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I call the meeting to order.
This is meeting number 41 of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Today is Tuesday, December 7, 2010.
You have before you the agenda for today. We are continuing our review of Bill C-48, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to the National Defence Act.
For the first hour we have with us Anthony Doob, professor, Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. We also have Allan Manson, professor, Queen's University, Faculty of Law.
During the second hour of our meeting, we will have three further witnesses on the same bill. That will wind up our witness list.
I remind you that at our next meeting we will be going to clause-by-clause consideration.
Professor Doob and Professor Manson, I think each one of you has been told you have 10 minutes to present. Then we will open the floor to questions.
I will begin with Professor Doob.
Professor Manson and I thought it would make sense for us to coordinate our comments because we think the most important message related to your consideration of Bill C-48 is something that probably has not been raised previously with you.
To understand the problems created by Bill C-48, one has to consider a few important issues. Most Canadians almost certainly believe that sentences should be proportionate to the offence and to the offender's responsibility for that offence.
That said, however, accomplishing proportionality is difficult, sentencing itself is complex, and sentencing issues are integrally related to decisions made within the correctional system.
Unfortunately, this bill provides evidence of an unwillingness to look at sentencing as a complex and integrated problem. When the government made major changes to sentencing in the mid-1990s, that was at best a timid first step. Most observers believe that those amendments changed few things, but they created a framework for future work that unfortunately hasn't happened. It's not clear that any government in the past 15 years has been willing to take sentencing seriously by looking first to identify what sentencing can and should accomplish, then examining circumstances in which sentencing is successful, and then fixing real problems, because there's an inconsistency between the agreed-upon principles and the outcomes of sentencing in the corrections process.
Obviously this government has been active. The last time I looked, since April 2006 the government had introduced about 60 bills that it calls “crime bills”. Most of them have much more to do with punishment than crime, but they have not made our sentencing or punishment system more coherent.
Unfortunately, as many people have almost certainly told you, you are not going to change crime through legislative changes in punishment, much as you might believe this to be true. These bills and changes to our sentencing system will not affect crime, just as this bill will not contribute to a fair or effective sentencing regime.
The most serious problem is that bills like Bill C-48 appear to give a message that the criminal justice system is completely broken, that judges and the Parole Board and the legislation governing the release of murderers must currently be unfair, and that only in 2010 did these problems get noticed.
Bill C-48 is not about balancing the rights of victims and offenders. It simply adds another level of presumptive punishment to a system that needs careful attention, not simplistic changes.
The difficulty is that you are dealing with problems piecemeal. Let's look at three bills: Bill C-48, which changes the nature of sentencing of certain murderers; Bill C-39, which changes the way in which parole decisions for ordinary offenders are made, among other things; and Bill S-6, which will abolish the faint hope clause for those convicted of murder in the future.
None of these bills respond to real problems with sentencing. Indeed, you haven't provided anything but conjecture about the need for change in these three areas. These bills are doing something else. They're tinkering with sentencing, but not looking at the serious, real problems, both with sentencing and the relationship between sentencing and conditional release.
As I have already mentioned, about 60 crime bills have been introduced in Parliament since 2006. From that, you'd think we had a crisis to deal with, and that the government either had no time to look at the problem as a whole or was incapable of doing so. We don't have a crisis in Canada on crime or on sentencing, but it may be that you as parliamentarians are not interested in looking carefully at something as serious as sentencing. So far, with the large collection of piecemeal legislation, in my view what you've managed to do is to make a complex and difficult-to-understand system more complex and more incoherent.
From the public's perspective, you've made things worse, in large part because of Parliament's unwillingness to look at the sentencing system as a whole. To understand what I mean, I think it's important that you look at some of what we know about matters related to parole decisions made in Canada.
The one thing that is clear about this bill is that the Government of Canada has little confidence in the parole system, just as I would suggest it has shown it has little confidence in judges in many areas of sentencing, and it also has little confidence in ordinary Canadians' judgments of those convicted of murder, as shown by your support of Bill . Since this bill deals with homicide, and multiple homicides in particular, let's look at this phenomenon carefully.
Canada's homicide rate is no longer one of the highest in the western world. Statistics Canada reports that Scotland, the United States, Finland, Turkey, and New Zealand all have higher rates, and ours is more or less comparable to those of many European countries, such as France, Denmark, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland. More to the point, homicide rates in Canada are relatively stable.
In relation to this bill, most homicide incidents--94% in 2009--have only one victim. There were 35 incidents involving multiple victims last year. In the last 10 years, there was an average of 26 incidents a year--that's about 4.7% of all incidents--that involved multiple victims. Most of these--86%, in fact--involved people killing family or other intimates or acquaintances, not strangers, but our image of the multiple murderer is Paul Bernardo or Clifford Olson. Fortunately, that kind of person is rare in Canada and will almost certainly die in prison.
Our murderers spend more time in prison, on average, than people in other countries for which data are available. On average, those sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder spend about 28 years in prison before being released or dying. This is higher than for countries such as England, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Scotland, or New Zealand. We're not soft on murderers.
As you remember, when we do release those who have murdered, they're on parole for life. If you think that parole for life doesn't mean anything, you'd best request that some lifers come before you and explain what it means to be on parole for life. Parole is not a picnic.
The problem in doing the various things you are working on to lengthen the time that people spend in prison is not simply one of trying to hand down proportional punishments. It is that there is a huge financial cost involved. I know various members of the government have responded to people like me--people who have urged you to use prison resources carefully--by suggesting that if one life were saved, it would be worth it whatever the cost. I find statements like that to be remarkably naive and irresponsible. Let me use an example.
Let us imagine that as a result of this bill, something like 26 people a year--the average number of multiple murder victim incidents that we have over the last 10 years--were to go to prison for an additional 15 years, which is somewhere between the lengths of the parole ineligibility periods for second and for first-degree murder, in 15 years we would be at a steady state, with an average of about 390 extra lifers in prison awaiting parole eligibility time.
We have been told that the cost of the policy is worth it, because if a single life were saved, it would serve victims' needs. We'll get to whether we can expect a life to be saved in a minute, but that relatively small number--390 people on top of the 13,000 or so that we have in penitentiaries at the moment--would cost us about $40 million.
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Yes, I will make the changes that I've handwritten very quickly and send it back.
The point I was making was if you imagine that as a result of this bill something like 26 people a year—the number of multiple-murder incidents that we have had on average over the past 10 years—were to go to prison for an average of 15 years—somewhere between the lengths of the parole ineligibility periods for second-degree murder and for first-degree murder—in 15 years we would have a steady state of an average of 390 extra lifers in prison awaiting parole eligibility time.
We've been told that the cost of this policy is worth it because a life might be saved or that it serves victims' needs. We'll get to whether we can expect a life to be saved in a minute. However, adding that relatively small number of 390 people on top of the 13,000 or so now in penitentiaries in Canada would cost us about $40 million. This may not seem like much to you, but the question that needs to be asked is whether that is the best use of funds either for public safety and well-being or for services for victims. That's the debate that a bill like this stifles, because it commits scarce resources to a particular action without considering other possibilities.
Keeping people in prison longer has financial costs. Costs are zero-sum. Money spent on prisons means money not spent elsewhere. Let's put this in simple terms. We all agree that a man who, without real planning, kills his wife and family needs to be punished, and punished severely. Few would suggest otherwise, but the cost of a penitentiary inmate averages out to about $102,000 a year for one inmate for one year, so 30 extra years for such a man means about $3 million not spent on preventing similar crimes in the future, assuming that you're willing to spend it only in this area of public concern. That is, roughly speaking, the cost of an additional police officer for 30 years. If you want to think in terms of other interventions that have been shown to be effective in reducing crime, it is the cost of an active public health worker for 30 years. It could be whatever you want.
Surely if you were saying that you're willing to keep some hundreds of people in prison for extra years, at a cost of more than $100,000 per person per year, we should debate whether that's the best use of funds to reduce crime, increase public safety, or serve the very real needs of victims. There are choices.
The interesting thing is that we know that those who murder, when released, are not particularly dangerous. Figures from the most recently available performance monitoring report of the National Parole Board point out that of the 2,853 offenders on indeterminant sentences being monitored by the National Parole Board between 1994 and 2009, 81, or about 3%, were revoked for any form of violence, meaning anything from common assault to serious violence.
As you may know, a small number of those released on parole for murder do murder again. Indeed, a study of 4,131 people who had murdered and who were released between 1975 and 1999 showed that 13 of them murdered again, and here we do return to the adage, “If one life were saved, it would be worth it”.
Obviously these were tragic events, but the only way to have stopped them would have been to incarcerate all 4,131 forever because of the possibility that 13 of them, or three-tenths of 1%, would repeat their terrible crimes. The question then is whether the $300 million to $400 million needed to incarcerate these offenders would constitute the best use of public funds for public safety.
Could we save these lives, or ten times these lives, by investing elsewhere? That's the real policy choice. The choice is how many lives we save when we're talking about millions of dollars, not these particular lives. Presumably what we're trying to do is to maximize public safety.
This last fact underlines an important fact. Crime in Canada is not concentrated in a small group of people who can be identified as bad people in advance. Hence, solutions to crime are necessarily going to be difficult. Bills like the current one, which purport to be good news to victims and good news to Canadians, distort the reality of what we know about crime.
I would urge you to put your time and thoughts into addressing some of the real problems of sentencing and the administration of sentences in Canada. That way perhaps we could have a more coherent and sentenceable sentencing system than we have at the moment.
Thank you very much.
Again, I apologize for speaking too quickly.
[Translation]
I am not bilingual, so I can articulate my remarks and ideas in English only, if that is okay.
[English]
I want to start by agreeing with Professor Doob that our sentencing system in Canada is in chaos. We lack workable principles. We lack appropriate guidance. We lack appropriate resources for options, including the state of our penitentiaries and prisons. All of this is being exacerbated by these piecemeal amendments to the Criminal Code.
I want to look at Canadian penal policy for a minute before we look at this particular bill. I would like members of this committee to recognize that for decades, for much of the past century, a lot of very thoughtful and serious work was done by a lot of people in developing Canadian penal policy. They were experienced, open-minded people, and included parliamentarians and even people from this committee. Behind that were consultation, debate, study, and data.
Look at the 1938 Archambault report: the principal author was J.C. McRuer. For those lawyers in the room, he subsequently became Chief Justice McRuer. The principal author of the 1969 Ouimet report was G. Arthur Martin, the dean of Canadian criminal lawyers, who later became Mr. Justice Martin of the Ontario Court of Appeal. A few years later, this committee worked very hard and very creatively in its examination of the legislation to replace capital punishment, and the members of this committee at that time deserve enormous credit. A few years after that, the McGuigan subcommittee, which came from this committee, also did an excellent study that produced changes to penal policy.
Now we've got Bill . I'm going to talk about it conceptually rather than mechanically, but I first want to say something about making good penal policy.
It seems to me that there are two reasons one would reshape an aspect of penal policy. One is to fix a problem--to “address mischief”, as lawyers sometimes say. The second is to add a new direction, or maybe a new dimension, consistent with the goals of sentencing.
What's the mischief that this legislation addresses? I look at the short title, which reads, “Protecting Canadians by Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murders Act.” I was involved in my first murder case in 1974. I started studying sentencing as a graduate student in 1972. Until I saw the predecessor of this bill, I had never, ever, seen the notion of discounts for multiple murders. I don't know who can see that. I've never seen it mentioned. I've never heard a judge, a lawyer, a police officer, or a victim suggest that Canadian sentencing provides discounts for multiple murders.
What we do is provide a life sentence with 25 years of parole ineligibility. I can tell you from participating in murder trials, including ones in which people were convicted of first-degree murder, that the people in that courtroom appreciated that this is a life sentence, and that it is grave and harsh. I don't hear people suggesting it's lenient. I don't think there's any problem that needs to be fixed.
Moreover, let's look at the current system. The current system does respond to multiple murders. Section 745 says that any person convicted of murder who has also been previously convicted of murder is automatically sentenced to life with no parole for 25 years. In other words, two seconds equal a first automatically. That is taking into account multiple murders.
As well, in sentencing for second-degree murder, for which the parole ineligibility could be anywhere from 10 years to 25 years, judges are clearly required by the jurisprudence to take a look at the number of victims, as well as prior record.
So why is this bill here? Given the history that I outlined, I have high expectations for the people on this committee. I'd simply like to try to understand why it's here.
I see, Mr. Petit, that you were the sponsor of this bill, and I have some of your remarks. Why do we have this bill? I quote: “...to balance the need to protect society and denounce unlawful conduct...”. Professor Doob has explained that the risk represented by paroled murderers is almost non-existent. Where is the protection? Is there not sufficient denunciation in a life sentence? Are we now going to look at life-50, life-75?
also said that “...the proposed amendments reflect the fundamental principle of sentencing that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence and the degree of responsibility...”. That's true. That's subsection 718.1 of the Criminal Code. A life sentence with no parole for 25 years is our harshest, gravest sentence. It certainly achieves that.
However, later he comments about groups in the community. I note the very felicitous language Mr. Petit used: “I am confident that the measures proposed in Bill C-48 will be supported by police and victims advocates...”. I don't want to challenge his confidence--that's up to him--but I've never heard police officers or victims' advocates saying we need life-50 or life-75.
Moreover, there's a suggestion that this is cost-neutral. Professor Doob went through some analysis of cost. He didn't mention one thing. What about the added cost to the penitentiary system? On the weekend I bumped into a group of former and now-retired and current senior CSC officers in Kingston, because I live in Kingston. I asked them what it's going to be like admitting someone to an institution when they show up with a warrant that says their sentence is life-50? What are you going to do for that person? It's mind-boggling. What is the correctional plan for a 30-year-old who might be able to go to the parole board when he or she is 80?
Then I also said to them, “What are you going to do if you don't have just one? What are you going to do if you have 12? What's that going to do to the environment in that penitentiary?”
Not only are the costs of this kind of proposal enormous, but no one has thought about them. That's my biggest concern. No one is thinking about this criminal legislation. What we are seeing is the parroting of remarks, starting over a year ago from the minister, that we know what Canadians want and what victims need.
Victims don't need this. Canadians don't want this. Talk to victims' advocates. They have concerns about being treated with respect, being treated with dignity, having opportunities to voice their concerns. They're not out there looking for harsher and harsher penalties. Let's be respectful to victims, and let's not use selected anecdotal comments to frame Canadian penal policy.
The last thing I want to say to this group is that Canada has a tradition of thoughtful, considered development of penal policy. What's happened to that tradition? Is it here still? If it's still here in this building, this bill should be rejected out of hand.
I'll be happy to answer any questions.
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I would take the words that the legislation has, which is the requirement that the judge give reasons, but only in one direction. In effect that is a presumption, though it doesn't state it, so what this is going to do in those cases of multiple murders is create classes of them.
The classes are also going to be determined, to some extent, by something that is completely independent of the offence, which is, to a large extent, how much confidence the judge has in the paroling process. A judge who has confidence in the parole process is going to say, “I'm handing down a life sentence, and when that person is safe, I have confidence that the National Parole Board will be able to identify that”. Another judge might not have that confidence and therefore would, in effect, put his own stamp on it by giving consecutive parole ineligibility periods, so it seems to me that it creates mischief.
I have more confidence in the paroling process, and we're not talking about the faint hope clause. I had confidence in the paroling process, really, because of the three-step process. It was first with a judge, then with a jury, and then with the parole process.
When I look at the parole data, I don't see the National Parole Board being terribly easy on people. Most offenders who go into prison these days are being released at the two-thirds point, not prior to that. That's not a lenient parole board.
What's it's saying is that we're not confident, and we want you, the judge, to take the heat when you have something like a person who has killed his family before you. We want you to take the heat for why you didn't give that penalty. It doesn't seem to me that this is appropriate.
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The difficulty is that what we tend to do in public opinion polls favours simplistic solutions. When the public believes that sentences would make them safe because many political leaders, many police officers, and so on tell them that harsh sentences will make them safe, one can hardly blame the public for believing this is the best route to safety. The fact that research shows that it's not the best route to safety, of course, goes unsaid.
In addition, to follow up on some of the remarks that were included in your question, the difficulty is that when the public is asked these questions, there's seldom a follow-up question. Let me give you an example. Mandatory minimum penalties, which seem to be very popular with the current government, are also seen as being very popular with the public. I'm sure the government has done more recent public opinion polls than I'm aware of, but when sensitive polls have been done, there's often a follow-up question on mandatory minimums.
The first question will be to a representative group of Canadians, asking whether they favour having mandatory minimum penalties for certain serious crimes. As the government will tell you, Canadians say they favour mandatory minimum penalties. If you stop there, you'd have less than half the story.
The problem is that if you do a follow-up question, which asks if they think judges with reasons should be able to give sentences less than the mandatory minimum penalties if the circumstances of the offence warrant it, a majority of Canadians want that too, which is in effect saying they don't want mandatory minimum penalties. I think they want these things because they're told about them. They believe that sentences are much more lenient than they are.
The studies I've done over the years--and similar studies have also been done in many other countries--would suggest that what the members of the public are responding to is their belief about sentences, not about sentences themselves, because, as we all know, very few sentencing hearings--or trials, for that matter--are covered in detail in the press. One hears of a serious assault or a sexual assault or something of that kind for which the person only gets a particular sentence, and of course what one doesn't know is what that person's role was. One doesn't really know the facts of the case.
What we do know, from my own research and from other research, is that when people are given detailed information and know the facts, they're much more content with the sentences handed down by judges than they are if all they have is a description. Then an ordinary case can be made to seem sensational if the sentence looks too lenient.
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My understanding is that in many countries this is the case, and judges are able to go below the mandatory minimum penalties when there's a good reason to do so. Of course you then get into the question of why then have the mandatory minimum, and that may be a way for Parliament or the legislatures in different countries to give an idea about the relative seriousness of offences.
I think what one has to look at is that sentences vary enormously, in large part because the behaviour that is being sentenced varies enormously and the role of the offender varies enormously. It is very easy to say that if this was a robbery with a firearm, we therefore cannot conceive of a situation in which somebody should get less than the minimum, except that as soon as one points out that the person being sentenced may have had a very minor role, may not have held a gun, may have been in the car waiting, and may have been an 18-year-old girl, the circumstances become quite different from one's image of an armed robber. In those circumstances, I think various countries say that the judge then has to justify it and go outside.
What we're really coming down to is the understanding that we have, or should have, some confidence in judges. I think one of the difficulties with the Criminal Code sentencing provisions at the moment is that even though we have a provision saying the sentence severity should be proportional to the harm done and the person's responsibility for that harm, what Parliament has done since the mid-1990s, when that was codified, is undermine that provision and make it more and more difficult to apply.
What I find interesting is that in many instances we're not really addressing the very difficult issue of deciding what we mean by proportionality and at what level we should be doing it. We're saying that we don't really care about those nice details, that we want to simply sentence.
Let's fast-forward to the bill in front of us here today. The language is deliberate in proposed subsection 745.51(1). The court “may”--not “must”, but “may”--“having regard to the character of the offender, the nature of the offence and the circumstances surrounding its commission”, and it goes on, “order...that the periods without eligibility for parole for each murder conviction are to be served consecutively”.
Now, you're an educated man. I don't have to explain to you the difference between “may” and “shall” or “may” and “must”. I would think, sir, that since you are in favour of judicial discretion....
In fact, it goes on. It goes on to read: “If a judge decides not to make an order under subsection (1), the judge shall give, either orally or in writing, reasons for the decision.”
You told my friend that a court ought to give reasons when it varies from a minimum mandatory sentence in other proposed pieces of legislation. With all due respect, sir, how do you reconcile your opposition to this bill, which gives discretion to trial judges, with having advocated so eloquently in the past that judges ought to have that very discretion?
I thank the committee on behalf of the John Howard Society of Canada for the invitation to appear. We appreciate the opportunity to meet with you today to discuss .
The John Howard Society, as most of you know, is a non-profit organization whose mission is the promotion of effective, just, and humane responses to the causes and consequences of crime. The society has 65 front-line offices across the country delivering services to support the safe reintegration of offenders into our community.
The John Howard Society does not support this legislation. We do not believe that there is, within the Canadian public, an informed consensus in support of 50-year minimum sentences. In addition, we do not believe that such sentences can be reasonably seen as effective, just, or humane responses to the causes and consequences of multiple murders.
As was evidenced by testimony before this committee on dealing with the faint hope clause, the current periods of incarceration prior to release on parole in this country for those convicted of first-degree murder are already twice as long as in most western democracies.
How do we as a country justify doubling this already excessive time in prison? What will motivate a 20-year old caught by this legislation to work towards rehabilitation, when their first eligibility for parole will be at the age of 70? At what risk are we placing those who work and live with individuals serving a minimum 50-year sentence? What message are we sending, as a criminal justice system, about our commitment to timely and effective reintegration in support of public safety?
The backgrounder on that the Department of Justice released in October of this year, entitled “Ending Sentence Discounts for Multiple Murderers", reads in part:
Families of victims argue that the fact that life sentences for multiple murders are served concurrently devalues the lives of victims and puts Canadians at risk by allowing multiple murderers to be paroled earlier than merited...
This document goes on to say:
The proposed amendments to the Criminal Code would address this situation by allowing judges to impose consecutive parole ineligibility periods on individuals convicted of more than one first- or second-degree murder.
I do not believe we can place a value on human life. The grief and hurt of family members following the murder of a loved one cannot be reasonably addressed through amendments to the Criminal Code. The process of addressing this pain begins with the provision of individualized support and services within the local communities, and through the assurance that timely and relevant information concerning the specifics of their circumstances is made available by the responsible government agencies.
Second, we currently have within our criminal justice system a conditional release process that has as its priority the protection of society. Although the timing of conditional release reviews is governed by legislation, the decisions to release an individual are governed by the assessed risk the individual poses to the community. As we know, the existing system is quite capable of extending periods of incarceration well beyond parole eligibility dates.
The proposed legislation potentially extending ineligibility to a minimum of 50 years addresses neither of these two concerns, nor does it enhance the concept of truth in sentencing or the public's confidence in our justice system.
I thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions.
:
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak before the committee. Good afternoon to everybody.
It was very quick notice to get to this committee, and I apologize that I don't have notes to hand everybody. I can certainly type up what I've quickly typed up and email it out. However, I have one piece that I will give you later for all the members. It's in a suggestion that I'm going to put forward.
This long-sought-after reform on sentencing made its way through the House in Bill , which was authored by Liberal MP Albina Guarnieri 10 years ago. This is not a new issue; this has been around a long time. The bill died in the Senate, but we are very glad to see it returned through Bill , introduced by the current government.
I know the current government. I've heard them speak many times, and they also give tribute to Ms. Guarnieri. As I said, this is a very important issue and has been around for a long time. I think it would be really good at this point to be able to settle it once and for all.
As you can tell, the bill simply gives a sentencing judge, in the defined circumstances of sentencing a person who is convicted of more than one murder, the discretion to impose consecutive parole ineligibility periods for the multiple murders. This is accomplished in proposed section 745.51 of the Criminal Code.
From our reading, this would apply to cases of persons who are convicted of a second murder, or more murders, following an early murder conviction, such as Daniel Gingras--if you're not familiar with Daniel Gingras, I'll be happy to answer that during questions--and also apply to persons who are convicted of multiple murders at the same trial, such Clifford Olson, Paul Bernardo, or Russell Williams. That is our reading of the section, but we urge you to make sure this is the case, because it makes no sense to not allow both scenarios.
We understand, in following the discussion on other bills, that there has been concern expressed by some members of Parliament over mandatory minimum sentences because they reduce judicial discretion. As you know, murder already has a mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment, although, with parole eligibility, the “life” part of the sentence does not necessarily mean being imprisoned. Bill would actually give judges more discretion at sentencing, so hopefully those MPs who have taken the position opposing a reduction in judicial discretion will support this bill, because it actually increases it.
This bill will apply, thankfully, to relatively few offenders, but that does not diminish its importance. Our system should have the sophistication, integrity, honesty, and discretion to treat multiple murderers differently. A consequence of this bill will also be, at least once it's passed, to possibly prevent victims' families, such as Ray and me, from having to go through the two-year nightmare of our children's killer demanding parole. This bill, as currently drafted, won't help us. Other changes are required for that, but it is a very important step to prevent the unintended and needless revictimization of victims' families in the future.
While I appreciate that it may be too late to incorporate into this bill the changes I just mentioned, I want to leave the committee draft amendments to the Criminal Code modelled directly on the judicial screening mechanisms that the former Liberal government enacted when it restricted the right of access to the section 745 advanced parole release of convicted murderers. It basically replicates the judicial screening process for a future parole hearing for murderers like Clifford Olson if they are denied parole at the 25-year point.
The screening judge would consider the request and could deny it, if unrealistic or without grounds, and disentitle the murderer from reapplying for a period of up to 15 years. It has narrow application to these horrendous cases, but it will prevent the revictimization that our families have just endured and the revictimization of others in the future.
Frankly, we are capable of better than what the current law permits. I hope that Bill can either be amended to include these provisions, or that one day, before Olson's next parole hearing, I will be back before you to urge passage of these measures.
I urge all members of the committee to support this bill, which provides judges with greater discretion to recognize the increased severity of multiple murders at sentencing by providing consecutive parole ineligibility periods.
That's all I have to say on that.
On a personal level, I can tell you one thing: it's tough. It's tough after 29 years, it's tough after 26 years, and I'm not so sure why we have to go through it. I have been around a long time; I understand laws and I understand people who work with offenders. Honestly, I'm not a vindictive person. I know all offenders aren't like Clifford Olson. I know that.
Honest to God, it's tough. I'm still coming down from it. I'm turning 65. When can I put my son to rest? My husband is gone. The last time he had his eyes open, he had brain tumours. He was right out of his mind and rolling on the floor. He climbed out of his bed and he was screaming, “Parole? Clifford Olson?” I don't think I can take it anymore.
I'm so sorry; I know we're not supposed to be emotional. I know better than that; I truly do. I know better than that. I didn't mean for this to take place. It really is tough, though. There has to be a way. If this bill isn't passed, maybe....
This is what I brought. Our policy adviser quickly drew this up for us. We're getting pretty desperate. There are five family members, five parents who have already died. When can we bring some justice for our kids? We don't have anything for them.
People talk about Clifford Olson all the time. He talks about himself. We're in a real catch-22. We attend these parole hearings because we have to put a face to the children he murdered. We're serving a life sentence along with him—we are—and it's not just us and it's not just Clifford Olson. His name makes me sick, because everything seems to relate to Clifford Olson, when there are other characters like him that we're talking about in this bill. It isn't only a Clifford Olson, and there are other families that will come after us.
Oh God, I didn't mean to do this. I really apologize, committee; I really do. I haven't done this in.... I'm sorry.
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Good afternoon, and thanks for letting me be here. I just found out yesterday that I was going to be here, so I don't have anything prepared. I don't have facts and figures. I can only speak personally.
When this started for me 29 years ago, we weren't in the process of anything. If this hearing had been 30 years ago, we wouldn't be here, yet the other side seems to have representation forever. It's getting better, but we're still behind.
I've been to three parole hearings for Clifford Olson, and in each one he's made a mockery of the justice system. Each time, the first thing he has said is, “Nobody in their right mind would let me out”, and yet we have to go through it over and over and over again for no apparent reason.
I think this bill is long overdue. Giving the judges more discretion is a good thing, as Sharon said. I have to agree with everything she said, of course.
I think we have a right, as survivors, to attempt to put our lives back together again, and it just hasn't happened. Obviously Clifford Olson is an extreme case, but there are others like him, and there will be others like him in the future. The people who come after us have to be protected, and this is one way to do it.
I think that's all I have to say. Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
Mr. King, to follow up on that point you were making in terms of the judiciary, I think that's probably a fairly accurate assessment. It's one of the reasons my party is considering supporting this bill, even though we have some problems with it.
In all cases we're concerned about the type of fact situation that just talked about. As you heard from Professor Doob today, the vast majority of these cases are different fact situations from the Olson-Pickton-Williams type. Those will be dealt with appropriately in terms of using this bill. I worry about other cases that may also get caught in it. That's really the concern that we have.
In that regard, there are alternatives. Ms. Rosenfeldt, you've raised a couple of them today. Possibly amendments to the procedure within the parole act would be more effective in dealing with those horrendous cases, not that any murder is not horrendous, obviously. Épouvantable is a good word in French, but I don't know if I can translate that into English. I think “horrendous” is as good as I can come to.
I suppose I'm making a statement; I don't really have a question.
Certainly I share what you heard from both and the chair. I share that. You have no reason to apologize at all, because emotion is a factor at play here. It can't completely guide us, but it certainly has to be a factor in doing it.
What we're looking at is these other possibilities. As much as our law is very much opposed to retroactivity, there are those few times when in fact we've been able to pass retroactive laws and have them survive. It seems to me amendments to the parole act that would deal with the Olson type of situation may in fact survive a challenge. I would be quite prepared to take a run at that in terms of legislation.
That's all I had, Mr. Chair.
:
Sure. This notion has been around a long time, as I said. It began some 10 years ago, or in 1997. I think back then it was called “volume discounts” under the Liberal government. This time it's called “discounts”.
I think it was really put into context by one of the members of Parliament, who mentioned that the ombudsman's office had a long list. Trust me: there are a lot of victims out there, but not many who really want to, or can, or have the strength to, stand up and say, “No, no, no”, or go before cameras or appear before committees. Why do we do it? I don't know. I can't answer that. There are so many victims who don't want to.
Ray made mention that in our justice system there are so many government-funded organizations that have the capacity to hire researchers, to hire professors of criminology, to have proper statistics, and to come to these hearings fully prepared. On the victim side, we're not there yet.
I feel that, first, we must address public safety. That's for all Canadians. Services for victims of crime will help us, but that's a totally separate issue. We should not confuse public safety issues and resources for victims of crime. We'll get there in a different way.
We certainly all feel for the victims and the families, and we also respect the good work you do, Mr. McIsaac.
In my short three minutes, I'll tell you where I'm coming from on this. In Moncton in the 1970s there was a double cop killing of two great officers, Bourgeois and O'Leary, by two murderers. These were people we knew in the community.
Charlie Bourgeois went on to become an NHL hockey player after that adversity. Carroll Ann O'Leary went on to run hospital services. They picked up and they went on.
These two murderers have been eligible for parole. Their death sentences, in fact, were commuted to life. In that case, I'm pretty sure, had this law been in place, the trial judge might have granted 50 years without.... It was such a shocking case.
There is no doubt, Mr. McIsaac, that these were bad apples. There are bad apples. You're working with the good apples, and that's great.
In this case, I think we need to save this bill, because the judge is going to be given a choice--I gave you the facts--of between 25 and 50 years. We heard good, seasoned lawyers say that given that choice, judges are going to tend towards the lesser, because they don't want to go overboard. We have to find a way, in my opinion, to go between 25 and 50. We might see victims angry that, given the choice of between 25 and 50, a judge didn't give 35 or 40.
I wonder if you think there is a way of amending this--and I'm working on this--and if you think it would be a good thing, because in some circumstances, it might be appropriate. It is true judicial discretion to have that choice in the case of first-degree murder.
Do you agree with that type of amendment? That is to the panel, briefly, because there are only three minutes.