QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Justice
Victims' Rights
November 19, 2025
Minister, earlier this fall, I introduced Bill S-236, a bill to amend the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights and establish an enforceable framework for the implementation of victims’ rights in Canada. This is work that many victims’ advocates and, frankly, many parliamentarians expected the federal government to complete since the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights was adopted in 2015. Yet it has been over a decade, and no concrete legislative mechanism has been put in place to make these rights meaningful and enforceable.
Why has your government not acted in almost 10 years to meaningfully strengthen victims’ rights, and why has it fallen to individual parliamentarians and not your department, the Department of Justice, to move this forward for victims who desperately need some support?
Thank you sincerely for the question and, more importantly, your concern for the victims of crime in this country. At risk of sounding like a broken record, there is a bill I have cited a few times that we will be tabling in the coming weeks.
There are a number of issues that might be included in that bill or subsequent legislation that we wish to target. I mentioned intimate partner violence and protecting kids online. We will also seek to address delays in the justice system.
An important additional component that we’re seeking to address through legislation is reforms to the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights. People ought to know to what information they are entitled. People ought to have access to certain testimonial aids to take part in the process. People should understand what remedies they have, not just in a criminal context but a civil one, when they are victimized by crime.
This is an extremely important issue. It has the attention not only of individual parliamentarians but the Government of Canada, and the Department of Justice is fully seized with the issue and putting together potential reforms as we speak.
Minister, for a decade we have also sounded like a broken record when it comes to victims’ rights. If your government is truly committed to improving victims’ rights, how do you explain that, in your own department’s report on the Statutes Repeal Act, one of the provisions scheduled for repeal is a section explicitly designed to make access to information easier for victims, including information about release conditions, temporary absences and potential proximity to the offenders? How can the government claim to support victims while at the same time choosing to repeal a provision specifically designed to protect — a provision that was never brought into force in the first place?
The piece of legislation that you’re referring to occurs annually. It’s a mechanism of good governance to clean up laws that were never brought into force. Some of these laws are not brought into force for good reasons; others sit on the books and are not actually doing anything to help people.
I would not read too much into a formulaic repeal of legislation that has never been brought into force when we can point simultaneously to the initiatives I have mentioned that will be introduced through legislation to amend the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights.
To the extent that you have follow-up questions on the statutes that were not brought into force but have been repealed, I would be happy to follow up and answer offline whatever questions your office may have.
