44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2023
- 05:02:21 p.m.
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Thank you.
I would like to thank the Algonquin Anishinabe people, whose land we gather upon today. I will once again encourage this committee to integrate the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into your report.
I'll be quick. I'll skip over some things, but I want to make it clear that I do not speak for all victims and cannot come close to encompassing the lived perspectives of those who face a number of barriers in accessing the system and accountability for the crimes committed against them.
I think the Senate did good work on Bill S-12, but we're here to ask you to be even more ambitious. From our perspective, a better bill would feature amendments that do a few more things, like ensuring that prosecutors are directed to immediately inform the victim of their right to request a publication ban before it is ordered. Right now, the bill talks about judges doing that. It's not realistic. It doesn't happen in real life. Someone needs to tell victims before the ban has been put on their identities that they have the right.
You should clarify, in section 486.4, that publication bans are available for witnesses under the age of 18 and victims of sexual offences, because there's still confusion about this in the system.
The bill should also require prosecutors to act in accordance with the wishes of the victim. We like to use the word “consent”, but for some people that might not make sense in the context of the Criminal Code. The wishes of the victim should matter. You need to make sure that this is in the bill and that there aren't justice system actors like judges or Crowns who are acting without the consent or the wishes of the victim being taken into account.
We want to make sure that publication bans are not put on the identities of victims who have made it clear that they do not wish to be subjected to such an order.
We want to make sure that victims are provided a copy of their publication ban. Victim services simply do not give us that information. They don't know about publication bans. They are not equipped to do so. It doesn't happen in real life.
I also want to make sure that the way applications are dealt with for sexual offence victims is separated from section 486.5 of the Criminal Code. Right now, Bill S-12 lumps discretionary bans for any justice system participant with this type of publication ban for sexual offence victims. It doesn't make sense to have them combined. You should separate them and make it clear that there are only limited factors that a judge can consider when someone comes to them and asks them to remove their publication ban if it has to go to a hearing. Ideally, victims should just be allowed to have their publication bans lifted without having to go to a hearing.
Finally, we want to make sure that you expand the limitations section to ensure that trusted people, including professionals who provide support to victims, are not criminalized for communicating. Right now, the bill carves out a limitation for victims sharing their own information, but people who have to converse back and forth with victims when they need support should not be criminalized.
We want to make sure that there are no more egregious delays for victims removing their bans, like what happened to Patty or Maarika. We don't want any more victims having to hunt for and go to the court to try to find their publication ban orders, like what happened to “Deborah Lyn” this very week. We want to make sure that there are no more defence attorneys who are reintroducing publication bans on the names of victims who have already had their publication bans removed, like what happened to “Cassandra” last month, and we want to make sure that Crowns are no longer acting on assumptions without involving victims, like effectively every single person we have been connected to.
These suggestions are crowdsourced. They are based on the lived experience of victims. We have done our very best to consult on these recommendations very widely, but it is literally impossible to capture the nuance of every individual's issues, perspectives and interactions with the legal system.
We've done everything humanly possible to give you amendments on paper and to help you in this process, but the reality is that this should not be our responsibility as victims. We are not lawyers, but we are trying to do our very best to help you. Inevitably, some people will say that it's not good enough, but we're here now and we're doing what we can.
Quite honestly, the last year and this process have left so many of us feeling retraumatized, depleted and extremely tired. We have been placed in the very unenviable position of wondering if tweaking on the margins of the current Criminal Code will be good enough.
For that reason, these recommendations are not a panacea. This Parliament will still be confronted with the fact and the reality that complainants face a shameful amount of barriers throughout the continuum of seeking help and accountability, and long after.
Your police still don't believe us. Your Crown attorneys are not trauma-informed. Your judges don't understand how to properly apply the law, at our expense. You have not invested sufficiently in the resources outside of the system that can be there to provide important support that is culturally appropriate for victims of all different kinds of backgrounds. After Bill S-12 is complete, you will still have work to do, including educating Crown attorneys and judges, implementing guides for the provinces and territories, reviewing legislation to make sure you get it right and producing accessible information for victims, who deserve to know what is happening to them in the system.
The people behind My Voice, My Choice have done everything expected of us—and far beyond that, to be honest. I know you are facing tough deadlines and I know this is not the ideal way to write a bill, but here we are, and this is what we have. I want you to continue to consider our amendments, as many of you have, and I want to know that they matter. I want to know that the stories we've shared with you matter, so please do the honourable work and collaboration across party lines and take this seriously. If you do and if you amend the law so it's at least a bit better, we can finally rest and take some time to do the healing that a lot of us still need to do.
Thank you.
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- 05:13:10 p.m.
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Thank you.
It's hard to choose just one, quite honestly. I'll go really quickly. You all have the package I sent around, and I think there are really four things that you need to lend your minds to.
First, make sure that prosecutors inform victims and act according to their wishes.
Second, allow for the application process to be clarified. It's really important that you get that right and that judges are given as narrow a scope as possible for potentially denying a victim their freedom of expression. Everyone who wants to speak should be able to speak, and there should no longer be the ability for judges to deny victims the ability to actually talk about their experience.
Those are the two, off the top, that I think are really the most important, because if you get consent right, people can make a decision before they have a publication ban put on their name. If they do have a publication ban put on their name and you get the application to remove the publication ban correct, you won't have addressed every problem but you'll have done good work.
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- 05:17:00 p.m.
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I actually think Megan would be really well suited. I know she's done a lot of work with judges on education, and I would pass it over and defer to her as an expert.
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- 05:26:44 p.m.
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We, as a group, receive DMs, Facebook messages and various types of correspondence from victims almost every single week from across the country that ask “Do I have a publication ban? How do I find out?” or “I have a publication ban, but my court case ended four years ago. How do I take it off?” No one understands how to remove them, how to figure out if they have one, or how to find help.
I am not a lawyer, but I've been very fortunate to be connected with lawyers like Megan, Robin and others to whom we refer victims because we simply can't do that work. It's so prevalent, but it's so hard to even know how they're being put in place. The ability for someone to just get help and figure out what's going on with their own identity.... It's absurd, honestly.
As Megan mentioned, it's very casual. If you're a victim, there's nothing casual about being told that you can't talk about your own experience. It's casual for everyone else except for us. It's extremely prevalent. It doesn't make sense how the current regime works. We can't keep doing the work of helping victims ourselves. The law just needs to be changed and clarified so that you take the work away from us, because it's not sustainable. It also shouldn't be done in the shadows because people fear criminalization or have various issues in accessing justice.
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