- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,586.11
- Government Page
- Oct/24/22 6:18:04 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's positive comments on the bill, but I think she may know, as others do, that one of the things I really want to see is mandatory labelling of heavy metals and toxic chemicals on consumer products, which is not in the bill at present. As I have referred to several times in this debate, we found that in dollar stores, lots of the products that have been tested contain heavy metals and toxic chemicals.
Would the member's party be willing to consider amendments that would make mandatory labelling of these consumer products available to parents so they can decide what they are going to expose their families to?
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Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the efforts he has put in within his community to help address the scourge of sexual assault in all communities across the country. I also thank all of the community-based organizations that provide support to survivors of sexual assault in particular but also to victims of crime.
One of the things we concluded unanimously in the justice committee's report on providing better support for victims of crime is that the federal government has to do more to support community-based activities. Coming back to Bill S-12, I think one of the important aspects of allowing sexual assault victims to speak freely about their cases if they choose to do so is that it will help remove the stigma associated with sexual assault. This in itself will help improve reporting rates.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking to Bill S-12 today, as it would address one of the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights report entitled “Improving Support for Victims of Crime”, which was tabled in the House in December 2022.
When the justice committee began its study on victims of crime more than a year and a half ago, the member for Victoria brought to my attention the bizarre and unjust situation that survivors of sexual assault face in their current circumstances, which is that survivors regularly suffer from restrictions on their ability to talk about what happened to them and sometimes even suffer penalties for violating court-ordered bans on the publication of information that would identify their own names. It is important to note that these bans are routinely imposed in sexual assault cases across Canada. Anecdotally, we know it approaches 100% of the time. It is also important to note that most of the time, this happens without survivors' being aware that the publication ban is in place.
Bill S-12 would fix that by requiring notification of survivors. There are many reasons a survivor might choose to or inadvertently violate such a ban. Some feel that such publication bans inadvertently protect the perpetrators by the necessity of protecting their identity in circumstances where the publication of the perpetrator's identity would identify the victim. Others feel the idea of publication bans itself is based on an archaic and misogynist idea that sexual assault victims are somehow responsible for what happened to them and should be ashamed.
To be clear, some survivors do want their privacy protected by having publication bans in place, but others believe that public safety requires them to let family, friends and members of the public know of a risk of sexual assault they might face, by identifying the fact they were assaulted and who the perpetrator was.
At this point, I want to express my thanks to the survivors of sexual assault, and in particular those from the group My Voice, My Choice, who risked retraumatization by coming forward to committee and talking in public about their own personal experiences, in order to get the legislative change they need, in the hearings before the justice committee on victims' rights that began in October 22, more than a year ago.
Again, I want to thank the member for Victoria, who brought this situation to my attention and then introduced a private member's bill on the topic in order to try to get the House to act. In addition, I want to thank the member for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the former minister of justice, who decided to include measures to restore agency to survivors of sexual assault by including it in Bill S-12.
The government did not choose a path, using a Senate bill, nor did it choose a timetable, at the last minute, that New Democrats might have chosen. This has left us with little time to meet the deadline for passage of Bill S-12 and therefore with little time to consider all of the important amendments suggested by My Voice, My Choice, without endangering the fate of this bill as a whole by causing a to and fro between the House and the Senate. Now, we have a bill that, had it been on a better path and a better timetable, could have been even better in meeting the needs of survivors of sexual assault. However, we still have a bill before us that, I am assured, would make the necessary fundamental changes to restore agency to survivors and to ensure that there would not be prosecutions for violating bans of those whom they were supposed to protect.
Let me turn briefly now to the other half of Bill S-12, which provided the original impetus for the bill. The Supreme Court of Canada decision requires revisions to the sex offender registry. The Supreme Court found that automatic lifetime registration for those convicted of listed offences was overly broad, and as a consequence, was capturing some who were very unlikely to reoffend. I know some argue that all must be listed, but it is important to remember that if we list people who are at very low risk to reoffend, we waste public resources that might better be used to monitor the higher-risk offenders.
Instead, Bill S-12 would meet the Supreme Court's challenge by implementing the presumption of registration of those convicted. This would mean that a very small number of those convicted of listed offences could ask a judge to use their discretion to exempt them from legislation. The estimates are that it would be probably far fewer than 10% who could ask for that exemption.
The bill would also strengthen the sex offender registry in a couple of important ways. Most importantly, to me, it would add the offences of non-consensual distribution of intimate images and so-called sextortion to the list of offences that would result in registration as a sex offender.
In our modern world of overuse of social media, overuse of the Internet and overexposure of everyone to everything, these offences sometimes may seem trivial. However, we must remember that with non-consensual distribution, intimate images last forever on the Internet, and I think those who perpetrate this need to understand that these offences will be taken very seriously and that they will be monitored as sex offenders on the registry to make sure they do not engage in this kind of behaviour again.
I would like to conclude with thanks to all the parties that have worked together to get this legislation here today in time to meet the Supreme Court of Canada's deadline. I know that some parties still have reservations and I know that some of the victims would like to have had more amendments made to the bill. However, I do believe that we have it in a form in front of us today that will help restore agency to survivors of sexual assault in the future. I think that is a very important reason for us to act promptly.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to take a moment to thank the member for South Surrey—White Rock for sharing in the House her personal experience as a sexual assault survivor. This is a scourge in our society that is too often treated as a source of shame for victims. It is very important that we all stand with those victims. One of the ways of doing that is by sharing personal experience.
The member will know that I also have shared in the House my own experience as an adult survivor of child sexual assault. I think that whatever our opinions about what the proper solutions are, it is important to acknowledge all those victims who came forward to the House of Commons justice committee, shared their experiences and risked retraumatization in order to get the legislative changes that they think are important.
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- May/3/23 6:58:14 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech. While my riding is not fully agricultural, we have a lot of small producers in my riding. They are concerned about food security and about quality of food. I know that my colleague, the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, is busy consulting in the agricultural community on this bill.
The member's speech raised a significant concern for me when he talked about presumptive approvals of things in agriculture, using countries with what he would call similar standards. However, in agriculture, that usually means the United States, which has significantly lower standards in most agricultural and food products. We know that in things like milk and cheese, there are extra additives allowed in the U.S. that are not allowed in Canada. Does the member share that concern, and does he think there are adequate protections in these presumptive approval processes?
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- Nov/23/22 5:58:35 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Madam Speaker, I think the question brings up an important point. In this bill, we are looking to adopt a broader use of technology, not just for the sake of a broader use of technology, but to provide greater access to justice, as part of this, and that flexibility.
I think we had the important suggestion made by the member for Timmins—James Bay about how sometimes using technology allows victims to participate more freely in these kinds of systems than if they have to appear in front of someone who has caused them great harm in person.
I think that there are lots of advantages, in addition to the efficiency advantages, in Bill S-4.
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- Nov/23/22 5:57:01 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his compliments. I do not think I share the same view of the system. I do not think there are a lot of people within the system who are there just to make money.
In my experience with the legal community, certainly in my own community, there are some who make more than a good living out of the legal system, but most people are there because of their commitment to justice, whether they are working as prosecutors or as defence attorneys.
However, I do agree with the hon. member that, as I just said about first nations, there are alternative methods to the traditional arrest, send to court and send to prison process that we have tended to overly rely on in Canada. That is appropriate for some people. That is the only way to deal with some criminals in our system, but for most people, that is not the underlying problem and not the real solution. I agree with him that we need to look at alternative methods of dealing with things such as drug addiction and poverty, which cause a lot of people to end up in the court system.
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- Nov/23/22 5:55:23 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Mr. Speaker, I think the first thing we need to address is that many first nations have their own ways of dealing with things we tend to send to court and prison that are much more effective than the methods we use. The problem is that those traditional communities and traditional systems are under-resourced, so we need to make resources available to first nations that wish to pursue their own justice initiatives, which in the end would be far more effective than the adversarial and correctional system we tend to support as a whole.
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- Nov/23/22 5:52:57 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Madam Speaker, I am going to have to say that I cannot speak extensively on that. I know that certainly the previous provincial attorney general, David Eby, and the current Attorney General in British Columbia have both had access to justice front and centre, and I know they have expanded access to legal aid as one of the main concerns about people having to go to court unrepresented.
Also, it is not just in criminal law, but also in family law, where we have a large problem in all provinces. Quite often one partner of a dispute, and it is usually the husband, has access to much greater legal resources than their partner in those kinds of cases. I know British Columbia has been both trying to encourage mediation processes in family law to tackle that problem and trying to right that balance between parties in those difficult cases.
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- Nov/23/22 5:41:00 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-4, although I have to place it in the category of “better late than never”. This legislation responds primarily to what we learned as a result of court delays during the pandemic. How quickly we forget that the court system in Canada essentially shut down completely, sometimes for weeks and sometimes for months in different parts of the country, as a result of widespread illness and the fear of illness. Essentially, we had a collapse of the court system looming.
Therefore, in this Parliament, through all-party agreement, we enacted quickly some measures that allowed the courts to keep functioning during the pandemic. Most of those measures are now appearing here to become permanent, because they were adopted on a temporary basis. They would now be made permanent in Bill S-4.
We also tend to forget that this bill was on the Order Paper before the unnecessary election. Most of my constituents have completely forgotten we had a 2021 election. People talk to me about the last election as though it were 2019. However, this bill was one of the casualties of the Liberals' calling that election during the pandemic, and it died on the Order Paper.
Therefore, I am glad to be back here today talking about Bill S-4 and how to address delays in the court system.
It is very clear that we already had delays before the pandemic. In the period between the Supreme Court decision called “Askov” in 1990 and the decision called the “Jordan decision” in 2016, we had more than 50,000 criminal cases dismissed in the province of Ontario alone because of delays of the court system. This included literally hundreds of cases of sexual assault that were dismissed because of court delays.
Therefore, it is important that we tackle this in the long run and not find ourselves back in that situation where delays deny justice to the victims of what are quite serious and horrendous crimes, in many cases.
With the Jordan decision, the Supreme Court specified that depending on the seriousness of the case involved, a reasonable time to get to court is something between 18 months and 30 months. That is a deadline that we face in our court system. If we do not have the system functioning for that, we will see dismissals of cases again. We have large backlogs in the system as a result of the pandemic, and we are in danger of seeing more dismissals of cases again in the future if we do not get moving. That is why Bill S-4, which would improve the efficiency of the court system, is really important.
The other thing about delays is that they affect public confidence in the justice system, both for those who have been accused, who would like to see their case dealt with in a reasonable time and who have a right to that under our Constitution, and also for victims of crime, who do not want to see cases drawn out for months and years. Victims of crime do not want to have this necessity of reliving the trauma and having what happened to them come back again and again over long periods of time, so we have this important task in front of us to try to reduce those delays.
There are some obvious obstacles that would cause delays in court. I will give credit to the government that it has tried to tackle one of those obstacles, which is filling vacancies on the bench. In doing so, the government has paid a lot of attention to making the judiciary look a lot more like Canadians as a whole, and that is a good thing.
However, there is another way of reducing delays that the government would not take up the NDP proposal on, which would be reducing the number of things that we consider criminal offences. One of the things we did was put forward the proposal that we decriminalize the personal possession of drugs. This would have taken literally hundreds of cases out of our court system in which there is no victim to the crime. Also, for cases in which we are talking about the use of very serious drugs, it would help get them into the health care system instead of the criminal justice system. Therefore, the government has not always taken our advice on the best way to reduce delays, but we are glad to see the changes that are coming forward here.
I want to talk quickly about two major changes and then two other changes in this bill.
Probably the change that is most important for the elimination of delays is the change with respect to remote appearances. Previously, there was no provision in our system for the accused to appear by video in preliminary inquiries, in trials, for lodging pleas or for sentencing, so a lot of time was spent moving accused individuals around, back and forth to the courts, so they could appear in person.
The changes here will remove the necessity that was there to make sure someone was always in person for what was sometimes two minutes of a routine proceeding, for things like lodging a plea. It will also make a change to allow those who have been selected for possible jury duty to make their appearances by video or remotely and reduce the inconvenience to members of the public who might be called to jury duty.
That is an important section of the bill, to allow the greater use of technology and remote appearances.
The second part, probably not so publicly visible but related to efficiencies in the court and policing system, is the provision for updating telewarrants. Our law before the pandemic envisioned that for a narrow range of criminal cases only, a judge could be called by phone. What we found during the pandemic was that we could use remote technologies to expand the range of cases in which a warrant could be obtained through remote methods.
Again, the bill provides for a wider variety of cases where a wider variety of technologies can be used in order to get warrants. This will save the time of both judges and police in our system.
I have a couple of things I want to mention quickly. One is the changes in case management rules for the unrepresented. One of the problems we have in our court system is that while people have the right to appear in court unrepresented, a lot of people are not exercising some kind of right. Rather, they cannot afford a lawyer to assist them in their case because they do not qualify for legal aid. Perhaps they earn just enough money to be out of the range of legal aid programs.
I think it is a significant improvement, both in terms of case delays but also in terms of justice for ordinary Canadians, who cannot always afford to get a lawyer. This would allow court administrators to provide a lot more assistance to the unrepresented.
The justification is often the court delays, but I think there is a second justification that is important there, and that is improving access to justice for those who are unrepresented.
There is obviously a better solution, and that would be to expand legal aid, so that people do not end up appearing in court on serious matters unrepresented. Again, though, that takes a lot of federal-provincial co-operation, something that is sometimes in short supply in our legal system.
The fourth thing I want to talk about, and I mentioned it briefly, is the provisions that make it easier for the public who are called for jury duty to participate remotely. Here is an area in which I think we have a lot more to do. We need to make sure jurors are not in fact penalized by serving on a jury. In our federal system, most of the rules about compensating jurors are in provincial jurisdictions, even though they are sitting on cases under the federal Criminal Code.
We need national standards on how we compensate jurors and what kinds of things they are compensated for. When we look at how people are compensated for jury duty right now, it ranges usually between $40 and $100 a day. Very few people have compensation in terms of getting paid leave from their employers. It increases people's resistance to serving on juries. There are lots of other expenses that are covered in various ways in various provinces. Are meals covered? Is parking covered? The one that is most important to me, which is rarely covered, is child care.
The Province of Quebec allows compensation for child care on a case-by-case basis. I think it is on the basis of application. That is also true in Nunavut. I believe that is the only other place where there is compensation for child care. If we really want to make sure juries represent the breadth of Canada and the face of Canada, then parents quite often are going to be very reluctant to serve if they do not have compensation for the child care that is going to be required.
Some people might say they would already be going to work so they would have child care, but we have a lot of parents who make choices about who is going to stay home and do child care. If that person is summoned for jury duty, that is a big expense.
That is something that is not in the bill, but I look forward to our taking this spirit of co-operation we have on this bill and maybe making some progress on what I would call a national standard of how jurors are compensated for serving in this country.
I want to say again that we have broad agreement on the bill. That is a good thing. It took a long time to get it here, but maybe now that we are in gear it will not take so long to get it out of here and into committee, and maybe it will not take so long in committee to get it back to the House. I share the optimistic suggestion of my Conservative colleague, who wanted to see us get this done by Christmas. I think that would be a good thing, and I think we can all work toward that.
We do not always co-operate well in the House. Sometimes our divisions keep us from dealing expeditiously with things that are real problems. I think delays in the court system are a real problem, and I am very happy all parties have come together to try to address this in Bill S-4.
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- Nov/23/22 5:07:24 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Mr. Speaker, I always listen with interest to the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo for his innovative ideas. I must say that the last suggestion he made on witness testimony is an important one for us to think about in the future.
This bill deals peripherally with the selection of jurors and allowing some of that participation to be virtual. I wonder if the member agrees with me that there is much more we need to do to facilitate the participation of jurors with things like the compensation of jurors for time lost at work or sometimes for travel costs or meals. We do not do a very good job right now of making sure that participating in a jury does not really cost individuals. I wonder if he would agree with me that there is more work to be done there.
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- Nov/23/22 4:31:59 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-4
Mr. Speaker, that was a very comprehensive review of Bill S-4. My question relates to timing.
During the pandemic we worked very quickly in this House to allow the use of technology to try to compensate for the restrictions from the pandemic, yet this bill was prepared and on the Order Paper in the last Parliament. This is identical; it is the same bill in this Parliament, yet it took the government almost a year to get it back in front of us.
I just want to ask the parliamentary secretary why there has been a long delay, when we all know this is something that will help alleviate court delays?
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- Oct/24/22 5:33:55 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I would also like to congratulate the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent on becoming the environmental spokesperson for his party, and for that reason I will listen with care to his answer to my question.
A recent study from Environmental Defence found that 30% of products in well-known dollar stores contained heavy metals, such as lead, and toxic chemicals. Studies have shown that nine out of 10 Canadians have been found to have endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which have been used widely in consumer products, in their bloodstream. Would the member support improvements to this bill to require the mandatory labelling of hazardous substances in consumer products so that Canadians know what dangers they are exposing themselves and their children to?
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- Oct/19/22 6:24:07 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, as I said in an earlier intervention, there is no doubt that there is a need to update the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and that there are some very good things in Bill S-5.
However, surveys have found that there are a lot of toxic substances in ordinary consumer products. We had a study that found very high levels of lead in products that were being sold in dollar stores, including in canned food and children's toys. This bill does not have any requirement for more transparency from corporations about the presence of toxic chemicals in ordinary consumer products. Why is that left out of this version of the bill?
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- Oct/19/22 5:41:46 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the debate we are having on this Senate bill, which I do think is important. However, there is a great deal of impatience in my riding with us talking about frameworks and rights when my community has just gone through the 90 driest days in the history of the community. We are facing wildfires and smoke. Yes, let us set frameworks and strategies, but let us also get busy working on the changes we need in creating jobs in renewable energy. We need good, family-supporting jobs.
There is, as I said, increasing impatience when we talk in the House about frameworks and the right to a healthy environment, but we are not actually getting down to the hard work of making the changes we need.
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Madam Speaker, I would normally say that I am happy to rise to speak on a bill such as this because it is a fairly simple bill. We have a rule against exposing deliberations of jurors for very good reasons: to make sure those decisions are final, to make sure there is no harassment of jurors and to preserve the rights and integrity of that deliberation process.
Bill S-206 would create a very narrow exception. It would allow those who have suffered post-traumatic stress and other mental health challenges as a result of serving on juries to disclose details of that experience to mental health professionals. It is a simple bill, one that is very necessary.
I want to take a moment to thank the former jurors who have spoken out on this issue, and in particular Mark Farrant for the work he has put into bringing this to the attention of those of us in the House.
Why am I not happy? Well, I am not happy because sometimes when we agree on something that needs to be done and agree that it is a good thing, and we do all agree, it seems to take us a very long time to get the job done.
There was a study at the justice committee, with a unanimous report tabled in 2018. All parties supported taking this kind of action and other actions to support former jurors. This was then introduced as a private member's bill in October 2018 by the member for St. Albert—Edmonton. It passed the House on April 12, 2019, with all-party support in the 42nd Parliament. Here we are, two Parliaments later, and we have not gotten this job done.
That is the reason I am not really pleased to be standing to speak to this bill today. In fact, I had hoped we might actually finish with this bill today, because if no one stands to ask for a recorded vote, this would be done. I know there are those who believe there are good reasons to have a recorded vote, and I will be happy to see the virtually unanimous support that I expect in this House for the bill. However, I have to say that what I really believe is that we need to get on with this and get it done. Let us not delay further former jurors who have suffered mental health challenges from being able to seek the professional help they need and deserve as a result of doing their civic duty.
I am proud to support this bill. I urge us all to finish with it as quickly as we can.
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