Moved second reading of Bill S-207, An Act to amend the Criminal Records Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to repeal a regulation.

She said: Honourable colleagues, I speak today from the unceded, unsurrendered and unreturned territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg to commence second reading of Bill S-207, which would amend the Criminal Records Act.

This is the fifth time that I have introduced this legislation, and I want to thank the fabulous experts whom we consulted during the development and study of this bill, from lawyers and academics, to folks with lived experience, to Legal Committee and Senate colleagues. Over the course of eight years, your feedback and expertise have driven crucial discussions, improved this legislation and allowed it to advance successfully to third reading last Parliament as Bill S-212.

I also want to thank the thousands of Canadians who have reached out to offer support for this bill. Many are family members, friends or employers of those whose lives have been irreversibly impacted by even decades-old records.

Working together to return this legislation to a third reading vote would constitute an urgent and meaningful step toward safer, more just and more cohesive communities for those in need of relief from a criminal record and for all Canadians.

We begin with the story of Kimberly. Kimberly is a member of the Fresh Start Coalition, a group of more than 85 civil society organizations working alongside those with lived experience of criminalization to achieve the type of no-cost, no-application record expiry that Bill S-207 proposes.

Like too many others, Kimberly was criminalized while trying to negotiate and survive victimization. Her criminal record exists within a context of three decades of physical and sexual abuse that began when she was a child. She eventually escaped an abusive partner, but her criminal record followed her wherever she went. She remained trapped in low-paying and precarious work. She once found better employment, only to be part of a mass firing of all recent hires with records. She retrained, working full days and taking online classes at night, only to learn a year in that she could not complete her entry-to-practice exam because of her record.

For Kimberly, her record meant that at every job interview:

. . . I have to talk about my personal life again. I’ve got to talk about the things that I’ve worked so hard to socially overcome, mentally overcome, physically overcome. And every time, it’s right back on my doorstep.

Everybody says, “Oh, everybody has skeletons in their closet.” Nope, mine are right here behind me, shackled to my ankles, and they just walk right behind me every step of my day, everywhere I go.

Kimberly’s experiences both demonstrate the urgent need for this legislation and serve to challenge assumptions about who is subjected to the too-often lifelong burden and stigma of criminal records — and to what end.

Like so many others, Kimberly has been failed by every one of our social service systems and left to survive poverty, homelessness, violence, addiction and/or mental health issues. These are the people who are disproportionately sucked into Canada’s criminal legal systems and jails. They end up living with criminal records as a result of legislation we’ve passed and because of our failure to provide the help and support they need.

As a consequence of unredressed colonialism and inequality, the majority of women in federal prisons are racialized; half are Indigenous. Virtually all — 9 out of 10 — women in federal prisons have histories of physical and sexual abuse.

When a woman like Kimberly — who is trying to escape violence, support her kids and make a fresh start — cannot find a job or housing because of a criminal record, who benefits? Who is kept safe?

Current rules regarding criminal records wait times — costs and complex and onerous application and documentation requirements — work together to make record suspensions virtually inaccessible except for the most well-resourced.

While this starkly inequitable system may sound like a relic of the past, most barriers to criminal record relief were legislated in 2010 and 2012, less than two decades ago. The solutions, however, are not new. Bill S-207 reflects a long-standing and growing consensus that all of us benefit when people who have been held accountable for their actions can move on from the consequences.

This bill proposes three key measures.

First, it would return to Canada’s original wait times of five and two years for indictable and summary convictions respectively, reversing the 2012 doubling of wait periods for record relief.

Second, instead of requiring people to complete costly and onerous application processes, records would expire cost free once wait periods elapse, provided that there are no subsequent convictions or charges. As is currently the case, expired records would be kept separate and no longer appear on record checks. Expired records would, however, continue to be available in police databases for legitimate investigative purposes. The bill would also maintain the current system of vulnerable sector checks, whereby expired records relating to sexual assault would appear on special record checks when people apply to work or volunteer with children, seniors or others deemed vulnerable.

Third, unlike current record suspensions, people will not face the spectre of the revocation of the expiry of their record or of it ceasing to have effect, except in certain circumstances related to sexual assault convictions.

Allow me to briefly recap a few key themes emerging from the eight-year history of this bill.

First is the urgent need for this legislation. The federal government has taken some incremental steps to improve the criminal record system. Bill S-207 furthers this important undertaking.

Second is the fact that record expiry and public safety go hand in hand. Removing barriers to record relief supports public safety.

Third, letting people move on from crime further meets the needs and priorities of victims.

Fourth, Bill S-207 prevents stigma and discrimination while still ensuring that police can carry out investigative work.

Fifth, and finally, in terms of feasibility and affordability, Bill S-207 is a better option than Canada’s current costly system.

Turning to the first theme, what does Bill S-207 add to the government’s previous incremental steps toward a fairer record system?

In 2022, the government reversed recent exorbitant increases to application fees, dropping from $658-plus to $50. While this measure is a major advance, it has not eliminated cost barriers.

For years, Canada’s record system operated without any application fees at all. Although $50 may not sound like much, most people applying for record suspensions are trying to find jobs or pursue education and other pathways out of poverty for themselves and their families. The $50 application fee for a record suspension could mean going hungry or without safe shelter, a coat, boots or essentials for their children.

In addition to application fees, other application requirements quickly generate hundreds if not thousands of dollars in hidden costs, such as police checks, fingerprinting, travelling to retrieve records, consulting lawyers or — in too many cases — getting scammed by businesses that do little to assist people with their records while charging unconscionable fees.

As a result, while numbers of applications have increased since the government reduced fees, they have not bounced back to where they were prior to the fee hikes in 2010 and 2012. The number of people making applications is still barely half of what it once was.

Bill S-207 would allow records to expire without a person having to submit an application, eliminating application fees and other related but often hidden costs. It could also reduce and eventually eliminate the need for infrastructure costs related to administering the current process.

In 2024, the government took a step toward this type of no‑application expiry. Through Bill C-5, all drug possession convictions now expire automatically two years after the end of a sentence.

We are told that work on the infrastructure for automatic expiry of possession records — which could also serve as the starting point for implementing Bill S-207 — is ongoing.

In the meantime, the government is functionally meeting its obligations through a ministerial directive that orders holders of criminal record information not to disclose information related to affected records, demonstrating the range of options available for immediate implementation of Bill S-207.

The automatic record expiry for drug possession convictions under Bill C-5 came about after unsuccessful attempts to encourage people to apply for pardons for cannabis possession post-decriminalization.

Through Bill C-93 in 2019, the government provided a no-fee application process that was meant to be as simple and supportive as possible. Five years after its implementation, however, the Parole Board had only received applications from 13% of the 10,000 people the government estimated could be eligible, which was only a small fraction of those with cannabis possession records.

Worse yet, more than one in three of the applications were then rejected due to technical issues, including because records didn’t specify that the possession conviction was related to cannabis or records were so old that courts had destroyed the paper records. Even an application process specifically designed to be quick and user-friendly was still too costly, onerous and complex for people to successfully navigate.

The government experienced similar outcomes when it developed a no-fee and simplified application process for expiry of records resulting from discriminatory criminalization of members of 2SLGBTQ+ communities. Only a handful of people have been able to benefit. And none of the historical convictions of sex workers convicted under the prostitution law have been eliminated.

Attempts to fast-track record relief came about because the government acknowledged that thousands upon thousands of people — disproportionately members of 2SLGBTQ+, Black and Indigenous communities — still had records for so-called crimes that have since been recognized as discriminatory and removed from our Criminal Code.

The behaviours that were criminalized are now recognized as never having presented a risk to public safety. Yet Canada’s record system continued to marginalize and stigmatize these thousands upon thousands and could not provide the necessary relief.

How many other people are currently unable to find jobs or safe housing or unable to support and feed themselves and their families because of criminal records that have nothing to do with a risk to public safety? Their records instead have everything to do with lacking the resources to avoid circumstances such as poverty, homelessness and mental health crises that multiply one’s risk of being victimized, exploited and criminalized. Their records also reflect unequal access to the financial and legal resources necessary to attain record relief.

These failed attempts to make applications easier demonstrate that to deliver equitable access to record suspensions, we need the process proposed by Bill S-207.

Reliance on an application process for suspension of criminal records puts the onus on individuals — who are disproportionately impoverished and unhoused, who may not have access to computers or a mailing address and who may experience language and literacy barriers — to fill out complex paperwork and assemble records that may be decades old and held in police stations and courthouses across Canada. These cost-related, time-related, travel-related and legal expertise-related barriers are piled onto those already marginalized. Worse yet, the entire process is stigmatizing, demoralizing and therefore, honourable colleagues, unacceptable.

In 2016, then-public safety minister Ralph Goodale vowed to overhaul the record system, calling it:

. . . needlessly complex and burdensome [and] . . . a procedural quagmire that is almost unnavigable for lawyers, let alone the general public. The wait times to apply are unnecessarily long . . . . And then there is the cost . . . if you are poor, you are branded for life.

The simple truth is that Canada’s record suspension system is punitive and it must be fixed.

Since 2016, at least three rounds of public consultations, one House committee report supported by all parties and our Senate Human Rights Committee report on the human rights of federally sentenced persons have all made similar observations: Record suspension costs are prohibitive, wait times are too long and options for automatic, non-application-based expiry should be explored.

Indeed, the 2021 government consultations on automatic sequestering of records demonstrated that “almost all . . . participants strongly supported” such measures.

Bill S-207 builds on years of government study, evidence, consultations and recognition. Record expiry provides the next cost-effective step to address injustice and inequality in the criminal record system.

This brings us to the second theme: How will removing application processes and reducing wait periods for record relief affect public safety?

All available research is clear that easing barriers to record relief enhances the safety of our communities. Simply put, people can more easily and successfully integrate.

As recently highlighted by Dr. Anthony Doob, professor emeritus and former chair of the ministerial Structured Intervention Unit Implementation Advisory Panel on Bill C-83, studies demonstrate that the best predictors of successful integration into the community are not the onerous and subjective criteria imposed by current application processes. What matters most is access to a job and housing, both of which increase the likelihood of folks being able to live in the community.

As summarized by Public Safety Canada in a 2021 research report, “Securing employment after release from a correctional institution is integral to the successful reintegration . . . .” and associated with reduced recidivism.

After a relatively small number of crime-free years, people with records are no more likely than anyone else to commit a crime.

One U.S. study followed the outcomes of 6,000 people with convictions ranging from property offences to serious sexual assault. Five years after their release from prison, no matter the offence that led to a person’s criminalization and incarceration, what was most predictive of successful community integration was whether they had been able to find a job and access education.

This bill would not alter Canada’s current vulnerable sector check system, meaning that records — even if they are expired — would still appear on this specific type of record check for those working or volunteering with people deemed vulnerable.

Current mechanisms for reversing record relief — known as revocation and cessation — would be limited to certain situations where convictions are related to sexual assault. This approach aims to account for barriers to reporting abuse and assault that may mean that relevant information is not available until after a record expiry has already occurred.

We must also recognize that given the realities faced by women and children who are violently victimized — from barriers to reporting to lack of accountability — record checks alone are not and never have been an effective means of protecting people from harm.

Parole Board of Canada data indicates that over the five-plus-decade history of the Criminal Records Act, the overwhelming majority — consistently upward of 95% of those with pardons and record suspensions — have remained crime free.

Furthermore, when application criteria were made more punitively complex in 2010 and 2012, that already high success rate did not improve. Implementing effective record relief programs and eliminating arduous application procedures eases barriers to jobs, housing and other essentials.

Public consultations in 2022 on the Federal Framework to Reduce Recidivism emphasized that punitive approaches to those with criminal records are not only cruel, but ineffective. Feedback focused on responding to recidivism through addressing social determinants like housing, education, employment, health and positive support networks.

Bill S-207 builds on these findings as well as steps that the federal government itself contemplated in a bill introduced in 2021. The legislation was pre-empted by an election but, if passed, would have eliminated some of the system’s numerous application requirements, allowed pardons for some convictions currently ineligible for record relief and reduced wait times.

We deserve a just system that actually delivers on its promises to make communities safer.

A third theme: Record relief is sometimes falsely equated with excusing acts of violence or neglecting the interests of victims. Neither is true.

Judges impose sentences based on what they determine is necessary and appropriate to hold a specific person accountable for their actions. They make these decisions knowing that, by law, people will have the right to apply for parole and, if eligible — if eligible — may eventually also seek a suspension of their criminal record.

In the words of the Supreme Court of Canada:

Individuals who have paid their debt to society are entitled to resume their place in society and to live in it without running the risk of being devalued and unfairly stigmatized.

Testifying on this bill last Parliament, the Federal Ombud for Victims of Crime supported removal of barriers to record relief because “. . . the types of barriers that criminal records introduce for people [without further convictions] actually increase the likelihood of more victimization.”

The victims ombud also noted that due to inequality and discrimination within the legal system, many victims, too often those who are racialized and women with abusive partners, are themselves living with the burdens and stigmas of criminal records. He testified:

Criminal records introduce direct and indirect harm to many victims of crime. They are a blunt instrument applied to a wide range of people who come into contact with the justice system. As criminal record checks become more common in applications for employment, volunteer positions, education and housing, the harms continue to grow.

For these reasons, a former Federal Ombud for Victims of Crime described the harsh 2010 and 2012 record suspension amendments as “a stupid thing to do.”

The victims ombud office is not alone. Among the dozens of community groups advocating automated record expiry as part of the Fresh Start Coalition are many working with and on behalf of victims of crime, including the Assaulted Women’s Helpline, Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation, Huron Women’s Shelter, Luke’s Place, Muskoka Parry Sound Sexual Assault Services, Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres, Ottawa Coalition To End Violence Against Women, Women & Children’s Shelter of Barrie, Timmins & Area Women in Crisis, Victim Services of Durham Region and Women’s Shelters Canada.

A fourth theme concerns when data about expired records may be relevant to police work. Bill S-207 incorporates amendments added to the previous version of this legislation at Legal Committee, in particular to reflect testimony that the committee heard from witnesses representing police services.

For instance, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police noted how the bill could support successful community integration and urged us to ensure — as relief from criminal records becomes the norm rather than the exception it is under the current record suspension system — that police do not lose swift access to centralized data regarding criminal record history that they use in their investigations.

The Legal Committee agreed to my amendment to ensure police access to expired records for limited investigative purposes.

Modelled on the current Youth Criminal Justice Act system, police would have authority to access expired records so long as this access is for legitimate investigative purposes.

This change also acknowledges, however, that public safety goals are undermined, not enhanced, if police use of expired records crosses the line from legitimate investigation into discriminatory carding.

The bill safeguards against expired records appearing on record checks for non-police, civil purposes including applications for housing, employment and volunteering.

Finally, the fifth theme: How feasible and affordable is a record expiry process?

Bill S-207 is a compelling alternative to Canada’s existing system of multiple, intricate application pathways, each requiring significant resources to administer, and each using complex and time-consuming criteria unrelated to public safety goals.

As a result of the government’s obligations to provide automatic expiry of drug possession records, the proverbial wheels are already in motion toward the system proposed by this bill.

Automatic expiry is part of record systems around the world, including in the U.K., France, Germany and New Zealand, but also here at home, in Canada’s youth system.

During consideration of the bill last Parliament, one of the architects of the Youth Criminal Justice Act testified:

We had many long discussions with record holders in the provincial system . . . police, court administrators, you name it. We worked through the challenges . . . it’s been in effect for 20 years now. It’s probably a decent precedent that [the Minister of Public Safety] and others could take a look at to bring the provinces on side. I think it [record expiry in the adult system] could be done relatively simply.

It is the current system that is unaffordable and inaccessible. The government has paid $18 million recently to community groups to help people file applications. These community groups indicate that the amounts they received are inadequate to cover the actual costs of supporting people through this complicated process, even when they are doing all they can.

Though not receiving support from this federal program, Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services in Northern Ontario, in partnership with the Ontario Provincial Police, is assisting community members to apply for record suspensions. This partnership arose from a shared recognition that ensuring people can move on from criminal records is an investment in community safety, economies, health and well-being, as well as in reconciliation and decolonization. As the communities were engaging in economic development activities, criminal records were barring the access of too many to employment opportunities.

I witnessed this first-hand when I visited Pikangikum First Nation two weeks ago. Chief and council talked about the barriers to hiring community members and the resulting lack of access to everything from housing to community supports.

We met with the fly-in judge and lawyers who dealt with the cases of community members flown to jails in the South for pretrial detention and then flown back to the community for trial. Pikangikum has a 16-bed bail resource that could have been used to keep people in community and out of detention. It sits empty, however, due to lack of staff. The legacy of colonization and criminalization within the community means that too many good candidates for this work would not be able to pass the required record check.

A single day of those flights, removing people from their communities and putting them in southern jails, costs our legal system hundreds of thousands of dollars, with zero benefit to the community.

By removing the requirement to make an application, Bill S-207 would ensure more effective access to record relief while allowing the Parole Board of Canada, governments, communities and service providers to reinvest scarce resources into other priorities.

So what are we waiting for? Of the 3.8 million Canadians with criminal records, 9 in 10 do not have a pardon or record suspension. At the rate that the Parole Board of Canada rendered decisions last year, it would take 256 years and counting to consider applications relating to all current criminal records.

In the meantime, low- and middle-income Canadians are struggling to access housing, employment and other supports. Criminal records not only add another layer of discrimination, they pile on the barriers.

Bill S-207 alone will not address all of the current injustices within the criminal record system. It is, however, a meaningful lifeline for people who have served their time and are working hard to rejoin society, integrate into the community, stay safe and healthy, and support and care for their families.

At Legal Committee last Parliament, we heard from a woman named Rachel who has a record and is currently pursuing a PhD in criminology in order to work with and on behalf of others ensnared in the criminal legal system. She spoke to us about the urgent need for this bill:

People —

— with records —

— are out on the streets because they cannot find housing. They are frustrated because they cannot access education. They’re not able to obtain regular, meaningful employment. I know of many people who have been forced into sex work . . . .

What does Canada gain from an unjust and inaccessible system that forces survivors of abuse back into the same conditions of isolation and exploitation in which they have been previously victimized and criminalized?

Let us work together to return this bill to third reading. Let us continue the work we accomplished last sitting and bring about long-overdue evidence-based, positive movement within the criminal records system and on so many interrelated areas.

Meegwetch. Thank you.

Yes.

The reduction was, I think, two years ago. I’ll find the exact date. At the time that I tabled the first bill, this being the fifth, the fee was $650, and then it was increased because it was subject to the provision that says that application fees and procedures have to keep pace with inflation. I can’t remember the name of the bill. It’s now escaping me, but I’ll find it. It was increasing, and then the government brought it back down to $50.

As I mentioned, the rate of people applying didn’t go up proportionately because it didn’t take into account all the other fees also attached to applying. As I mentioned, people have to go and get their fingerprints. They sometimes have to travel long distances to go to where they were originally convicted to find the files. Sometimes those files don’t exist. That has been part of the reason, even when they went through an automatic process for the cannabis convictions, that some people were denied.

I was interested in what these technicalities were. They said one in three people were denied because of technicalities. To learn that one of the technicalities is that nobody can find the record seems to add insult to injury, so to speak, but to really increase the challenge.

At this stage, we are still in a situation where, even though they’ve made record expiry automatic for cannabis, they had to issue a ministerial directive because they haven’t finished the process of automating those systems. Once that automation is done, they should be able to apply it to all records.

In terms of the record expiry process, they have implemented Bill C-5. The bill they had introduced that died on the Order Paper would have advanced towards the automatic process. For some, they expunged records for 2SLGBTQI+ discrimination. They didn’t expunge sex worker records, which was part of it. They expunged records for things like sodomy and that sort of thing.

The only other one is the one I mentioned, where they provided $18 million to community groups to try to assist people to do the pardon application process. Through that process, folks inside the government — particularly with the Parole Board — have acknowledged that part of the challenge is the application process is challenging for people, not just because some don’t have computers, as I mentioned, but because of the technicality of completing the process.

Now there are groups that are being funded to do that. And then, like NAN Legal Services, the Nishnawbe Aski group; they’re doing it. The Ontario Provincial Police, or OPP, is working with them to try to achieve that because they see the injustices. They can’t hire people in their own community because they have criminal records, and they’re people who they see would be valuable to be able to work in those areas. They’re doing that. In fact, I found out about it because they came to lobby me to support the previous bill that I’d introduced, not realizing that I was the sponsor of the bill.

It would be simple drug possession, which would be the less serious type of possession. The expiry was supposed to happen — it has been a ministerial directive, which is essentially the minister saying to all law enforcement, “You can’t use these records for this purpose,” even though they don’t have the structure in place to do their automated elimination from the system.

No, that’s why I didn’t say a specific number. I asked for that. It’s recognized that it would be at least double, potentially many more times than that.

The challenge really has been why people didn’t apply. This is anecdotal. They haven’t done research on this, but when I started to talk to people on the same issues and the organizations that were getting the $18 million to assist people, one of the reasons why people were saying they weren’t coming forward was because some of their records were so old, they didn’t trust that if they came forward to get the pardon, it wouldn’t dredge up that evidence. Some of them were grandparents; their children may not have known, and their grandchildren certainly did not know of their records, and they still carried that stigma. Although for some people I spoke to it was important for those records to be expunged, they weren’t willing to come forward. That’s partly why they went to an automatic expiry process. The first iteration required people to put their names forward, but people were not willing to do that, particularly in historical records.

I mentioned that Dr. Anthony Doob has done research on this. In fact, this morning, he sent me new information about bail research, which I will be digesting and will be happy to share after I have done so. It’s his research and the research of many others.

Yes, there are issues around bail. However, many of these issues have to do with the fact that we are dealing with people who are often homeless, and the reason behind locking them up is not necessarily first and foremost a public safety issue, but instead a lack of housing. As a lawyer, you know that is not supposed to be a reason to lock someone up, hence some of the challenges in terms of public perception of what bail is about.

In this case, we are talking about people who have completed their sentences. The new research is that people who have been out, have completed their sentence and have been living crime-free for five years with no interventions with the police and no charges are no more likely than you, me or anyone else in society to commit a new offence. It is based upon the period of stability after the record, which is why it is in this speech.

The reason that I focused on that is because that is the time frame in this bill. It would be five years for indictable offences, going back to the original time periods from when pardons were first introduced. It was two years for summary convictions and five years for indictable offences. It is going back to those time frames. A part of the reason is that in the research that the then-solicitor general and Public Safety Canada did on that, those were the time frames at the time.