THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, September 20, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs met with videoconference this day at 4:15 p.m. [ET] to study Bill S-212, An Act to Amend the Criminal Records Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to repeal a regulation.
Senator Brent Cotter (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to the committee.
I would like to start by inviting my colleagues to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, Quebec, La Salle division.
Senator Dalphond: Senator Pierre Dalphond, De Lorimier division in Quebec.
Senator Clement: Bernadette Clement, Ontario.
[English]
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate from here in the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Renée Dupuis, senatorial division of Laurentides, Quebec.
[English]
Senator Jaffer: Mobina Jaffer from British Columbia. Welcome.
The Chair: I’m Brent Cotter, senator from Saskatchewan and chair of the committee.
We were just doing introductions, Senator Tannas. Jump in.
Senator Batters: Senator Batters from Saskatchewan.
The Chair: Let me begin by welcoming you senators all back after a lengthy recess over the summer. We are returning to business full speed ahead with further consideration of Bill S-212.
I might take at this moment an opportunity to introduce our witnesses. We’re meeting, as I said, to continue our study of Bill S-212, An Act to Amend the Criminal Records Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to repeal a regulation. Oxzn our first panel today, I’m pleased to introduce and welcome George Joseph Myette, National Executive Director of the 7th Step Society of Canada; Anita Desai, Executive Director of St. Leonard’s Society of Canada; and as an individual, Rick Sauvé, Peer Mentor for the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada. Welcome to all of you.
We’re going to begin with presentations initially from Mr. Myette, then Ms. Desai and Mr. Sauvé, in that order, if that’s all right.
You’ll have five minutes for your presentation, Mr. Myette, and after the presentations, we will engage you all with questions from senators. The floor is yours.
George Joseph Myette, National Executive Director, 7th Step Society of Canada: Thank you, senator. First of all, I would also like to thank the committee for welcoming us here today.
I’d like to speak to you from my background of lived experience as a person who has a pardon. I received a pardon in 1980. I was convicted of three indictable offences as a young person, and I chose to turn my life around and basically tried to move on. A pardon, for me, was a very impactful experience in the sense that it basically gave me a sense of confidence and it helped to reduce the stigma that I felt as someone who had been in the system.
Of course, our justice system, to a large extent for many years, was about shaming and punishing. “Corrections” was a word that was used somewhat loosely, but in a lot of cases — and I think the general view of the public was that — if you committed a crime you deserved to be shunned, shamed or punished.
For me, personally, the impact of a pardon was almost immeasurable in the sense of me being able to move on with my life.
I started off working in the justice system and working with the 7th Step organization 50 years ago, actually; it was in the fall of 1973. At that point, 7th Step was a fledging organization dedicated to peer support and developing people who had lived experience to help others. That’s what I had committed myself to.
After a number of years, though, I decided that for me, personally, my life was going to take a different direction. I went to work in the oil and gas business. The rest of my career was making my living in oil and gas, but my volunteer commitment was to 7th Step until I was in a position later in my life to basically become a volunteer in various levels and on the board of directors. Eventually, I was able to retire at a relatively young age and commit myself to being the national executive director as a volunteer. That was something that I think — again, for me, having a pardon back when I got it originally gave me a certain sense of confidence in terms of being accepted back into society. I think that’s the real impact people feel, aside from the fact that they might have a better opportunity for employment and for all sorts of things that they wouldn’t have otherwise. What it does is really create a state of mind because if you think you can do something, and you have the confidence to do it, then you might just want to try that much harder.
Coming back to the whole intention of Bill S-212 in terms of an automatic pardon system — and I like to use the word “pardon.” Personally, I don’t like the word “record suspension.” To me that doesn’t indicate that the sentence is finished. It just means that it is held in suspension. I think the idea of an automatic pardon — especially back to when I was pardoned when the waiting period was two and five years. In my case, being indictable offences, it was a five-year waiting period. That was changed, obviously, back in — I believe — 2012. In fact, I spoke against the change in 2010 at the Parliamentary subcommittee. I think that change was quite damaging to an awful lot of people who have been through the system.
An automatic pardon system will do a couple of things. One, it takes the onus off individuals who may be struggling to financially secure a pardon and to be able to have the wherewithal to do it. I think it also takes a burden off the system, because the system ties up a lot of resources. I know that as an organization, the 7th Step Society of Canada has been fortunate to receive money through the public safety contributions grant — the grant under the pardon support project. As you probably know, well, the government committed $18.5 million — I think it was — for a four-year period, and that $18.5 million could probably be used a lot better in prevention and rehabilitation programs as opposed to necessarily just helping people process a pardon.
I’m not an academic, and I’m not an expert. There are other people that can represent those points of view. However, I can tell you from personal experience and as being involved in a peer support organization that there’s a huge benefit that can be derived from people being able to have the pardon in place so they can then move on with their lives.
I guess that’s the primary message I wanted delivered today. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much both for your presentation and also the timeliness of it.
Anita Desai, Executive Director, St. Leonard’s Society of Canada: Thank you for the opportunity to bring the perspective of the St. Leonard’s Society of Canada to this committee’s considerations regarding Bill S-212.
The St. Leonard’s Society of Canada, or SLSC, is a national membership-based charitable organization that brings together a network of individuals and ten independent community-based agencies collectively to advance our mission. That mission is to promote humane and informed justice policy and responsible leadership to foster safer communities. We do this by endorsing evidence-based approaches to criminal and social justice, conducting research and developing policy, supporting our member affiliates and advancing collaborative relationships and communication between individuals and organizations dedicated to criminal and social justice.
First, I would like to thank Senator Pate for her extensive work on establishing Bill S-212. For many years, the issue of how we manage criminal records in Canada and work related to record suspensions have been a recurring trend. We are so encouraged to see a bill like this attempt to spark the kind of truly creative change that is so necessary within the existing system.
As I know you have heard from many others before today — and in SLSC’s written submission to the committee — the consequences of having a criminal record can often be some of the most punitive elements resulting from a criminal conviction. Criminal records significantly hinder people’s access to employment, housing, education, volunteering and travel. However, access to these basic needs is essential for successful community integration, and limiting them minimizes opportunities for a safe, successful return.
These limitations are counterproductive to the overall aims of the criminal justice system, including those which strive to contribute to public safety by returning people to the community as law-abiding, active members of society. Individuals face consequences for their criminal convictions over and beyond the sentence handed to them by a judge and deemed by the court to be proportionate to the offence. The consequences of bearing a criminal record continues long after an individual has completed the sentence. Fair access to life essentials and opportunities for self-sustainment are vital to the people who regularly access supports from SLSC’s network of affiliated members as well as the community corrections sector at large.
These vital opportunities have also recently been recognized and reinforced by the Government of Canada’s Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism and its five pillars: housing, education, employment, health and positive support networks.
The framework notes that these priority areas each fulfill important needs in successful reintegration, yet they are all areas that can be roadblocked by the persistent presence of a criminal record. Furthermore, there is no official stated purpose for why we administer criminal records in the first place. What we can reasonably presume is that creating and retaining criminal records most likely stemmed from the need for a risk assessment tool when sentencing those who reoffend and making parole decisions. But criminal records are used for much more than that today.
While record suspensions exist as a means to address the consequences that come with bearing a criminal record, there are many barriers to obtaining one — which I trust the honourable committee members have become quite familiar with by now — such as prohibitive fees and a complicated application processes. The automatic expiration of criminal records after a certain number of years removes the onerous burden on individuals and the associated barriers within the existing record-suspension system.
I trust that you have heard from many others who have noted that this bill provides the framework for truly meaningful reform to the administration of criminal records. We do not disagree, and we consider Bill S-212 to align with the principles of our justice system as they relate to successful community integration. In our view, it presents an excellent opportunity for Canada to establish a more humane, fair and effective justice system.
As I understand, today is your last public hearing with witnesses, and so, in conclusion, I would like to use my final minute to acknowledge many of the unsung heroes within the criminal justice system: frontline workers, clinical directors and housing managers, such as those within the St. Leonard’s network, who are working tirelessly within the community correction sector to support the safe, effective and humane integration of the people they support. This bill also reinforces their efforts toward improved public safety outcomes by supporting people when they are initially released to the community and getting back up on their feet. That work is undermined when we actively prevent people who have remained crime-free for years from moving on and moving forward with their lives.
Thank you again for the opportunity to speak here with you today, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Desai, and again, thank you for the timeliness of your presentation.
Rick Sauvé, Peer Mentor, St. Leonard’s Society of Canada, as an individual: Thank you. I’m very pleased to be here today. It’s an honour to be able to be here today.
For the past 43 years, I’ve been involved in the criminal justice system in one form or another. The first 17 years I spent in prison, serving a life sentence. When I got released, I got a job in Toronto with the Toronto Boys’ Home. We had five houses, mostly with inner-city youth. Many of them had some gang ties. They were all young offenders. I considered myself a peer support worker doing modelling behaviour for them, and after three years, I went back inside prisons to work with men — and women at times — serving life sentences and long sentences.
I’m happy to say that I never ran into any of the youth that I worked with in the prisons, although I did receive a letter from one young man who said that I made an impact on his life, and he became a better parent and better person for that.
The majority of the prisoners I work with are serving life sentences. Over the years, I’ve assisted at several hundred parole hearings as an assistant. Most of them were serving life sentences, so the pardons would not apply to them. Some were not serving life sentences, and I maintain contact with several of them.
Over the years, going into the prisons, I’ve run into men who ask me about the pardon system. When are they eligible to apply? How do they go about that process? It is a very cumbersome process. Just recently, in the last two or three weeks, I’ve had two phone calls. One was from a gentleman who’s serving a life sentence but is on full parole. He started a new job. His parole officer started asking him about his co‑workers. She misinterpreted the condition that he’s to have no association with anyone who’s criminally active. She interpreted as no association with anybody with a criminal record, and so she wanted a list of his co-workers to see if any of them had a criminal record. And I said, “No. That’s outrageous. That should not happen.” But what it would do is criminalize those people all over again.
The other phone call I got was from a man. I didn’t know him. Somebody had provided my phone number and name to him, and he was wanting to take his kids down to Disneyland. He’s never been in prison before, but he had a criminal record for drug possession, and so he asked if he needed a pardon to get into the States, and I said, “Well, you’re going to need to get a waiver.” I started explaining that process to him, and I said, “You’ve never put in for a pardon,” and he said, “No, I never realized that this could have an impact on me.”
There are millions of Canadians who have criminal records. I heard recently that the European Union is bringing in the waiver system, so Canadians will have to apply for that waiver system. When I think of all the Canadian citizens that haven’t had a pardon, this will be another hurdle that they will have to deal with.
Anyway, I’m going to be brief with my comments, and I welcome your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Sauvé, and again, a thanks for the timeliness with which you delivered them.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I’d like to welcome our witnesses. My questions are for Ms. Desai.
Do you have any data on the number of people who have been incarcerated in Canada and the percentage of people who cannot find work or housing?
[English]
Ms. Desai: I’m sorry. I don’t have the number of employment in particular. My best estimate, based on research that I’ve done and that I think is consistent with other research conducted by others, is that roughly 30% of people who are exiting prison face challenges in finding appropriate housing after release.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I understand that your main argument and the reason you support this bill is that people cannot find work or housing. Therefore, that’s a perception you have.
The other factor regarding this bill is that yesterday, the other chamber passed Bill C-48, which will be even tougher on repeat offenders.
How will all that intersect with your approach, which says that we need to be very flexible with offenders and ensure that pardons become automatic, even for repeat offenders and abusers of women or children? In addition, may I remind you that sexual assault and domestic violence are the crimes that have increased the most over the last decade. Even if they are the crimes that have increased the most, you support this bill, which would enable rapists or abusers to obtain a pardon automatically. Have I clearly understood your position?
[English]
Ms. Desai: Well, I think with respect to the particular severity of the offence, we should look at the period of time that is crime‑free. So, yes, I think that think that this is what the research indicates. Am I advocating that it automatically happens the moment they are released from the institutions? No. I don’t think that’s what this bill is attempting to do, but I do think that after a period of crime-free time in the community and having received interventions and programs of support where they are ready to move on with their lives and they have demonstrated some success —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: However, it talks about the probation period. As soon as the probation period is over, the individual can get a pardon.
The bill also provides that someone who commits a crime will be treated the same as someone who has committed five. Therefore, people who are more dangerous than others are going to be treated the same way. The bill makes no distinction. Do you agree with this principle?
[English]
Ms. Desai: No; my short answer is no. I think that there can be different amounts of time that it takes for people to get out of a cycle of crime, and there are many factors that contribute to somebody’s reoffending. If those opportunities are given to somebody to get out of a crime cycle at a certain point in their life, there are many people who have repeat offences. So this would impact many folks if we were to create exclusionary criteria.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Are you aware that with this bill, from now on, the Parole Board of Canada will have to demonstrate that the individual has not reoffended in the qualifying period for their pardon? Offenders no longer have to prove that they have obeyed the law.
Therefore, the police or the board will have to contact all police forces in cities where the individual may have resided — they might have lived in 10 different cities — to determine whether the individual has committed a crime in any of those cities.
From a purely practical standpoint, do you feel this is something that the board can do with the resources it has, namely to check with all police forces to determine whether an individual has committed a crime?
[English]
Ms. Desai: I’m not a technical expert in terms of how the police resources and information is —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: However, you support the bill.
If you support the bill, that means you believe that the board will have all the necessary resources to do that. However, people have told us that the board will not have all the resources it needs to track all offenders and ensure that they did not commit crimes during the qualifying period for an automatic pardon.
[English]
Ms. Desai: I’m sorry; I feel like that’s more of a statement than a question. I’m not clear on what the question is.
The Chair: Could I just return to the earlier question, which was the question concerning the lack of coordination of police services making it more difficult to identify risk and inviting you to comment on that?
Ms. Desai: Sure. I think that certainly nobody is advocating for the police to have fewer resources in doing their job. I’m not an expert in terms of how the information will flow. In particular, my area of expertise is on how we support people to reintegrate into the community and do that safely and effectively.
I’m certainly not an expert on police processes and the information exchange that happens between different jurisdictions.
The Chair: Thanks very much. Senator Simons?
Senator Simons: Thanks very much. I’m going to ask two questions that are opposite perspectives. First of all, to be devil’s advocate, I was a journalist for many years. I covered many cases where it would have been very valuable for people to know in advance that they had a criminal record before they reoffended. I’m just wondering: If I’m an employer, should I not have the right to know whether the person I’m thinking of hiring previously embezzled a lot of money, or previously had a record for impaired driving if I’m hiring them to drive a motor vehicle? At what point do you think people should be denied the right to know information that may be pertinent to the position for which someone is being hired? Mr. Myette, please.
Mr. Myette: If we have an appropriate waiting period, and I just wanted to address that comment that the previous senator mentioned in terms of probation. I think if probation is part of the sentence, the person finishes their sentence. I think the way the bill is being presented now, if it’s a summary conviction, the person would have to wait two years after the end of their sentence and be crime-free during that time. If it’s an indictable offence or offences, it would have to be five years after the end of their sentence and be crime-free.
Presumably, with our criminal record system that we have in place with CPIC, for example, if there were a police investigation or if there are any charges, et cetera, that would be a matter of record. First, that person would have to have been crime-free during that period of time. The question is: How long is long enough? What period of time do we have to wait for that person to say, “Okay. You are fine now.”
If a person has been crime-free for five years after the end of their sentence, then that should be an expression of their sincerity to change their life. In that case, maybe they should have some protection under legislation to be able to do that so they are not penalized for the rest of their lives for something that they did that they could have been doing because of mental health issues.
If you were to look at the people who are going through the prison system, a high percentage of them have addictions and mental health issues. They made bad choices. It is not that they are bad people, necessarily. There is a percentage of people in the institutions who are bad people. Those are the people who, obviously, have to be handled in a different way.
The large percentage that eats up a lot of our resources such as taxpayers’ money, social, you name it, are people who have other issues who, if they were given the right opportunities such as support, rehabilitative services, or whatever, would change their lives.
To answer your question, yes, they deserve that protection if they have a proven period of crime-free life.
Senator Simons: It’s not “crime free” but “conviction free.” That’s not quite the same thing.
Mr. Myette: Yes.
Senator Simons: Let me turn to the other side regarding my questions. I remember being entertained when my daughter had just turned 18 and had her first real summer job that she had to get a criminal background check. I thought it was amusing because she had been 18 for two months and I did not think that much would show up in a criminal background check. However, summer after summer, she had to go to have a criminal background check. Now she is a lawyer. They never asked for a criminal background check then.
Maybe this is a question for Ms. Desai: Does it create a feeling in the public imagination that crime is worse than it actually is when we ask people to get a criminal background check to have a summer job working at a museum, which is what my daughter was doing; or, to get a criminal background check to volunteer at the school? Are we creating the illusion that there are criminals everywhere when we are asking for criminal background checks for the most mundane of tasks?
Ms. Desai: I think that Mr. Myette has spoken to this point. There is a pressing stigma that arises from historical convictions which starts to no longer have relevance to things like employment and volunteer opportunities. Once we lose that relevance over time and it becomes historical, then this prejudice remains in terms of somebody’s attempt to be rehabilitated or reintegrated into the community.
The function should be to limit access to the information. This bill accomplishes that. It does not mean that you can’t have a regime that ensures that the police can continue to have access to the information that they need to provide effective crime prevention services. That can still be established using the framework that is here. The protection has to consider sharing information with housing authorities and employers, who more than likely will not consider the actual context of whatever crime has occurred or the nuances that exist.
It is one thing to say one crime is this or that. There really are a number of layers when you start to unpack what comes with a criminal conviction and the different complexities that are baked into it. I do not think that employers take the time to think through or care about this and it becomes prejudicial in that way. We really do need to limit the access to that information after a period of time.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you to all three of our witnesses for being here. I appreciate it.
This bill is about reintegration into society and about the fastest way to do so. As you said, Mr. Myette, if I understood you, most people do not reoffend. It’s a one-time mistake or things like that. What do you see as the biggest problem in reintegration? Any one of you can answer. All of us want people who come out of jail to reintegrate almost immediately. However, after listening to you we know that that is not always possible. There are a number of issues involved.
You three are very experienced. In speaking to the committee, besides the record, what other things are needed to reintegrate people into society?
Mr. Myette: Effective programs while a person is incarcerated, if you are talking about someone who has been incarcerated, are the most important, as well as the involvement of the community.
Our organization, like many nonprofits in the criminal justice sector, involves members and volunteers who participate in the prisons and keep the link alive for people so that they are not totally isolated. You are taking someone who comes into prison and experiences all kinds of issues. They are in a closed environment for a period of time. Believe me, if you have ever been to some of the institutions across Canada, those are not healthy places to be. You are not actually improving the mental health of the person. You are, in fact, exacerbating the mental health of the individual. The more normal the process of reintegration can be, the better. Basically, reintegrating people into the community with strong links and support when they come out is what our organization, as a peer support organization, is trying to do.
This is important to remember: People want to help others. One of our seven steps is helping others that I have been helped. That means a lot to an individual. Those are the sorts of things that will help people to reintegrate better into the community. As you said, yes, the other aspects of what a criminal record can do to limit that reintegration will be something that must be dealt with down the road.
I am not sure that that really answers your question entirely. The process of community involvement and community acceptance back into the community if a person proves that they deserve it is important. The pardon is one final step of saying to that individual, “We have accepted you back.”
It is important also to remember that the state needs to show leadership for the community to say that we have taken the necessary steps to rehabilitate this person and now we are bringing them back into the community. A whole range of things will obviously have to be put in place.
Senator Jaffer: When you say that the state will rehabilitate, obviously that is not happening. When the person is out, the state is not really involved in that person’s rehabilitation; the person is left on their own. We know that the criminal record suspension takes a long time now, so that will be held over their head — and, there are all kinds of other issues — which means that the person may end up back in jail which doesn’t help, right?
What is your experience, any of you? It is a vicious circle. You make a mistake. You go to prison for the first time. When you come out, it is harder than being in prison because of all the different factors involved with living in an open society. And then there is recidivism. Isn’t that a vicious circle that we create if we do not have the state helping to find a way to rehabilitate people?
Mr. Sauvé: Some of the biggest challenges are when prisoners come out from federal institutions, there is a period of time during which they will be on parole. When they come out, they’re coming out with no resources, no money. Many of them do not have any ID. There are those challenges, along with trying to find housing. Many of them end up in halfway houses. There’s also health care. They do not have doctors. For many, they cannot go back to the community where the crime was committed. They will have to go to another community. There is a real sense of isolation that does lead to the recidivism. There are many prisoners that I have seen who come out with no money, no resources and no opportunities to succeed.
Senator Clement: Thank you for your presentations. We appreciate it.
Mr. Sauvé, we met this summer at Grand Valley Institution. It was an honour to see the value and strength of the work that you do with the St. Leonard’s Society. It is remarkable. All parliamentarians should visit prisons; it will and does make us better at our jobs. Thank you.
I want to engage in something that Mr. Myette said. You talked about how a pardon — and I like the way that you use the word “pardon,” I get your point — gave you confidence. It is a question of state of mind.
In my work at the legal clinic, when we had the resources to do so, we represented and helped people with those complicated application processes. I would accompany a client through that. Even there, they would be discouraged. They were often from marginalized communities, by the way. Their lives were chaotic — looking for housing, looking for work — and they would give up, even with the assistance of the legal clinic. Can you speak to people just giving up and how Bill S-212 would help?
Mr. Myette: If the person felt some confidence that if they do their time, do the programs that they are assigned to do and they have some opportunity — and as a previous senator asked, what can be done to help them reintegrate better — if the support systems are in place, not just by the government system, but community organizations which need the support.
Every time we show up in Ottawa at Public Safety or something, we have our hands out because criminal justice or reintegration and rehabilitation in the community is not a popular cause. Charity money goes someplace else. We are somewhat dependent upon support from — I will call it the taxpayer — to come back and to help and support the community organizations to support those individuals as they come out to give them access to housing and employment, that kind of thing, so that they have a sense that there is actually somebody who cares about them.
The additional aspect is that if they believe that if they serve their time and are able to get a pardon at some point to be, in a sense, forgiven. I can remember a previous government cabinet minister — I will not say the name, because I am not 100% sure who it was. I know what he said. Effectively, he said that, “It’s not the responsibility of the state to forgive; it is the responsibility of society to forgive.” But society needs a sense of leadership from somewhere — somebody to set the direction. In a lot of cases, that comes from the state because the state sentences people and the state had care and control of those people. In my view, it is the responsibility of the state or the government to actually award that pardon, if you will.
As I said, the state of mind comes down to people being confident enough that they do not have to give up because there are resources there. Believe me, the incarceration process, in a lot of cases, is more damaging than it is assisting individuals.
Some people will say, so what? They broke the law, they deserve it. Well, is that making a safer society? If we talk about public safety, we have to talk using all of the means available to us to make it a safer society. How can we do that? We can do it by preventing recidivism. The federal framework to reduce recidivism is a good platform to start with. As members of the National Associations Active in Criminal Justice, we’re committed to that. We have partnered with Public Safety to build the pillars of that platform to make it more effective.
Ms. Desai: I know that under the existing system, even where my colleague, Mr. Myette, has highlighted, there is currently money being put into helping people to apply with the current record suspension process in place. I know that right now there are people working with that funding to do that work who are losing clients who went through the initial stages of the application process only to find that they have discovered outstanding fines that they could not afford to pay. They just give up.
In terms of Mr. Myette’s point about what we are trying to achieve with successful reintegration and safer communities, you want to be able to streamline a process where people can, at a certain point, go back to living meaningful, productive lives, whatever that means to those individuals, that is absent from returning to custody or becoming reinvolved with police services.
To Senator Jaffer’s point earlier in terms of the barriers to reintegration, for me, a big piece of that is housing. This is a bill that actually addresses a big part of a major barrier. You can have all of the mental health supports and everything else that you need, but if you do not have a safe place to live, what are the chances of those things succeeding for that individual? For me, anything that removes a barrier to accessing safe housing should be a top priority of this particular government. My research is largely grounded in housing and homelessness, and I am obviously passionate about criminal justice as well, but I see them as interlinked. This definitely gets to that.
Senator Pate: Thank you very much, all of you, for appearing and for the work you do every day, and for your volunteer work, which is often unpaid.
Mr. Myette, and Mr. Sauvé, you are both Indigenous. You know the particular challenges for those coming out. Mr. Myette, you live in a province where 90% of Indigenous men have a criminal record by the age of 30. You have already talked about the impact that has.
I want to ensure that this is clear, just because some of the comments that have been made have been less clear. You are right, it is after two years for a summary conviction, five years not just crime free, but there is no automatic expiry if there is any flags, then there is a review done by the Parole Board and that comes up as a flag in the Canadian Police Informant Centre system, also referred to as the CPIC system, which is an automated system. I want to be clear that it is not that it has to be a conviction, be flagged and then it can be reviewed.
I get calls all of the time still in this position, even with the $18.5 million provided to your wonderful organizations to assist people trying to navigate. I wonder if you could expand on the intertwining of these issues. Just today, I was talking to a woman who, because she could not get a job because of her record, was in a homeless shelter. She was going back to potentially looking at selling her body and stripping because that was the only place that did not ask for a criminal record check. It struck me how intertwined all of these issues are in terms of her ability to parent and have housing. As she said, I do not want to get back to using drugs to anaesthetize myself to this.
Can you describe the steps of what the process takes to go through now and how long it takes? You have mentioned, as has Senator Clement, people not going through with the process. I know that story, as well. What would the difference be, in your view, of some of the people you know? How would it impact them directly if this were put in place?
Mr. Myette: There are various levels of capability of the people who go through the system. Some people can navigate things easily, but that is not a large percentage of people who go to prison. If you look at the number of people in prison in provincial jails, Indigenous people, marginalized communities of people who are in prison, they are starting off at a disadvantaged perspective to begin with. If they happen to have mental health issues that go along with that, and addiction issues that are usually caused by underlying mental health issues, the process for them is that they are starting from a point of weakness to begin with.
I had a conversation with a Parole Board of Canada executive here about a year ago, and we were talking about implementing the pardons project. They said that if you can figure out some good processes to help people navigate through the system, let us know, because we are confused. The process is so complicated as it is, but does it really need to be?
That’s the point. Why does it need to be so complicated that even the Parole Board itself, which is responsible for granting pardons, struggles at times to understand what really needs to be done? We have two levels — well, I think there are actually four streams, if I’m not mistaken, to get a record suspension or a pardon, and there’s even confusion around that.
I think the whole process needs to boil down to something that is a bit simpler, and I don’t think we’re going to create an unsafe society by doing that, quite frankly. I think we’re going to create a safer society by simplifying the process. For people who could be contributing members of society, instead of being a burden because they are not functioning properly, we have a way of dealing with that. Shame on us if we don’t do something about it.
For so long this process has existed and hasn’t really gotten any better, so we need to address it and deal with it in a way that will assist people so it can be streamlined, and especially for people who are challenged. Literacy is a big issue for a lot of people. That’s one of the things.
We have two offices with our pardons project. One is in Dartmouth and one is in Alberta, in Calgary. A large percentage of the people that come for assistance are people that struggle with literacy and all sorts of other things that they are dealing with, and these are people that, in fact, if they had that advantage, because employment is obviously one of them. Housing, as Ms. Desai said earlier, and so that process is dragged out for them for a long period of time. In a lot of cases, that’s what does force them to give up, like the person that you mentioned that is thinking now she has to resort to selling her body in order to support herself.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Myette.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: I have a question for you first, Mr. Myette. Thank you for being here today. You said something that I found very interesting. At the beginning of your presentation, you said that you were an ex-convict, that you obtained a pardon, that you changed your life and that the pardon you obtained gave you confidence.
I don’t mean to pry, but my question is: Was it your decision to change your life that led you to get a pardon, which gave you confidence, or was it the other way around? There are many stereotypes, and people might think they are dealing with inmates who will become repeat offenders. This is getting frustrating and we’re trying to dig a little deeper and really understand, so I hope you don’t mind me asking you this type of question.
[English]
Mr. Myette: First of all, I had decided to change my life well ahead of getting a pardon. The pardon was the icing on the cake for me to remove that sense of stigma that I felt. For many years, even though I had a pardon, there was still this idea that, well, I can’t be too open about my criminal past because I live in a society — even though I have a pardon, I wasn’t walking around advertising it, but I didn’t have to. I had the confidence that I didn’t even have to talk about it and people didn’t ask. I mean, I was fortunate in a lot of cases. But if I were asked in a situation, I could say, no, I don’t have a criminal record because I had a pardon. That was the point.
A lot of people do make the decision that they want to change their lives. It’s not like a pardon is magically going to make them a successful person. Obviously, they already have made the decision that they want to do better. I think what it does is it helps remove that sense of stigma and shame in some cases in order to support the decisions you’ve already made.
If it opens more doors, whether it’s employment, housing, insurance, for example. Insurance companies ask the question, even today: Does anyone in your house have a criminal record? Well, what relevance is that to getting home insurance? I guess if it was arson that you were convicted of, that might have some relevance, but otherwise I’m not sure, to be honest with you.
That’s why I come back to this comment about the state of mind because that’s part of it. We’re all driven by our emotions to a large extent. If we can manage that and manage our fears and lack of self-confidence, self-worth, I think that’s the biggest thing, self-worth, because so many people come out of prison and one of our previous founders of the 7th Step Society talked about their self-worth was in their boots. That was how their self-worth was, so anything that helps to restore it. Some people can say, yeah, you can’t just go around hugging criminals. In some cases, yes, you can, because that’s what the person was missing in their life, maybe some human compassion, that sort of thing.
Again, the pardon reinforces the fact that society is willing to give them a chance.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: My question is for all three of you. In response to Senator Boisvenu’s question about whether you have any data, shouldn’t our committee instead be requesting data from those who provide funding, such as Correctional Service Canada and the Parole Board of Canada? We understand that your organizations operate with minimal funding. Are we asking the wrong authority or organization? Shouldn’t we be asking governments what they manage to do and what they have in terms of data? We know that government data is an issue. Shouldn’t we be forcing the authorities to develop systems that will generate data?
[English]
Mr. Sauvé: It would be important to look at the government’s statistics. Agencies don’t have those resources, but the Parole Board and corrections should provide those.
I’d like to go back just briefly to what Senator Pate raised about Indigenous prisoners and people of colour that are in prison. That’s a growing percentage of the prisoners. Some of the assessment tools that were used were biased against them. Many of them have difficult times finding housing when many of them are from low-income housing. Some of them are from reserves.
I was shocked when I first started going back into the prisons and I went up to the Beaver Creek Institution, which was called the Fenbrook Institution back then, and that’s where they were bringing most of the Inuit prisoners. They were bringing them to Gravenhurst, and they were thousands of miles away from their families and their resources. Many of them were coming to Ottawa and had never lived in the city in their lives. I see so many Indigenous and people of colour and it’s stacked against them when they are coming back into the community.
For myself, I succeeded in prison in spite of it, not because of it. When I go in now, the opportunities that were afforded to me aren’t available in the prisons now.
The Chair: I will have to interrupt you at that point, Mr. Sauvé. Thank you very much.
Senator Batters: Thank you very much. My question is to Ms. Desai.
I was the critic of an earlier version of this bill. I remain highly concerned about this bill, in particular about the automatic nature of granting free pardons to some people who have been convicted of committing some very serious crimes. With the automatic nature of that, there are some very real and alarming situations which would fall through some pretty wide cracks in this legislation. I’m thinking about an elderly woman who looks after her grandchild and unknowingly rents out a basement suite in the place where she lives to an offender who has served a sentence for some very serious crimes, or an offender who has served a sentence for a serious sexual assault and received a record suspension and then finds employment as a realtor where he would potentially show residences to female clients alone.
Can you comment on those types of situations? They might not be the normal situations that might fall into the types of things that people are thinking about under this bill, but those types of situations could very easily occur. Aren’t those kinds of situations potential concerning to you and to society about this bill?
Ms. Desai: Yes, certainly.
I don’t want to come off on the side that there is one side versus another side. Nobody is advocating for there to be anything other than a just, fair and proportionate response to criminal activity. I don’t think we’re endorsing concealing important information from police or from the criminal justice system. If there are people who are criminally active, there should be a process in place.
This is a tough one because it’s an emotional kind of response to an issue where those are very genuine concerns, but the discomfort lies in getting comfortable with what the research shows us, which is that, overwhelmingly, if there is a period of time where someone has not been engaged in further criminal activity and they have the right supports in place — for somebody to get to a point where they can then become a realtor, I would celebrate somebody who was in prison and who has been able to get to a point where they can become meaningfully employed.
However, the reality of what happens to folks in terms of the risk management comes down to a period of time where they can demonstrate they’ve moved on and where they are no more of a risk than anybody else to reoffend. That’s just what the research tells us, and that’s the discomfort in addressing these kinds of hypothetical situations. Then, thinking through what the research shows us about people’s engagement in criminal activity is a bit different from that.
Senator Batters: There are some pretty serious crimes that can be summary conviction offences. Would you concede that, perhaps, two years is not enough for those types of situations?
Ms. Desai: I know you’ve heard from many others who are probably well positioned to speak to the specifics on time. The honourable members here today must figure out what that period of time is, but I think there must be a set period of time. If we don’t ascribe to a belief that there can be a set period of time, then we are effectively saying that we don’t believe in the criminal justice system as it’s currently articulated.
We must believe in rehabilitation. That has to include the concept of reintegration after many years following a conviction. There’s a point at which we have to ascribe to a set period of time in order to really fundamentally stand behind the principles of our criminal justice system. That’s up to you folks to decide upon, not me, but I do think that it’s an important deliberation for you to have.
Senator Klyne: Thank you, and welcome to our guests.
My question is for Mr. Sauvé. We met a few years ago when I was in the company of Senator Pate on a tour of some of the correction centres. There were two memorable things from that. One was that in speaking with some of the prisoners — and this was in maximum security, largely speaking — there were rehabilitation programs available to them, but they weren’t getting them. That was one thing that just stuck in my mind.
The other one was the fantastic work you were doing with some of the men who were struggling with authority and so on. You had a great program that probably led to successful rehabilitation, I would have to assume. I know there were many records of where that was the case.
I have two quick questions. Do you believe that granting a pardon in itself is sufficient in facilitating successful reintegration in society? Second, would the successful implementation and execution of a tried and tested rehabilitation program prior to completion of their sentences add substantially to the success of the reintegration?
Mr. Sauvé: The pardon is one of the tools that would motivate people to remain crime free and for them to feel that they are a citizen and can reintegrate into the community, yes, by all means.
As to programming in the institutions, I see so many people of colour who are screened out of the programs because they are labelled as STG, a security threat group, meaning they have had some gang affiliation. Therefore, they get screened out of those programs. Barriers are being put up against so many. Not all of them are gang members; a vast majority of them aren’t gang members, but if they happen to be in a picture with somebody, that label can be attached to them.
Then they get screened out of programming, jobs and transferring down to lower security. That says to them that they are not equal and that they are being held back.
I feel a lot of the programs should be delivered in the community, and a lot of the resources being spent in the prison system should be spent on the front end to prevent crime.
With the pardons, it doesn’t apply to me, but it does make people feel that they are accepted back. It makes people feel that they are not walking around with a scarlet letter on them. So, yes, I think that is a huge thing.
Senator Klyne: Thank you.
The Chair: We have two minutes, Senator Boisvenu, for the second round.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Ms. Desai, you say that you do a lot of reading and research; have you read the Auditor General’s 2018 report on recidivism rates in Canada?
[English]
Ms. Desai: No, I did not.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: The report says that the recidivism rate in Canada doesn’t include provincial prisons. The provincial prison population in Canada is five times bigger than that of federal penitentiaries. It would therefore be reasonable to believe that the recidivism rate is much higher than 10%, as Senator Jaffer just said.
How will the Parole Board of Canada be able to track the provincial prison population — the board isn’t informed of their release — given that there are five times more offenders in those facilities than in federal penitentiaries? How will they track them? Don’t you feel that is an issue? Mr. Myette, you appear to be nodding.
[English]
Mr. Myette: The number of people who are going through the provincial system — you’re right that there are large numbers across the country. Those people, however, to a large extent, are what I would call in many cases — and that’s where, if you were to grade the degrees of threat to the community — property offences —
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I understand. However, how will the board be able to track the recidivism rate in such a big prison population? There are 55,000 inmates in provincial facilities and 15,000 in federal penitentiaries. So that’s 70,000 people to track. How is that humanly possible?
[English]
The Chair: Senator Boisvenu, we will give Mr. Myette a minute uninterrupted to answer now.
Mr. Myette: That’s where the benefit of an automatic pardon comes in. If you have people who have been crime free for a period of time, it takes the burden off the Parole Board. Obviously, there’s going to be some sort of review, yes; there will be some administrative review, a checking of police records and that sort of thing as to whether a person has reoffended.
But if the person has been crime-free during that period of time, and if all the other supports are put in place — it is not just that the pardon will be the magical cure.
Obviously, it will not.
There was a question earlier about what can be done to help people reintegrate. Provincial corrections systems now are starting to realize that. I’ve had conversations recently with the Government of New Brunswick and the Government of British Columbia, who have injected large amounts of money into programs to give people who are released a better chance of succeeding in the community. Prior to that, provincial jails were primarily warehouses. People would go to court and say, “Give me two years plus because if I go to a provincial jail, I’ll get no kind of support and programming.”
I don’t want to point fingers and say it’s all their fault, but that is a situation that is changing, and the provinces have recognized that. Hopefully, within the next few years, I hope we’ll see the benefit of that as well.
In any event, I’m not really sure I’ve answered your question, but it is a problem that needs to be addressed. Obviously, the whole point, as Mr. Sauvé said earlier, if we can, is to prevent the person from going through the provincial jail system, committing more serious crimes and then going into the federal system. Then we’ve gained something to start with. Any measure we can use to do that is worth looking at.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Myette.
Let me bring this session of our committee meeting to a close, first, by thanking the senators for their engagement with the witnesses but, in particular, Ms. Desai, Mr. Sauvé, Mr. Myette, for your thoughtful presentations and your engagement with us in answering our questions.
Honourable senators, we will continue our examination of Bill S-212 with our second panel. We are pleased to welcome, from CAEFS, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Emilie Coyle, Executive Director — welcome back, Ms. Coyle — and Nyki Kish, Associate Executive Director; and from Aboriginal Legal Services, joining us by video conference, Christa Big Canoe, Legal Director. Welcome.
We begin the opening remarks with Ms. Coyle, followed by Ms. Big Canoe. As you know, we operate with the pattern of inviting you to speak for five minutes each, and that will be followed by questions from senators.
Emilie Coyle, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies: Thank you very much, and I will be sharing my time with CAEFS’s Associate Executive Director Nyki Kish.
Thank you so much for having us here again, honourable senators. As you know, at the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, we work to address the persistent ways in which criminalized women and gender-diverse people are often excluded from considerations of community and denied their humanity, so this conversation is very pertinent to the work that we do.
We also have a membership of 22 local Elizabeth Fry Societies, several of whom are engaged in record-suspension programming and front-line services supporting criminalized women and gender-diverse people.
As you know, we work closely, daily, with people who are victimized, socially excluded and harmed because of the lasting effects of having a criminal record. CAEFS is also a member of the Fresh Start Coalition, which is a committee from which you’ve already heard several submissions.
Today we are here to underscore the need and the net social benefit to taking a responsible approach to the administration of justice. There are crises that are impacting our systems, and they are unknown to all of you. We welcome this proposed legislation as it does three very important things in order to answer those crises.
One, it tackles an important issue that everyone cares about — public safety. This is a non-partisan issue. Everybody wants to feel safe in their communities.
Two, it offers us a proactive step that helps move us further toward our national goals of reconciliation, access to justice and an equitable country.
Finally, while we recognize that this subject can be very emotional, we are grateful to see that this bill has looked at clear evidence in its drafting.
Nyki Kish, Associate Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies: Creating public safety through reintegration back into the community is the ultimate and driving goal of our prison system. This is the result we seek across people convicted of both summary and indictable offences, including Schedules 1 and 2 offences. The research clearly indicates that reintegrative systems are what creates public safety.
However, our criminal record regime currently works against this purpose. We are punishing people in prison and then punishing them again long after they have completed their sentences by preventing them from accessing employment, housing, their families and, as we have heard, meaningful participation in society.
We closely know many impacted individuals who have completed their prison sentences and then gone on, to the best of their abilities, to try to improve their lives and the lives of their communities. One person in our network, for example, completed her sentence some years ago. She’s gained employment delivering a front-line service that helps others in her community. She recently learned she has to move from her apartment. However, she’s been unable to find new and secure housing because of record checks on housing applications. She has disclosed to us that she’s fearful that she’s going to have to try to complete her job while living in her vehicle.
Too many people are facing these unnecessary and immovable barriers to reintegration every step of the way. People are being denied jobs that could become careers. People are even denied volunteer opportunities.
Ms. Coyle: I am so grateful to be joined by Ms. Big Canoe, who I’m sure will speak to this as well, but this government knows already that the mass incarceration of Indigenous people is a glaring crisis. Fifty per cent of the population in the federal prisons designated for women are Indigenous and upwards of 90% in certain provincial jail populations in the Prairies. This government has taken some action, including investing significant funds into the NGO sector to deliver these record suspension programs, which is an acknowledgment of that, but the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies who are engaged in this work report that the process remains arduous and inaccessible for many. Shortening timelines, eliminating applications — these are going to have a direct impact on so many for whom a record suspension is currently inaccessible. It is also going to alleviate a tremendous amount of public resources that could be much better allocated, as we heard earlier.
Section 4 of this bill provides a two- and five-year wait time for record expiry, respectively, without future system involvement. If we think about how much that occurs in a person’s life across five years, it would be difficult to argue that this is not a sufficient time period, particularly given that when we go into the prisons we see very young people there, 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. Think about the difference in a person between the age of 20 and the age of 25. These are simple and effective changes that serve the goal of a responsible, equitable justice system.
Ms. Kish: Importantly, this legislation does not speak to everyone who is criminalized. We discussed this legislation as a two-tiered system, that being between summary and indictable offences. But as we heard from Mr. Sauvé, it excludes the now 26% of federally sentenced people who have life or indeterminate sentences, and this is a population that is populated by Indigenous, Black and cumulatively disadvantaged people.
In the past ten years, the Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview reports that 61% of women who have been given life sentences have been Indigenous. So what we really have is a three-tier system.
Despite that, this legislation does, importantly, begin to address the mass incarceration of Indigenous women and gender‑diverse people by removing reintegration barriers.
Ms. Coyle: I will finish. This is my last minute, if you do not mind, senator. By reducing the high sentences of people needlessly returning to prison because of ongoing social exclusion which are caused by these criminal records, we will obviously then improve the lives of countless people including the Indigenous people that we were speaking about earlier and create capacity in our systems to more thoughtfully respond to legitimate social harm.
I direct you to look at an opinion piece that we co-wrote with the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund as well as Luke’s Place in the Toronto Star in October 2022, which says that:
The social science research is clear: you cannot predict, solely on the basis of a criminal record whether someone is likely to be violent in the future. Keeping people out of jobs and stable housing, on the other hand, significantly increases the likelihood of justice system involvement.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you to you both.
Christa Big Canoe, Legal Director, Aboriginal Legal Services: Thank you. Meegwetch. [Indigenous language spoken]
I will translate for you. I am the Legal Director of Aboriginal Legal Services, our Anishinabeg people who seek truth. Ms. Coyle and Ms. Kish have done the heavy lifting for me, so I will try to keep this as brief as possible in my statement.
On November 30, 2021, Senator Pate moved to the second reading of this bill, and we wholly support it. Aboriginal Legal Services are in favour of an automatic records expiry process. There is a value in a type of process where records expire. This is particularly true as it relates to Indigenous individuals. The current cost and onerous application process compound barriers that Indigenous peoples already face. The cost of the current process results in discrimination that intersects with other systemic inequalities Indigenous people face without a criminal record, let alone in the context of mass incarceration and over‑policing of Indigenous people that exists in Canada.
People who have served their time and who have been held accountable for their actions have done exactly that: They’ve served a sentence that in legislation — whether based upon a mandatory minimum or based upon a judicial determination to use the sentencing principles within the Criminal Code — have completed their sentence. Once they have completed their sentence and the time proposed in the bill as mentioned by my colleagues in section 4, the two or five years — once that time has elapsed, they, like everyone else, need employment, housing, education and volunteer opportunities to be contributing members in their community.
The socioeconomic inequities between Indigenous and non‑Indigenous people are vast. These inequities include a higher prevalence of poverty among First Nations people, Métis and Inuit, perpetrated by colonial policies and practices including barriers to educational and economic opportunities. The bottom line is that Indigenous people are more likely to experience poverty. Indigenous people in Canada experience the highest levels of poverty. A shocking one in four Indigenous people, or 25%, are living in poverty, and 4 in 10, or 40%, of Canada’s Indigenous children are living in poverty. You’re like, “Ms. Big Canoe, why are you talking about Indigenous children?” When you have a criminal record and you do not have the means to seek a pardon, whether it is financially or based upon low educational attainment, and you then proceed to have children who also live in impoverished communities, it makes it very difficult to proceed in a good way.
One of the things that Aboriginal Legal Services also believes is important is the shifting of responsibility to government actors, and Senator Pate actually explained this well, back in November of 2021.
The shifting of responsibility to government actors to ensure expiry of the record once these wait periods elapse, without subsequent convictions or charges rather than putting the onus on the individual to shoulder the current cost and onerous application process, is important. CPIC itself is an automated system. I know that some of the senators have asked questions about what the commission has to do. If you look to provisions 7 and 8, you will see it does require the commission to do a review. This is already an automated system. Putting into place a process and ensuring time frames that are important would remove the barriers for individuals to actually access the pardon process or to have the records removed.
We also submit the provision that will disallow the disclosure of conviction and criminal record checks for offences that are now decriminalized is extremely important. This is particularly true for Indigenous women who may have experienced criminal records that include prostitution. Anything that we have now removed, antiquated laws in some ways that have been a part of that systemic barrier or discrimination that Indigenous people have faced, it will be of value if people, in a time-lapsed manner, who have not had further convictions and who have served their time, have the ability to have their record clear.
We’ll be able to access things. All this sits on that same first thing I mentioned, which is this is a system that already, whether there is a criminal record or not, sees a lower educational attainment, employment opportunities and wellness and health access for Indigenous community members, whether they are in urban settings or remote First Nations in the Far North.
So in every way possible, we should ensure that these individuals who have served their sentence and have completed everything have every opportunity to live and strive in a good way.
Those are my submissions. I look forward to any questions you may have. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Big Canoe. It was very timely.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Thank you to the witnesses for being with us. Welcome to the committee.
I think we all agree that the current pardon system needs to be reformed to make it easier for offenders to obtain pardons, and also that reforms must not compromise women’s and children’s safety.
I will speak for my province. We can see that sexual assault by adults on children, whether it’s hockey coaches, scout leaders or teachers, is a scourge. Domestic violence is a scourge in Quebec. Sexual assault on women is a scourge.
The bill doesn’t differentiate between serious and less serious offences. I understand that stealing from a corner store at age 18 can be a youthful indiscretion. However, raping a woman at age 35 or 40 is no longer a youthful indiscretion.
What bothers me about this bill is it completely ignores the concept of victim. It focuses on the state of the offender, on their employment or housing. I share those concerns, but wouldn’t you agree that this bill should differentiate between violent crimes and minor crimes, so that the pardon is automatically granted for minor crimes, but that for violent crimes — especially in cases of recidivism — pardons are obtained upon request from the offender to ensure that at least some verification is done?
As I said earlier, there are 15,000 people in federal penitentiaries and 60,000 in provincial prisons. However, the parole board has no information on those in provincial facilities. How can we have a system where there are no longer any victims because these individuals will be automatically pardoned, when we should differentiate between the two? Would you agree with that?
Ms. Coyle: Are you asking me?
Senator Boisvenu: Go ahead. Any of you can answer.
[English]
Ms. Coyle: I just want to say — and you may have heard this from me before in other times that I have been here, senator — that the people we work with who are in the prisons designated for women are people who actually — there is a false distinction being made between people who have criminal records and people who are victims. In fact, most of the people that we work with have been harmed themselves several times over.
What we want to ensure, when we take any kind of action, is that we look at the ways in which people are trying to make their way back into society, to reintegrate, to be rehabilitated, and we don’t want to prevent them from doing that, especially considering that these people that we work with are extremely vulnerable people, often very marginalized people, who have experienced a lot of harm in their lives.
I will just leave it at that.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I understand what you’re saying, but that’s not my question. I understand your philosophy, because you work with these individuals. This bill will ensure that women who have been victims of domestic violence will no longer be able to go to the police station, as they do now, to inquire about the history of a new partner who is acting strangely. A daycare centre will no longer be able to do a background check on an educator or worker it wants to hire. That’s my issue. This is going to wipe the slate clean for offenders working with vulnerable groups. That’s the problem with this bill.
Shouldn’t the bill take crimes against children or women into account to ensure that we don’t grant an automatic pardon to those offenders, but instead provide for an application-based process?
[English]
Ms. Kish: Thank you for the question.
When we think about this question, it is an issue of — as Anita Desai said — what the intention of the prison system is, because as people are sentenced and go into the prison system, there is a very high, demanding and onerous expectation on people to complete programs and change the course of their action, regardless of the circumstances of their conviction. This, as many of you know, happens up against a lot of barriers in the prison system.
The presumption must be — unless we reconfigure all of the resources that we use to incarcerate — that after moving through the prison system, successfully completing one sentence, after a period of time in the community and then having no flags for future justice involvement — and when we think about all of the ways that the populations who become incarcerated are at higher risks of flags, that is really an astounding feat to go two or five years without justice involvement.
At that time, unless we really believe that the people are incapable of changing, and in which case we would have to change the whole system, I think we have to recognize that what we are doing right now is causing harm to many, and there are ways to build public safety that doesn’t come in a polarizing way but in a way that brings safety for everybody, and that’s by removing barriers and letting people who have worked hard to move on, to move on.
The Chair: Ms. Big Canoe, would you like to comment?
Ms. Big Canoe: I won’t. I will just add a bit, because I think that both Ms. Kish’s and Ms. Coyle’s answers suffice.
I would say the same thing or repeat that when you are talking about the time lapse between — and remember what the context is. First of all, I agree that the majority of Indigenous women — and I am going to use them as an example, Indigenous women, 50% of in-custody population and in some jurisdictions, much higher — have experienced more violence than they’ve probably created themselves.
But the other issue is, what you are talking about — and to me it seems a bit like the sky is falling sort of concern. Oh, the sky is falling. If we let one person through the system, what happens? The reality is that when we look at it more broadly, that is not what is happening.
The duration, the two to five years between, if someone is violent and of that nature, the system should be catching them. They should be getting new charges. The lapse that actually occurs in that time frame, when you have someone who is crime free or conviction free, having the pardon. The other thing is the concept of the presumption of innocence.
If an individual has committed an offence, and they are back before the criminal justice system, they still have the presumption of innocence that works in their favour. There is still the onus to demonstrate that they actually committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. None of that changes in the system simply because the time expired on an already served sentence.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: I keep thinking about the security theatre of sending people to do background checks on thousands and thousands of people who have no connection to the criminal justice system, but we have created this culture. We don’t, in fact, do criminal background checks on our boyfriends, but we do criminal background checks on our nannies and our volunteers in schools.
Is it really just in the last 10 or 15 years that we have developed this fixation that everybody has to have a criminal background check for everything? I don’t remember this being the case 20 to 25 years ago.
Ms. Coyle: I don’t know if I’m the right person to answer that question, because I’m not sure if I remember 20 to 25 years ago if that was something that was happening.
Senator Simons: Oh, the unkindest cut.
Ms. Coyle: I do think that there is, certainly, if you look at the trajectory of the law around criminal records, we did have a two- and a five-year waiting period before the current law. I think if we were to look back in time, we could take some lessons from then.
Senator Simons: It just seems to me that you need a criminal background check for almost everything these days; although, I don’t believe that to be a senator we had to get one.
Ms. Coyle: Oh, yes, you had a —
Senator Simons: Oh, it was a security check, but I didn’t have to go down to the police station the way my poor kid has to all the time.
I will turn the question the other way, though.
Ms. Coyle: Sure.
Senator Simons: I spent 30 years as a journalist, much of that time covering courts and crime, and so, perforce, the cases I covered were always the worst ones, because those were the newsworthy ones. As a result, perhaps I have a skewed view of things, but I do share some of the concerns of Senator Batters and Senator Boisvenu that there are people out there — not the people who did more minor things because they were in a bad way — but very bad people, sociopathic people, who might be perfect — the cleverer the criminal, the better able they might be to stay out of the criminal justice system. So I do worry about the automatic example.
Senator Batters raised the question of a realtor who is a rapist, and the answer was, “Well, wouldn’t it be great if somebody recovered enough to become a realtor?”
But there are people out there who are not, perhaps, the clientele that the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and the John Howard Society of Canada are serving but people who are more career criminals. And I worry about the automatic nature of this in cases where people are — you understand what I mean — more sinning than sinned against.
Ms. Big Canoe: May I start answering this one?
Senator Simons: Please.
Ms. Big Canoe: Thank you. There are a couple of things to unpack there, but I did want to suggest that it is interesting, because, again, we’re talking about the most heinous when you talked. Maybe your view has been skewed, because you did cover — and misery loves company, and we’re a voyeuristic society that likes to see the bad. I saw more than enough of that on the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls as the lead commission counsel, where a lot of the media wanted just the bad parts of the news.
Possibly there is that skew there, but the other part is, for instance, we can’t provide you statistics of all of the unresolved missing and murdered Indigenous women that were heinous crimes where bodies were found. Those are walking around, unconvicted people. What we’re talking about in this legislation is a group of people sentenced in law based on sentencing principles where a judge has overseen the case and they have served their entire sentence.
Once the sentence is done and it expires — and, as my colleague has mentioned, this is what used to be in place, namely, two and five years — this is not reinventing the wheel. This is a lapse of time. Is there a concern? Why are we holding on to this stigma? Why does it matter in terms of employment? Why are we holding the stigma of an action that someone now has been accountable for so long after the fact? Is it because of the mere possibility that they might do something again when we, in this country, still have a whole host of unanswered homicides?
The Chair: Ms. Coyle or Ms. Kish, did you have a supplementary comment, ever so briefly?
Ms. Kish: I think that the outlying cases are important. I come to this job from a qualitative background. We come before you today because we spend a lot of time in the prison system. We work within the majority demographic contexts. We see and we know that the current system is imposing a lot of harm on people. Knowing that outlying cases will occur, how do we not have that allow for all of the present needless barriers that are occurring?
We often say there is no reason for the mass incarceration of Indigenous people. There is no reason that coming from economic insecurity should increase one’s chances of being sentenced. It should be about lawbreaking. If we are able to address all of the needless reasons why people are becoming criminalized, then wouldn’t the system have more capacity to meaningfully think through and respond to these legitimate cases that you are raising?
Ms. Coyle: We really do not want anyone to think that we’re excusing or looking the other way from risk. This is actually addressing that risk in a real way, just to make that clear.
Ms. Kish: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Tannas: I want to go back to the recurring theme of homelessness and the inability for employment to sustain you once you come out of prison. This doesn’t help, does it?
We’re hearing a bit of a red herring, namely, that somehow this is going to help that. It doesn’t. Someone can’t fiddle around at the margins for five years and then, all of a sudden, get a job and a house because this happened five years later.
What is it? Is it hope? That is, where you are now saying to somebody, “Look, you have to tough it out for five years. You have to do these things. Then it automatically comes off, and you can really go and achieve your dreams?”
What is it about the automatic piece after a long waiting period that is so magic? Can you tell me? That is, around housing and work and the things that we keep hearing about.
Ms. Coyle: Sure. I want to ensure that Ms. Big Canoe also speaks if she wants to take this first.
Ms. Big Canoe: I will take it first and then, Ms. Coyle, I will let you take over.
First, it is not a magic time frame, right? If someone is in custody long enough, if it is an indictable offence, five years is the transition period. When we reintegrate people back into society, it is not something that happens instantaneously. There are amazing programs like those of the Elizabeth Fry Society, and others, that help transition an individual back into the community. That’s the first thing, right? That time frame is really important because, in its absence, an inability to pay $680 or $690 — I cannot remember off the top of my head what the amount is — to get a pardon, the paperwork to fill out and the time it takes to get the pardon often extends out past five years. Often, individuals do not have the capacity to fill out the paperwork or to keep up with it to get that pardon.
When they apply for housing and then they have to answer the records question, but the record does not immediately expire after that duration, guess what happens? They have to answer in the affirmative. Then they are immediately taken off as a potential for any reason. They could have a good job or be obtaining education. They could be doing really strong on their transition path. That does not matter. They are going to be barred when people see that they have a criminal record. That is just the reality. And then you complicate that when you add intersectionality, diversity and indigeneity. All of that makes it more difficult.
The Chair: Thank you. You, as witnesses, are in quite a bit of demand so I might try to be more disciplined in terms of time.
Ms. Coyle: I would press everyone to look at the report that came out of the Mass Casualty Commission in Nova Scotia. If you want to look at a heinous crime and some really wonderful recommendations around how we can address that in our communities, we can dig into a lot there.
This is but one tool. Getting rid of someone’s criminal record automatically is not the answer to everything we’ve raised here today. However, it is an onerous application process. Even if you take away the cost, which the government has recently done, the application process still requires someone, in many ways, to relive parts of their lives that they do not want to bring up anymore if they have gone past that. If you look to the Fresh Start Coalition website that we developed, freshstartcoalition.ca, there are several examples of people who have criminal records and the experiences that they have in trying to get rid of them. For one woman who had quite a few struggles in her life, it was not necessarily the cost but the fact that she had to go back to the court house and she had to go back to the police. She had to get all of these pieces that are required for this onerous application. It tired her out. There were times when she decided not to do it because it was too much for her. She lived a productive life post-conviction, and she was never convicted of another crime. Something automatic would be of great benefit to her.
Senator Tannas: Thank you.
Senator Clement: There is so much in that answer. Thank you for your answer.
When I was at Grand Valley Institution for Women this summer, I was with Katie Verhoeven from my office. We sat in a town hall with women. It was heartbreaking to see the over‑representation of Indigenous and Black women. I stand up in the Senate and I make speeches about that and I quote stats, but to sit in a room and actually see it is a whole other life‑changing experience.
I am listening to you now and I can understand more clients who, even with my help trying to get through that record suspension process, walk away and say, “I cannot do this. I am no longer going to commit crimes, but I cannot do this. It is too much. Obviously, society does not want me to do it.”
You framed public safety in a different way. We hear “public safety” is law and order and tough on crime. You are reframing that. If you could lean into that, why does Bill S-212 make us feel safer? Why should it?
We need to reframe what “public safety” means. I need to understand how you do that.
Ms. Coyle: Do you mind if I take this first, Ms. Big Canoe? Thank you. I am going to read the second-last paragraph of the article that I co-wrote with LEAF and Luke’s Place. For those of you who aren’t aware, Luke’s Place is an organization that works primarily with people who are in family law, a lot of people who have experienced domestic violence and intimate partner violence. It was important for us to get their perspective as well on something like criminal record reform.
For us, true public safety is when — talking about issues of intersectionality — a Black, trans woman can safely find housing. True safety is when a disabled woman with a criminal record is employed and she is able to feed her children. True safety is helping someone with a history of addictions find a good home and a supportive community.
When you have a criminal record regime that prevents people from getting that, that is when you have public safety issues. Public safety is true safety for all, starting with the people who need it the most.
Senator Clement: I’m still partly employed by a legal clinic, so I have always wanted to say that before I engage with a legal clinic lawyer.
Ms. Big Canoe: Fair enough. Thank you, Senator Clement.
I would echo exactly what Ms. Coyle has said. Those of us who work in criminal justice systems should recognize that the criminal justice system doesn’t actually create our safe communities — things like housing, employment and opportunity. We have entire pockets, groups and populations, whether racialized or by some other intersectional need or reason, and we continue to leave up barriers so that they can’t access the things that we know will help them to do better.
We talk about why Bill S-212 would help. When you eliminate barriers, you are also protecting the children of the woman who was convicted of a criminal offence 10 years ago. She’s not that person. She’s fully reintegrated into society. But she’ll always have something that sticks with her. She’s fought the system through all of the other barriers to maybe be productive and to have children. However, if they are Indigenous or have another intersectional need, or a disability, they probably already have all those barriers. It’s one more barrier that’s not necessary, particularly if she already served her time and has transitioned back into the community.
Senator Batters: Thanks to all of you for being here.
First of all, I’m sorry, but I have to say, Ms. Coyle, that I find kind of shocking the response you recently gave about how you believe the application process that currently exists for a pardon requires offenders to relive difficult experiences, like going to a courthouse. I was immediately thinking: What about the victims of those crimes who have to relive the crimes perpetrated against them by offenders who will then get an automatic free pardon for serious crimes that have been perpetrated on them? What is your reaction to that?
Ms. Coyle: My immediate reaction is this: Let’s take, for example, mandatory charging policies when it comes to domestic violence in this province. In a case of mandatory charging, when the police arrive at the home and can’t determine who the perpetrator of the violence was, often they charge both parties. If it were a woman who had experienced a lot of violence in her life at the hands of her partner and she then had to go to court every day and defend herself against a charge of domestic violence against the very person who was harming her every day, you can imagine that would be a horrible thing to relive.
To bring it back to the discussion around who is a victim of crime and who is a perpetrator of crime in our line of work, it’s a blurry and important distinction to understand.
Senator Batters: Ms. Big Canoe from Aboriginal Legal Services, I’m wondering about Indigenous women who are too frequently the victims of serious crimes. What is your response as to how the automatic free pardons granted to offenders who have hurt Indigenous women in terms of how that will impact those women?
Ms. Big Canoe: I will contextualize this again in terms of the bill that is being proposed. It would be someone who has completed a sentence. I hear what you’re saying. As you may know, I was the lead commission counsel on the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Yes, there are always a number of issues that exist with that, but we also have to take into context — and I think of what my colleagues are saying — the number of women who are convicted for things like domestic violence when there’s dual charging. It’s a well-known fact, and one that has been cited in multiple reports, that Indigenous people plea out. The system treats them so harshly that sometimes it’s easier for them to plea out and take a lesser sentence or charge. What about those people? It’s the opposite. What about the people who have experienced their own violence? What’s the culpability? Our whole system, quite frankly, is broken when it comes to these types of things.
It’s a hard balance between survivor of harm or violence and someone who’s perpetrated the violence. It’s a blurred line. This concept of a free pardon was the system we had before the law changed it in 2012. It’s two years and five years. It’s a return to something that already existed for some time, so I don’t think it’s a free pardon.
Senator Batters: It wasn’t automatic. Again, I would ask you to please comment on the Indigenous women who are the victims. There is not any blurred-line situation. I’m asking you to comment on that.
Ms. Big Canoe: Being an Indigenous woman myself for almost 50 years and working in this field, I can’t recall where there’s not been a blurred line, to be honest with you, in relation to anyone we have worked with, where they have been convicted of something but they’ve also been a victim of something, whether through the colonial legacy or not. It’s hard for me to distinguish that.
You’re asking me to make a general comment on Indigenous victimization. As an individual who has been the victim of a sexualized crime as a child, I would also tell you that I can’t speak on behalf of all Indigenous victims. That wouldn’t be fair.
I can tell you from my own experience that an individual who had been sentenced or convicted, served their time, was accountable for their actions and didn’t commit further crimes, that is a person who should be entitled to have their record expire.
Senator Batters: Do you think that two years for a summary conviction offence with an automatic situation, as proposed in this bill, is long enough?
Ms. Big Canoe: Again, it’s the nature of the crime. If it’s a summary conviction, it’s probably a lesser crime.
Senator Batters: Probably, but not always. It’s just summary and indictable. There is no further distinction. Do you think there should be a further distinction?
Ms. Big Canoe: Not necessarily. Again, the distinction is based on the nature of the offence, whether it’s indictable or summary. I’m not sure that I understand your question exactly.
The Chair: Ms. Big Canoe, it’s a very good discussion, but it’s squeezing out opportunities for a few other senators.
Senator Pate: I want to go back and contextualize the question that I have for all three of you. I want to thank you all for your work and your ongoing efforts in all of these areas.
First of all, I want to be clear that the bill does not purge Schedule 1 or Schedule 2, and the bill maintains vulnerable sector checks. I want that to be clear because, through some of the questioning, that process has been made a bit fuzzy.
I do remember 25 years ago and 40 years ago. Criminal record checks have evolved as there have been calls for more accountability in relation to things like violence against women and children, in particular, as, I would say, a facile response instead of a meaningful response of the type that you’re talking about. That’s my humble opinion.
I’m curious whether that’s what you’ve seen as well that as society has become more risk-averse and wanting to point the finger at whom to blame and whom to hold accountable, there’s been more reliance on things like criminal record checks rather than providing housing and supports and ensuring that people have those opportunities. Even when the government made a commitment to change back to this kind of system and look at a more automated process, I think that the emotional knee-jerk response has been the problem, less the evidence.
If I’ve got it wrong, I certainly want each of you to correct me. Is that your understanding of where we’ve been and what we’ve seen evolve?
Ms. Coyle: I think it’s a little bit of a paternalistic answer to use women and children as the excuse for creating more restrictive and less responsive laws. Frankly, as a woman who has also experienced sexual violence in her life, I don’t want other people speaking for me. I would like to have evidentiary-based laws. This is one of those laws. It’s not going to be the answer to everything, obviously. This is why I turn our attention to the Mass Casualty Commission recommendations, because they look at the upstream preventative approach that we need to make a big difference in this country.
Ms. Kish: I think you’ve really said it well with the more restrictive and less responsive. When we publicly message about who the bad guys are, who the criminals are, this population hears those conversations. We know that there’s a tremendous amount of wrongful and over-convictions and all these systemic issues filtering into our justice system. When community members — the daughters, mothers and fathers — when the one in nine Canadians with a criminal record hears this, it creates public anxiety in them too.
The Chair: You’re nodding, Ms. Big Canoe. Do you want to make a contribution?
Ms. Big Canoe: I want to agree with both of my colleagues and, yes, it’s true. I think they have both articulated it well and I would agree wholeheartedly with them.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: I’d like to thank the three of you for being here.
I want to go back to what you said about it being a very cumbersome process right now, that the government has provided funding to help groups get through the process, but at the end of the day, it’s extremely expensive.
My first question is: How could the current funding be used to support people in their pardon process?
If Bill S-212 passes, what could this type of funding be used for? I imagine it will be used to support these people, because even if their records are automatically cleared, we’re still dealing with people in a vulnerable situation, if only because they were confined in prison for a period of their lives.
[English]
Ms. Coyle: We have so many ideas about what we could use that money for. It could be used in so many ways. Certainly, our colleagues who were on the panel before us spoke about the Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism that identified several pillars to help people reintegrate back into community post‑incarceration, such as housing, employment, health care, peer support, among others. To date, this government hasn’t attached any dollars to the Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism. There are some ways they are able to address it using other pots of money, but that would be one way.
Certainly, we have a lack of housing in our country, particularly for people who have criminal records or who are harder to house already. I would probably be remiss if I didn’t mention that we have a legal aid system that continues to need increased funding, particularly for people who are in prison and who can’t afford a lawyer, not only for prison-related issues but other issues that affect them.
Ms. Big Canoe: I concur. I agree with all of those. The big one for me would be housing. When we house people, they do better. One of the things our legal clinic does is prevent eviction or help with housing when people can’t get it. The difference between someone being housed and not housed is almost always fundamentally the biggest and best move that can occur.
Ms. Kish: I thought about one thing to add. In talking about reducing the burden from over-criminalization and having a more meaningful system, we do train and trust a host of experts and professions from the Parole Board of Canada to the staff of the CSC to administer the justice system. If we take away barriers for people who are moving forward, again, we could put dollars into supporting those services to them ensuring that there are solutions to the questions that still arise.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Several people have talked about housing and the three of you have as well. I’d like you to be more specific. You might very quickly be told that everyone is facing a housing problem, including those who haven’t committed any crimes. It’s a stereotypical response, but people say it all the time.
Are we talking about certain types of housing in particular? Could you be more specific than “each of these individuals needs a roof over their head”? Perhaps you could talk about your organization’s experience and that of the people you work with.
[English]
Ms. Coyle: I don’t know how much time I have. The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies last year did a bit of research to understand what was offered by the Elizabeth Fry Societies in terms of housing across the country for women and gender-diverse people who had experienced incarceration or criminalization. We found there was a lack of housing overall, but we also found that primarily there was a gap in the Prairies when looking at Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta.
In those particular locations, you also have the most Indigenous people who are being incarcerated. We can’t talk about intersectionality as an ephemeral idea. It is real in people’s lives. Indigenous peoples in these provinces and across Canada experience racism and effects of intergenerational trauma, which lead to them being discarded from or turned away from housing opportunities. Then add a layer of criminalization onto that and already they have no options.
We are looking for a range of options from bail beds for people who need to get out on bail if they have been charged, to second-stage housing, to supportive housing, to housing that is subsidized. All of it is basically what I’m saying, but there is definitely a particular focus on the Prairies for our efforts right now.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Coyle.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I like these discussion rounds, because they help us correct certain assertions.
My position is not to be tough on all criminals; I believe in rehabilitation. My position is to be tough on repeat offenders who keep on assaulting women and keep on abusing children.
Shouldn’t this bill distinguish which criminals society can recover? We know who they are, we have assessments to determine which ones are, which ones aren’t and which ones are released on parole, because we have to grant them statutory release. We know that some will reoffend. Shouldn’t we differentiate between those we know will continue to claim victims and those who will not because they have already begun a rehabilitation process?
I remind you that provincial prisons have no rehabilitation programs; only federal penitentiaries do.
[English]
Ms. Kish: Thank you for the question. I guess I would ask following that is what is causing people to be convicted multiple times? Are some of the issues we’re trying to resolve a part of what’s contributing to recidivism and repeat convictions?
We’re leaving time for you, Ms. Big Canoe, if you want to say something.
Ms. Big Canoe: Yes. Following from that, in terms of the point Ms. Kish is making — and this is a point in my first submission to you when we talk about antiquated laws that no longer exist or where there’s been decriminalization. For example, someone who had maybe four convictions on something that is decriminalized now, removing that is a really important thing. Just with that example, what if they are a repeat offender? A repeat offender of what offence?
I know you’re focusing only on what you think are the most serious criminals, but the impact this has on more people who are experiencing issues and who are now decriminalized would change their opportunities moving forward if they get a record expiry on things that are no longer unlawful in this country.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Big Canoe. At this point, I think that concludes our round of questioning. I’d like to take a moment to thank both the senators for their questions and, in particular, our witnesses. Ms. Coyle, Ms. Kish, thank you very much. And I know, Ms. Big Canoe, you were working with some time constraints and it was generous to make yourself available. I hope we lived up to your expectations. Thank you very much.
Colleagues, I will just mention two or three things in terms of our agenda. The first is that this concludes our consideration of witnesses for Bill S-212. The committee is scheduled to conclude its study with clause-by-clause consideration of the bill tomorrow, Thursday, September 21. This is a message that if you have amendments or observations, the earliest you can prepare them and make them available to members of the committee would be much appreciated.
Second, the steering group of this committee met last week and agreed to try to maintain the sequence of the list of public and private members’ bills but to give some consideration to alternating sponsors and examining the bill in as timely a way as possible. We’ll have some further discussion of that in the coming week or two. It was the steering group’s view that we should move to Bill S-231, which is Senator Carignan’s bill, to be followed by Senator Pate’s bill.
As well, it’s possible that we will receive government bills which will, as you know — let me use the word — “adjust” our timetable, and I think we will do our best to try to propose as efficient and fair a way of moving through the existing bills as we can over the course of the fall and probably into the winter. We’ll have that discussion in a couple of weeks.
Let me just add just one other point, and then Senator Dupuis has a comment or question.
There had been some suggestions about an early invitation to the Minister of Justice to appear before the committee. Steering’s view, collectively, was that it would be helpful to not give up that time, given the bills we have, but to propose the possibility that the new Minister of Justice and the Attorney General Arif Virani schedule an informal breakfast meeting with as many of us who could attend in the near future. The discussion would be informal and essentially off the record, but it would be a good chance to get the new minister and perhaps hear some of his perspectives on the kinds of work we will see coming from the executive in the weeks and months ahead.
Are there comments and discussions in relation to that? Senator Dupuis, you have your hand up.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: My question has to do with the list of bills. Is Bill S-231 the second bill on the list? I understood that the practice, the custom on the committee is to study bills that are not government bills in the order in which they are received from the Senate. Is the bill that follows Bill S-212 on the list the one you talked about?
[English]
The Chair: The sequence would be S-231, Senator Carignan’s bill; S-230, which is Senator Pate on corrections and conditional release. Then we will have some discussion about whether we will adjust the sequence, other than “first in, first out,” if I could say that.
On this list with, at this point, I think the main government bill that we have an eye out for is the legislation that is highly technical corrections of act and regulations provisions. I don’t believe there are any in line for us from the government at this point.
There is Bill C-48, but that’s “when we get it.” We are awaiting an indication of when we will get Bill C-48. If we do, in accordance with the standard requirements, we will move immediately to it, and that will suspend the consideration of Senate bills.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Senator Carignan’s bill is second on the list in the order in which they were received from the Senate?
[English]
The Chair: Immediately after. We just have been looking at the list of witnesses that we can begin considering next Wednesday.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Did I understand correctly that we usually study bills that are not government bills according to the date they are referred by the Senate and referred to the Legal Affairs Committee? Is that correct?
[English]
The Chair: That’s correct. Although, to be fair, Senator Carignan’s bill and Senator Pate’s second bill arrived on the same day, and it seemed a grace note to enable his bill to proceed rather than back to back with Senator Pate’s.
[Translation]
Senator Dupuis: Thank you, that answers my question.
When I brought up possibly asking the minister to come explain the response he sent to the committee about our report on Bill C-28, the idea was to have a formal meeting with the minister.
Can you explain why we would prefer to have an informal breakfast with a minister? It’s not at all what I had proposed and what the committee agreed to by consensus. I just wanted to be sure I understand.
[English]
The Chair: Let me give you what I think is the sentiment of steering on that: The plan for an informal breakfast doesn’t rule out what you have suggested, Senator Dupuis, but there was a sentiment that we have so much on our plate that even giving up a couple of hours to hear from the minister on a report was, at least in the immediate time frame, not the best use of time. I think that would be a fair description of the conversation.
We haven’t abandoned your suggestion, but we have just put it in suspension until we can move forward on some of these other items.
Senator Jaffer: Chair, I have been on this committee for a long time, and every time a minister is appointed, we’ve never had breakfast or met informally with them, so why are we going away from that practice? We just meet them when they present a bill. Why do we think we have to come to know this minister? We didn’t have breakfast or anything informal with Mr. Lametti or anyone. I don’t remember anybody, so why do we need to do that with this minister?
The Chair: I should leave that, then, to those who suggested it. If it’s the wish of the committee that it’s not a good idea, we have not made that invitation, so —
Senator Jaffer: We have never done it, so why are we doing it? I have personal things I could say about that, but I’m not going to. I’m just going to say that we have never done it, so why do we want to do it this time?
The Chair: Is there a sentiment of the committee that we not proceed in that direction?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Okay. Thank you for that.
Are there other comments or questions?
Senator Batters: I thank Senator Jaffer for bringing that up, because I was going to say that I think it’s much more preferable to have on-the-record, publicly televised conversations with the minister where we can potentially ask him questions that people see rather than an off-the-record informal breakfast meeting.
But my comment was just to ask about Bill C-291, which I’m the sponsor of in the Senate but which passed the House of Commons. Where is that on the order of proceeding with legislation? It was referred awhile ago and it did unanimously pass the House of Commons, so it’s something there is definitely appetite to have that proceed in a relatively expedited fashion.
The Chair: Given that it wasn’t a government bill, it was fitted in, at least by the judgment of steering today, as part of “the first come, first served” items. It was directed to us on June 1, 2023. We have had within steering a discussion of whether there might be modified strategy where qualitative questions could be given consideration in terms of the prioritization of bills, but we have not moved that forward. In my view, if we do something that, it ought to be a call of the whole committee.
We haven’t lost the idea that we might make some adjustment to the sequence of the bills, but we are starting with the status quo rule of “first come, first served” of these types of bills.
Senator Batters: In the past, we have absolutely — perhaps not in the time you have been here, Mr. Chair — but we have previously given precedence to some bills that have passed the House of Commons so they can proceed in a timely fashion, given that one important stage has already been completed.
The Chair: It will be a great discussion when we have it, and I think that’s a fair criterion to add into the mix for decision making.
Senator Dalphond: Just to complete, maybe the Library of Parliament could provide to the group the list of the dates. I remember that three bills came on November 3. There are two from Senator Pate, one from Senator Carignan, and another one from —
The Chair: Senator Boisvenu?
Senator Dalphond: Yes, I think it was Senator Boisvenu.
So we got those three bills the same day. We went from Senator Pate to Senator Carignan, and then we would be going to?
The Chair: I think one of the conversations within the steering group was that we would make every effort in a timely way to see Senator Boisvenu’s bill considered in the fall because this is really his last window of service with the Senate. If we can be attentive to that, that would meet Senator Boisvenu’s expectations.
My suggestion is that we have a meaningful, open-ended discussion about a modification of the sequence based on qualitative factors, and perhaps the wisest way to do that is to have some conversation. Perhaps we can have a proposal or a draft that we can all discuss and be comfortable with by the end of committee consideration. That enables various of us to express our observations about some of the bills. For now, we don’t need to make any decisions.
Are there any other things that need to be addressed at this time?
Senator Dalphond: [Technical difficulties] — is that we have to call witnesses for the next bill, which is Senator Carignan’s bill. I think we are authorized to call witnesses for Senator Carignan’s bill?
The Chair: I am comfortable with that. That would be what will proceed next Wednesday. Senator Carignan has given us a list of names, and the clerk has tried to streamline that so that we can deal with the bill as effectively as we can. We will get that out to you soon.
Tomorrow will be a clause-by-clause consideration of Senator Pate’s bill, Bill S-212. Just a reminder, if you have amendments or observations, the soonest you can make them available to the clerk and members of the committee would be much appreciated, recognizing that we will begin those deliberations at 11:30 tomorrow morning.
On that note, I am comfortable in bringing this meeting to a close. Thank you very much for your participation and your contributions to all of the discussions.
(The committee adjourned.)