are to mobilize individuals and groups in the fight against sexual assault, effect social and political change and bring together sexual assault help centres to provide spaces for reflection and discussion. In this case, RQCALACS’ analysis was rooted in the intersectional approach first used by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1991.
This approach dictates that we consider the various overlapping pressure systems — and allows us to do so — such as racism, classism, homophobia, misogyny and others within the context of a single issue analysis. Our analysis also focuses on criticism of the belief that the punitive aspect of the prison system represents a viable long-term solution to the issue of sexual violence.
This approach is put forward in the work of Angela Davis, particularly the notion of historical trauma and the Indigenous and racialized communities’ relationship with the justice system.
First, the RQCALACS would like to reiterate some of the things that senators need to consider in their work. Indigenous people are significantly overrepresented in Canadian correctional facilities. As of January 2020, Indigenous people in prison accounted for just over 30% of the adult population in federal correctional facilities, even though Indigenous people represent only 5% of Canada’s general population. Indigenous women are even more significantly overrepresented, making up almost 50% of women in federal correctional facilities as of December 17, 2021. Moreover, the number of Indigenous people in prison has continued to rise over the past 10 years. Racialized people are also overrepresented in the federal criminal justice system, making up 7.2% of the prison population in 2018-19, but only 3.5% of Canada’s population in 2016.
In its 1999 R. v. Gladue judgment, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the serious problem of Indigenous people being overrepresented in Canadian prisons. In addition, the court interpreted subsection 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code, expressly requiring sentencing judges to consider the unique circumstances of Indigenous people in prison. Distinctive systemic or historical factors may be one of the reasons incarcerated Indigenous people end up in court.
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Comtois, your colleague is online with us. If you wish to give her time to speak, you must finish your testimony quickly, within a few seconds.
Ms. Comtois: I will turn the floor over to my colleague Ms. Chénier.
Justine Chénier, Communications Manager, Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel: Good afternoon, everyone. I am Justine Chénier and I am the Communications Manager for the Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel.
I’m going to talk to you about the consequences of criminalization and of poverty. According to the 2022 annual report of the National Advisory Council on Poverty, poverty “[...] affects some groups more than others.”
First Nations, Inuit and Métis people are at greater risk of falling into poverty due to the historical and ongoing effects of colonialism in Canada, so as trauma, racism and discrimination. Marginalized groups, including Black and other racialized communities, are also more likely to live in poverty due to economic barriers and various forms of discrimination.
Study after study shows that incarcerated persons in Canada are living for the most part under the poverty line, are often unemployed and even homeless when they start their rehabilitation, have very little education and have a history of mental health problems, addiction and violence. Similarly... I will let Ms. Comtois finish by talking about carceral feminism.
Ms. Comtois: To conclude...
The Deputy Chair: You have a minute; please wrap up.
Ms. Comtois: Carceral feminism, is the belief that prisons, used as a form of body control, become a viable strategy over time to wipe out sexual violence. It’s the belief that longer and harsher sentences meted out to every aggressor will bring all women into society’s fold. However, researchers who have profiled incarcerated men and women have observed that a large proportion of men and an even greater proportion of women have been subject to psychological, physical and sometimes sexual violence. While we debate the place that rapists should have in prison, we are blind to the fact that these institutions are filled with their victims.
Moreover, according to Ivan Zinger, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, sexual violence is a systematic problem in federal prisons. According to him, the persons the most at risk of being victims of such violence are mainly women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and persons exposed to violence and other trauma. When we know who is in our prisons, we understand that carceral feminism is basically bourgeois feminism. Asking for longer prison sentences as a solution to social problems, including sexual violence, is an avenue that can only lead to more disenfranchised poor and racialized women and more sexual violence.
Ms. Chénier: Fifteen seconds is not enough time, but we were going to say that we are against Bill C-5.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.
Ms. Chénier: If you give us five more seconds, I will be able to tell you why, Senator Boisvenu.
The Deputy Chair: All right, but not a second more.
Ms. Chénier: It is important to remember that the Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel is against impunity for crimes of a sexual nature. We are not seeking harsher punitive measures for offenders, but rather a review of the prison system’s culture and more rehabilitation programs that will bring down recidivism rates.
We should be continuing our prevention efforts everywhere in Canada, but that doesn’t mean that we should downplay the impact of sexual crime on victims. Quebec’s CALACS and the RQCALACS oppose the bill, based on our expertise in this field. We are also asking the senators here today to take another look at the culture of incarceration in order to avoid the over‑representation of marginalized persons in the prison system.
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Chénier, thank you very much for that. I gave you much more time than the other witnesses usually get. Mr. Sauvé, you have the floor.
Brian Sauvé, President, National Police Federation: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
[English]
Thank you for inviting me to appear. I am a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, and President of the National Police Federation, or NPF, the certified bargaining agent representing close to 20,000 members of the RCMP across Canada and internationally.
Bill C-5 takes several important steps in the right direction. This legislation acknowledges and supports practices that are happening today, such as police officer discretion to refer offenders to diversion and treatment programs. Legislative support for these practices means enforcement across Canada will be more efficient and consistent. However, without additional resources for police officers and for social and restorative justice programs, Bill C-5 cannot achieve its objectives.
I would like to address three main areas of concern, the first being police resources and discretion. The NPF supports the use of police discretion and alternatives to incarceration for lower‑risk offenders who would benefit from treatment and rehabilitation. Diversion to these programs is a valuable tool for police officers. Our members acknowledge this key role, but government must provide the necessary support and resources to ensure that police officers can do it effectively.
Even after this bill is passed, police officers will still need to enforce laws against those involved in drug smuggling, trafficking and production, and the link between weapons and drug trafficking still needs to be addressed. Drug trafficking exacerbates the opioid epidemic which continues to impact Canada’s health network and police services.
For perspective, there were 30,843 apparent opioid toxicity deaths between January 2016 and March 2022. This scenario was further aggravated during the pandemic with a 91% increase in opioid toxicity deaths. The government has made investments to combat this crisis, but the numbers continue to rise. To address these issues, we will need a whole-of-government approach.
Second is program availability. Bill C-5 needs to be accompanied by an expansion of investments in programs such as addictions treatment, rehabilitation and diversion. The need for greater support for social programs exists across Canada, however, the gap in rural and remote areas needs to be urgently addressed.
According to the Department of Justice, 48% of surveyed police agencies have a pre-charge diversion program for young offenders. However, 66% of rural and small-town police agencies have no pre-charge diversion program. This gap is further expanded in Indigenous and First Nations communities, where the lack of diversion programs aggravates overrepresentation in the justice system.
Successful diversion programs need consistent, ongoing funding and meaningful, evidence-based oversight to ensure their effectiveness. Meanwhile, police officers require the time, staff and resources to refer cases to these treatment programs.
Third is firearms and border integrity. Bill C-5 strikes down some mandatory minimum penalties related to weapons trafficking and firearms offences. This is inconsistent with the expressed intent of the government to reduce firearms violence.
The legislation maintains mandatory minimum penalties for offences such as weapons trafficking, the production of automatic firearms and murder or manslaughter involving a firearm. However, tackling criminal activity requires strong measures against criminals that threaten vulnerable communities, especially criminal activity that funds and empowers gangs and organized crime. Bill C-5 unfortunately does not address these problems, notably when considering the increase of firearms offences in Canada.
In 2020, Statistics Canada reported 4,137 firearms offences overall, a 15% increase compared to 2019, and an 84% increase compared to 2010. The removal of mandatory minimum penalties requires additional deterrence measures to address criminal activity, such as providing more resources to stop the import of illegal drugs and firearms at the border. The NPF calls for increased funding to the RCMP Border Integrity Program and the creation of an investigative firearms smuggling unit.
In conclusion, to achieve its primary goal, this legislation needs to be backed by increased funding in three main areas: evidence-based and effective social programs to adequately address the root causes of criminal activity and repeat offenders; sufficient police resources so our members have the personnel and resources to meet the increased workload created by this legislation; and support for border enforcement to address the trafficking of illicit drugs and firearms into Canada.
Thank you. I am happy to answer any questions.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Sauvé.
We now go to a round of questions.
Senator Gold: I would like to welcome all our witnesses. I have a question for Ms. Comtois and Ms. Chénier.
Bill C-5 overturns many measures that were put into place by a previous bill, C-10, the so-called Safe Streets and Communities Act of 2012. At the time, your organization was against this act and stated, and I quote: “[...] repressive measures are not at all effective in reducing crime [...].”
You encouraged the government to avoid pitting the rights of victims against those of offenders and you stated that the government did not speak in your name. I find that interesting, because very often, when we try to improve the justice system so that it is more focused on prevention and social rehabilitation, we are told that we should do the opposite and be hard on crime, because that’s how we should support victims.
Why do you think this impression exists? How can we change it?
Ms. Chénier: Firstly, we should explain what happened at the Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel, which is also called RQCALACS. Our organization underwent a period of reorganization these last few years. The team had to evolve. Our statement was cut short, but I think that...
The Deputy Chair: Ms. Chénier, as you do not have your headset, our interpreters cannot translate what you are saying.
Ms. Chénier: In that case, I will ask Ms. Comtois to answer.
Ms. Comtois: You no doubt know that feminism does not speak with one voice and is not expressed in the same way everywhere in Quebec and in Canada. There are many feminist approaches, including one that we criticized in our statement, which is carceral feminism. Some feminists are in favour of harsher punitive measures and then you have other organizations who push for rehabilitation and preventative measures.
We can’t claim to speak on behalf of all feminist movements in Canada. That would be impossible. It is a pluralistic movement and there are many ways of looking at the carceral system. It is therefore possible that you get the impression that some feminists are asking for harsher punitive measures against criminals, whereas others, such as ourselves, are looking at prevention and rehabilitation.
This dissonance can also be explained by the fact that there are many feminist movements and that feminism does not speak with one voice on all issues.
Senator Gold: I gather that your organization is rejecting the idea that we have to be harsher in terms of fighting crime to better protect the victims.
[English]
Mr. Sauvé, you expressed concern that the repeal of certain mandatory minimums related to firearms runs counter to the objectives of the law. However, do I understand correctly when you talk about the mandatory minimums that this bill would repeal for the trafficking in weapons, this bill repeals trafficking in some weapons like pepper spray and brass knuckles, but not firearms trafficking. Would you agree that at least in the reading of the bill that it maintains the mandatory minimums for trafficking in firearms?
Mr. Sauvé: I would, but I also like to see this as an opportunity. If we’re going to look at mandatory minimums and if we’re going to look at addressing firearm violence in Canada, we have an opportunity here. Let’s do things right the first time versus having to come back and do it again in other legislation that is already at the other place for something else.
[Translation]
Senator Dalphond: My question is for Mr. Sauvé. Do you speak French?
Mr. Sauvé: Yes, I do speak French, but I might answer in English to be clearer.
Senator Dalphond: Perfect. I’ll ask you my question in French.
You have said that your organization supports giving discretionary powers to the police to create diversionary programs that lead to pathways to health treatment to address a public health problem, rather than criminalizing people who need help. However, you say there is a big difference between rural areas and groups in Indigenous communities compared to the rest of the country.
Can you elaborate on that and why there is such a difference? The RCMP is the police force in most provinces in Canada, both rural and urban, except for municipal police forces.
Mr. Sauvé: This is probably because Canada is a large country geographically.
[English]
When we talk about equal representation and access to adequate social support programs and services — when you’re in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, for example, it’s not the same time as Winnipeg or Brandon. What happens is when our police officers find an opportunity for treatment or diversion, it might be the best course of action in Pukatawagan, however, the resources and social safety net that we as Canadians endear is not available in that small area versus in Brandon or St. Paul, somewhere in and around a major centre.
If we’re going to consider the facts of overrepresentation of different populations in our correctional system, we should perhaps look at how we resource those diversion and social support programs in smaller communities because I think they have been overlooked. If they were available to smaller communities, we would see an improvement in those numbers.
Senator Dalphond: My next question will be to follow up on that answer. My understanding is that there is some overrepresentation of Indigenous people because when they are, for example, arrested, the police will charge them instead of doing the alternative track because there’s no alternative track available. Is that what you’re saying?
Mr. Sauvé: 100%. If an alternative track is available, perhaps the costs associated are too great, and no one knows who’s going to pay for it.
Similarly, if someone is apprehended under the Mental Health Act in — we could talk about Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories — there might not be a psychiatric nurse in that community, and they have to get on a plane to go to a larger centre. If a diversion program is available in a larger centre, does it sometimes involve a bus ride? Does it involve a plane? And who funds that transport? It ends up being —
Senator Dalphond: One of the root problems for overcharging is the fact that there are no resources available to go to the alternative track?
Mr. Sauvé: Exactly, yes.
Senator Dalphond: That will most likely target people living in remote areas or on reserves, so Indigenous people’s overrepresentation is associated with that?
Mr. Sauvé: We could draw that parallel, yes.
Senator Batters: My first question will be to Mr. Sauvé.
Mr. Sauvé, you’ve raised concern in the House of Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee about eliminating mandatory minimum penalties regarding firearms offences. You’ve acknowledged the inconsistency with the government’s expressed intent to reduce firearms violence in Canada, and we’ve also heard from other law enforcement representatives about their concern with eliminating mandatory minimum penalties for offences involving a firearm.
Can you elaborate a bit more on how, in your view, eliminating mandatory minimum penalties for firearms offences specifically impacts public safety? As well, can you expand on the inconsistency of the Trudeau government’s approach to firearms when they’ve proposed to restrict the ownership of guns for legal gun owners while proposing to extend leniency to those who have actually committed gun violence?
Mr. Sauvé: That’s a bit of a political football. I’m not much of a politician. I can say, from a policing perspective in general, less illegal firearms on the streets is a good thing. Whether or not the legislation that gets us there is the legislation that is in the other house looking at restricting firearms access and prohibiting whatever types of long guns in Canada, I don’t know. However, we have expressed concern about that legislation and the intention being perhaps misguided with respect to its evidence-based approach, in light of the fact that the majority of firearms offences in Canada are statistically linked to illegal firearms that come up from the largest undefended border in the world that we share with the largest manufacturer of small arms in the world. Hence why I mentioned earlier in my opening remarks the strengthening of the border network to be able to combat the illegal trafficking of drugs, people and firearms into Canada because those are the weapons that statistically are linked to crimes, homicides, domestic violence, et cetera.
Mandatory minimum penalties with respect to firearms offences in an evidence-based approach, I think we can support judges being judges. I know one of our partner agencies, the Canadian Police Association, has been advocating for years to allow judges the ability to interpret the specifics of a case. For example, if a police officer uses a firearm, hurts or injures someone and is found to have committed a criminal act, does the judge have the flexibility to consider it was a police officer or is a mandatory minimum required? Those are the things we hope judges will be able to do and use their discretion.
Similarly here, I trust that our judges and our judicial system are there for the right reasons and that they will make the proper decisions on sentencing with the legislation that’s provided to them.
Senator Batters: I’d like to ask my next question to Ms. Comtois from the Quebec Association of Centres for Assistance in the Fight Against Sexual Assault.
Ms. Comtois, if legislation Bill C-5 passes, some perpetrators of sexual assault will be serving their sentence in their communities. The Minister of Justice responded to this concern by suggesting that, “Serious crimes will always have serious consequences.”
Again, this conditional sentencing eligibility expansion does include sexual assault. From your experience, is there such a thing as a non-serious sexual assault that could warrant an accused serving his sentence in his community? What risk do you foresee for victims in this conditional sentencing expansion? Do you think this might have an impact on a victim’s willingness to come forward?
[Translation]
Ms. Comtois: First, there is no such thing as a sexual assault that is not serious. We have been fighting for 40 years to have the seriousness of the crime of sexual assault socially recognized. The project of specialized courts that is under way in Quebec aims to fight impunity for aggressors and aims to have the social importance of the seriousness of the crime of sexual assault recognized.
In closing, I will add a few statistics. There is a great risk that if the aggressors serve their sentence at home, they will be in contact with their victims, their families and their loved ones in common places. In fact, 87% of sexual assaults are committed in private residences; 96.8% of assailants are known to the victims; 39% of sexual assaults are committed in a home that the victim shares with the assailant, i.e., 22% in the assailant’s home and 6.3% in a public place or at school. These places are shared by several people and often the victims live in the same community or city as their abuser. It is known that the injuries associated with sexual assault go beyond the victim alone; often they have repercussions on their social circle, family and close friends, who will also suffer.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, Ms. Comtois.
[English]
Senator Pate: Thank you to the witnesses.
My first question is for the Quebec Association of Centres for Assistance in the Fight Against Sexual Assault, and then I have a question for Mr. Sauvé as well.
When the London Abused Women’s Centre was before us, they talked about the fact that they would support judges having discretion to not impose mandatory minimum penalties in circumstances where women were defending themselves or otherwise responding to violence. It sounds as though you also share that view, so I’d like clarification. I’ll then ask my question to Mr. Sauvé so that the time can be devoted to the answers.
Mr. Sauvé, when you were before the Justice Committee in the House of Commons on this legislation last May, you talked about the fact that you would like to see discretion for judges to not impose mandatory minimum penalties, particularly with respect to police officers who are convicted of the commission of offences. Would you also have that view with respect to women who have responded to violence perpetrated against them?
[Translation]
Ms. Comtois: I didn’t quite understand the question; can you remind me of a few points?
[English]
Senator Pate: I apologize that I did not deliver my question in French. When the London Abused Women’s Centre was before us, they talked about the fact that they would support having an amendment in this bill that would allow judges the discretion to not impose mandatory minimum penalties where women are defending themselves or otherwise responding to violence. I was questioning whether you would support that as well. I thought I heard that, but I wanted to be clear, and then on to Mr. Sauvé.
[Translation]
Ms. Comtois: As I said at the outset, the group does not pretend to speak for all feminist groups on earth, including the London group. We are aware that there are women who have been sexually assaulted who will end up in prison. Often women who have been assaulted, and indeed all people who experience assault, can tend to replicate these behaviours, which is a sign of trauma. Some repeat these behaviours and subsequently find themselves victims, abusers and criminalized.
We need to consider all the possibilities in the lives of victimized people, as well as the consequences of trauma that come with all of this, including a greater risk of being incarcerated.
I don’t know if that answers your question. I will let my colleague complete my answer.
Ms. Chénier: Just to make sure I understand, do you want to know whether or not we support judges being able to impose discretionary sentences on abused women?
I will go along with my colleague. The RQCALACS is indeed a national group on sexual violence. We do not claim to speak on behalf of all feminist movements. I think my colleague has done a good job of naming the consequences of sexual assault for women victims.
We collaborate in specialized sexual and domestic violence court programs in our province, Quebec. The implementation of such courts is indeed part of the pilot projects at the moment, but it should allow the Quebec justice system to adopt a transversal approach to sexual assault and conjugal violence. We hope that this will help prevent the commission of criminal acts after an assault.
[English]
Mr. Sauvé: Yes, senator, I would. I think that discretion in our judicial system is an excellent decision. I trust the judicial system. Honestly, judges get to be judges for a reason and we need to have more faith in those judges.
Senator Francis: This question is for Mr. Sauvé. As the horrific tragedies in James Smith Cree Nation revealed and according to the 2020 General Social Survey on Social Identity, 22% of Indigenous peoples have little or no confidence in police and 32% said the police were performing poorly in at least one part of their job, which is almost double for non-Indigenous, non-visible minorities. The survey also found that Indigenous people have particularly negative perceptions of the ability of police to treat people fairly. Can you speak to what your organization is doing to deal with this growing fear?
Mr. Sauvé: Thank you, senator. On the one hand, I won’t speak for the RCMP, a completely separate organization, but I do know that they have a lot of initiatives under way with respect to reconciliation and enhancing the trust with all communities across Canada.
As far as ourselves representing the membership of the RCMP, we are an active participant in the government’s First Nations and Indigenous policing programs review. We have been speaking with our members who have isolated posts or First Nations policing experience to determine what barriers they have seen or felt through their lived experience of going into a First Nations or Indigenous community or providing policing to those communities and some of the challenges that they faced in order to make submissions and bring an educated proposal to the government of the day so that they can improve that particular service. Ultimately, if the community that we serve is under a misconception of what the police are there to do or what authorities they have, then that creates confusion and mistrust.
A simple example: Some communities that we police thought that under the Community Tripartite Agreement that we were enforcing all band bylaws. Some did not. It created confusion when our members would go from one community to another and think that they had different authorities.
As far as the education piece, we are big proponents of having some form of further education for different communities that we police with respect to history, traditions, how those communities operate, how their bylaws get created and how they support their communities. We have been big proponents of improving the First Nations policing program in Canada, but we are also trying to increase our membership’s awareness and provide input on that program as it evolves into next year.
Senator Simons: My question is for Mr. Sauvé. It strikes me that one of the challenges facing front-line officers in dealing with these kinds of diversion questions is the sorry lack of alternative spaces. You talked about small, rural communities, but even in larger cities there’s often a non-existence or a very small number of spaces in day shelters. There are not treatment beds, whether that’s for addiction or mental illness. A lot of these issues are beyond the direct scope of the federal government. They fall to provinces and municipalities to deal with.
In order to make this legislation work the way it’s intended, what do you think has to be done on the ground to make sure that officers — if your choice is to arrest somebody or leave them on the street, then arresting them for their own protection may seem like a reasonable alternative when there is no other alternative.
Mr. Sauvé: Excellent point. Thank you for the question, senator. We have brought this up I think it’s going on three‑plus years now at varying levels of government, whether it be municipal, provincial or federal. Hence, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the solution here involves a whole‑of‑government approach. Whether we’re talking about changes to provincial health care initiatives, funding for provincial health care, municipal social services, homeless shelters that are funded by municipalities or by provinces or even some that have charitable status that are funded federally or by Canadians as a whole, we really need to get behind what we as Canadians think we want as a social safety network.
If we’re failing in Halifax or in Edmonton, how do we fix that problem? It’s not just an Alberta problem, it’s not just an Ontario problem; it’s a Canada problem. I think the federal government can take a leadership position on how they look at supporting homelessness, addictions, recovery and vocational training, for example, for those coming out of federal sentences. There’s an opportunity here. I’m all about capitalizing on opportunities to make life better for Canadians through legislation that makes sense.
Senator Simons: [Technical difficulties] — of this bill to work. But you can see in the election results from Vancouver, you can see in the concerns in my home city of Edmonton where the numbers are shocking. The number of homeless encampments that have sprung up during the COVID period where homelessness seems to have become even more acute than before. I just want to make sure that officers on the ground have the resources to do the diversions because you have to divert people somewhere that is safe for them and for everyone else.
Mr. Sauvé: Well, they don’t, and it’s getting worse. Hence, it is timely that this particular legislation — and I think there’s another one in the other place that might have some opportunities. We’re coming into budget season for the federal government and a number of provinces as well. It’s always an opportunity for different governments to look at the challenges before them and hence why we keep saying we can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem. Let’s look at why we have the problem in the first place.
If it’s a lack of shelter beds, there’s something that can be fixed easily. If it’s a lack of vocational training, social support services or rehab facilities, those are all things that we can work on. None of it is flipping a light switch, but initiatives toward a positive, brighter future so the police on the ground can actually divert folks out of the criminal system and into the social system, where appropriate, I think that’s a positive.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: My first question is for Mr. Sauvé. Mr. Sauvé, in your document, you make recommendations, but none of them mention training police officers. Could you explain why?
Don’t you think that, in the event the bill passes, training would be required for police to learn how to exercise their new police discretion, for instance? Groups are criticizing the bill because it grants discretion to police officers without requiring any accountability for the reasons they decide to lay charges or not. Could you tell me more about training? I imagine it’s an important issue for the union you represent.
Mr. Sauvé: That’s a good question. Thank you, Senator. Police training is normally regulated at the provincial level. Ontario, British Columbia and other provinces have a Police Act, for example in British Columbia and Alberta. For the majority of police officers in Canada —
[English]
— they follow along with the rules prescribed within their provincial legislation.
[Translation]
If a federal law imposes training requirements on police officers, that would be somewhat more difficult, because that means imposing training on police officers who are regulated by their provincial Justice system.
[English]
Right now, obviously, the members of RCMP are governed by all the federal legislation, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act, et cetera. Most police officers that I know pay close attention to new authorities, new rules or new laws that come into place that impact their day-to-day operation. I know the RCMP’s learning, training and development branch updates their course material. For example, when R. v. Jordan came through the Supreme Court of Canada expediting processes for criminal offences, training was updated. Similarly, I suspect if and when this mandatory minimums legislation passes, the training materials for our membership will be updated starting right in Regina at basic training all the way through to continuous development.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: As a union representative of RCMP officers, have you made representations to the RCMP to establish a training program in the event that Bill C-5 is passed?
Mr. Sauvé: Certainly. Bill C-5 and Bill C-21 are two opportunities to establish training for members of the RCMP.
[English]
We will definitely be asking the RCMP to be clear and cogent with what our members are being asked to do and how they are being asked to do it with respect to changes to legislation.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Ms. Comtois, I would like some details about your organization’s work.
You were right to point out that feminist points of view are not homogenous and, indeed, they do not have to be. No one is expecting you to represent all points of view. I would like to better understand yours.
When you talk about reviewing prison culture, I would like you to tell us what you mean by that. Before that, do you represent groups or centres that help women who are victims of sexual assault, or women who were victims at the outset but then became aggressors or the accused? Or rather, do you only represent women who have been victims of assault?
Ms. Chénier: I’d like to specify the mission of the RQCALACS. They are a national umbrella group for sexual violence. We work with sexual assault help centres. Throughout the entire province, over 20 centres work exclusively with women and girls who are victims of sexual assault. That’s really our mission.
We do not work with women who are aggressors. We work only with women who are survivors and victims. That is the first part of the answer. In fact, just to be certain everyone understands correctly, you mentioned earlier that, indeed, we cannot claim to represent all women’s groups. The RQCALACS has three pillars of action. We work on prevention, awareness, assistance and support of victims and survivors of sexual assault and their loved ones. We also have a component to fight for and collectively defend rights. As for culture…
The Deputy Chair: I must interrupt you; thank you.
Senator Dupuis: That answers my question.
[English]
Senator Cotter: I have two questions for Mr. Sauvé, if I may. I’ll ask them in sequence, and hopefully get time to ask the second one.
You observed at the beginning of your remarks that police are actually following the practices that are being set out in the portions of Bill C-5 that deal with diversion and alternative measures and the like, and you indicated the difficulties in rural regions. Earlier in evidence before this committee, we heard and saw that in Toronto, which is a fairly urban centre, with respect to simple possession charges, police laid 6,000 or 8,000 charges against people, disproportionately against Black people in Toronto, and 82% of those charges were stayed or dropped by prosecutors. This suggests to me that the police are, as recently as 2021, significantly less committed to diversion, even in major centres, than you suggest. Could you comment on that?
Mr. Sauvé: I should clarify that the remarks I make are on behalf of my lived experience, which is representing members of the RCMP across Canada, and not the Toronto Police Service or the Toronto Police Association. Their respective union would probably have better information for you. From what I see and what I’ve heard from our members, they are encouraged and they do try to do as much as they can for diversion.
Senator Cotter: The second one — and I would have thought this is an opportunity — you suggested that diversion will require more police resources. I would have actually thought the opposite, in this respect: The amount of time that an officer deals with a diversion initiative saves him or her from all kinds of documentation with respect to the charge, preserving evidence, reporting to prosecutors and attending to court — often multiple times — to deal with the matter of a trial.
Can you speak to that? Is there a kind of documented analysis of the cost and opportunity that meaningful diversion on these kinds of cases would result?
Mr. Sauvé: When I say more resources, I’m not necessarily saying more cops. We might be talking about mental health outreach, psychiatric nurses being embedded in operational communications centres or initiatives such as in Manitoba’s health network, which allows a real-time analysis of 911 calls to assist those responding to determine how they will go forward.
So it’s not necessarily more police bodies. My job is to make police officers’ jobs more effective on crime prevention and the after-the-fact, so how do we alleviate the stuff that they’re not supposed to be doing.
Senator Cotter: That was hopeful and comprehensive. Thank you for that.
[Translation]
Senator Clement: My question is for representatives of the Regroupement québécois des centres d’aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel.
You referred to a feminist analysis, and I accept the answer you gave to Senator Batters. No sexual assault can be considered minor for a woman, and I am speaking here as a woman. Therefore, on the level of feminist analysis, how do you respond when told that Bill C-5 contributes to a massive over‑representation of indigenous women?
If we apply a feminist analysis, what is your position on this matter?
Ms. Chénier: We will both answer this question, which relates to the one asked earlier on change in prison culture. It really is necessary to leverage prevention and rehabilitation programs.
It is important to remember that, in 9 out of 10 cases of sexual assault, men are the aggressors and women and girls are the victims. Male aggressors are truly overrepresented, especially in Quebec.
We also have to make a connection with the Gladue decision, which we mentioned in our presentation. We think that during sentencing, only in cases of sexual assault, consideration must be granted for the social, economic and psychological circumstances that led to a person to commit a sexual assault.
When it comes to current action by RQCALACS, it is important to keep in mind that we work through the process with victims, and we want the state to recognize the serious consequences of sexual assault. Unfortunately, sending the message that a sentence can be served at home represents, in our opinion, too great a risk for victims’ long-term safety.
I will give the floor to my colleague, because I think she has something else to add, given the little time available to us.
Ms. Comtois: You said that Bill C-5 could lead to an over‑representation of indigenous women in prison. What do you mean by that? Essentially, in Bill C-5, my understanding is that it’s a matter of determining whether they can serve their conditional sentence at home.
What we want to say, is that a sexual assault is a sexual assault. We sincerely want these women to be able to find rehabilitation and, like other aggressors, be rehabilitated while also benefiting from prevention programs. On the other hand, we do not want sentences for sexual assault to be served at home.
Ms. Chénier: Again, don’t forget that in the case of sexual assault in Quebec, aggressors who are men are overrepresented, not women. These are substantive issues. Indeed, social analysis leads us to conclude that sexual assaults are closely linked to gender inequality, which has a systemic aspect and is deeply rooted in patriarchal structures.
Senator Clement: What I meant to say is that it is not Bill C-5, but rather minimum sentences, that will lead to over‑representation. Thank you, your answer is clear.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. I would like to conclude with a question for Mr. Sauvé. During testimony by the Montréal police officers union representative, in the other place, he stated that Bill C-5 would worsen the problem of street gangs. In fact, about every two years, crime rates double for street gangs that use firearms. We saw it Montréal and Toronto. It’s a scourge.
One part of the bill worries me: broadening conditional sentencing for assault of an officer causing bodily harm, with or without a weapon. Don’t you think that aspect is worrisome for a police association like yours, having conditional sentences rather than criminal charges?
[English]
Mr. Sauvé: Yes. Even when I was giving evidence before the House on this bill earlier in the year, that question was asked. It does express concerns that there are no mandatory minimums for assaults or use of weapons on police officers. However, the greater good must prevail. Ultimately, if that’s my only sticking point, I have to sit back and say that I do trust the judiciary.
In terms of the challenges with gun and gang crime in our inner cities as well as across Canada, as I mentioned, I don’t think this particular piece of legislation goes far enough to address the root causes of gun crime in Canada.
There is another piece of legislation coming forward that will talk about firearms. There’s another opportunity within that legislation, as well as this one, to talk about how we get guns out of people’s hands who commit crimes. Can we do better there versus just dealing with the after-effects of being in a court system?
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: I’ve just returned from a trip to the Arctic, during which we visited the RCMP. We observed that the number of police officers is, I would say, limited in northern regions. If the number of conditional sentences increases, it means that people return to the community faster. Whether it be in the North or provinces where you act as municipal police, if this number increases, do you have the required resources to monitor these offenders and prevent recidivism?
Mr. Sauvé: Yes and no. There are actually two answers to that question. First of all, I think we are working very hard with the RCMP to recruit enough officers and meet today’s standards. If there is a need to add officers to the RCMP in the future, the RCMP recruitment program is being revitalized.
You must understand that the National Police Federation has been in the North for only three years and this has impacted the RCMP. Getting enough human resources for the RCMP is a strategic priority for us, as well as for the RCMP in the future.
[English]
Yes, it’s going to be a challenge in the short-term, but I think everyone is on the right page.
[Translation]
The Deputy Chair: Honourable senators, this concludes our study of Bill C-5. We thank our witnesses from this morning; their testimony is very much appreciated. Next week, we will continue clause by clause consideration of Bill S-210. I remind you that if you have any comments or amendments to present, you may do so in both languages and refer them to our legal experts, in order to ensure that the wording meets the standards established by the committee.
Thank you very much and I wish you a very good weekend.
(The committee adjourned.)