- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,586.11
- Government Page
- Jun/4/24 6:20:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for many reasons, I am really pleased to be standing to debate the current bill at third reading. I am happy, because I first tried to bring this issue to the attention of the House nearly four years ago. It has been a long struggle to get the bill to this state. I am also happy because the bill does something quite important: It recognizes that, in intimate partner relationships, there are other forms of violence than broken bones and bruises, and they are equally harmful. I am happy that all parties have now come to support the bill.
We owe a great debt of thanks to the survivors who came forward to committee and publicly told their stories of suffering coercive and controlling behaviour. We owe it to the women's shelter workers, who gave very eloquent testimony about the need not only for better legislation but also for better supports for women who suffer from domestic violence. We also owe a debt of thanks to the police who talked about their frustration. In particular, those in the Saanich Police Department told me that, many times, officers visited homes that they knew they would come back to. They knew that there would be bruises and broken bones next time, but they did not have the tool they needed to intervene.
Finally, I want to thank the member for Victoria. I took this, as my own private bill, as far as I could get it in the last Parliament. I have been very pleased to work with her in this Parliament to make sure that the bill gets across the finish line.
There is an urgency here. Quite frankly, I was worried that the bill might get lost in the rancour of the end of a sitting in a minority Parliament. I want to express my thanks to the member for Calgary Nose Hill, who did some important negotiations today that will help us get the bill back in front of the House next week so that we can pass it before we rise.
Why is it urgent? Of course, we all know the terrible statistic that, once every six days, a woman in this country is murdered by their intimate partner. Not as familiar is the statistic that nearly 25% of those are indigenous women. Given the promises that we have all made in this Parliament, especially the government, to act on the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, this becomes a part of that package.
It is also urgent because, often, the women who are subjected to coercive and controlling behaviour are among the more marginalized in our society, whether they are indigenous women; new Canadians, who may lack the connections and supports in the community to escape such relationships; or those within my own community, the queer community.
We recognize, and we heard very clearly, that there is a concern about ensuring that the bill not do further harm. There were some extensive amendments made in committee to prevent revictimization as much as we can for those who survive, as well as to prevent the use of the bill by the actual abusers to continue their coercive and controlling behaviour.
Two of those amendments are quite important. One would forbid those who self-represent from being allowed to cross-examine their partners. These are perpetrators who engage in coercive and controlling behaviour and who represent themselves in court. Instead, the judge would appoint an independent lawyer to do that. That is an important part of avoiding revictimization by the abusive partner. The second is equally important. It says that, in findings of guilt under this offence, the judge must consider the overall context of the relationship. In common language, this means that the judge would have to ensure that the actual abuser, not the victim of coercive and controlling behaviour, is the one being charged. It is my hope that, after seeing these important amendments, the other place will also act expeditiously to pass the bill.
In addition to the women who are subject to coercive and controlling behaviour and the harms they suffer, and in addition to those who eventually die by femicide, which, 95% of the time, is preceded by coercive and controlling behaviour, the other victims of coercive and controlling behaviour are children. Children who are in households where coercive and controlling behaviour is taking place quite often suffer enormous psychological damage as a result of this behaviour as it goes on.
That leads to a related question that the bill does not address, and that is parental alienation. As I like to say when we talk about family law, this is not a thing. There are people who try to use the concept of parental alienation against their partners, saying that it is not their behaviour that has caused their children to be afraid but their partner, who is alienating the children's affections.
The bill does not deal directly with parental alienation, but it does deal with one of the fundamental causes of those disputes, which is the coercive and controlling behaviour at its root. We have heard today that all parties are very interested in making sure that we also address the question of parental alienation.
Will the bill end domestic violence? Of course it will not. There are many other supports that the frontline women's shelter workers talked to us about. They include legal aid in family law at the provincial level and additional funding for shelters. During the pandemic, it became quite clear that many women do not have good options for leaving these relationships.
Even when women finally come to the conclusion that they have no other option but to leave, there is no place for them to go in the community. In particular, many women stay in relationships because they have children; they are not sure how they will provide shelter and food for those kids. Therefore, they suffer through that coercive and controlling behaviour in the interim.
Quite clearly, we need better education in the justice system on the issue of coercive and controlling behaviour, as well as domestic violence in general. Too often, stereotypes of survivors and relationships interfere with the proper operation of the justice system.
Many police forces have done good work in establishing domestic violence units. Not all police forces have those units. We need to make sure that police forces have people who are trained and have the sensitivities to recognize when there are harmful relationships in front of them. When the bill is in place, they would be able to use it to help people get assistance in those times.
We also know that prosecutors, quite often, do not proceed with cases because of a victim's reluctance to testify. We need some education there, both for the survivors and for the prosecutors, to make sure that these situations actually proceed in court, as they should. This is a way of sending a very strong social message that this behaviour is unacceptable and that those who engage in it will be sanctioned by society.
Finally, there is a difficult topic and one that I am always concerned about: We need to encourage judges to better educate themselves in this area. I respect the independence of judges, and I am not arguing here today that we make judges do something. What I am arguing is that we should get the attention of judges and have education provided to them, within their own professional organizations, on the topic of domestic violence and, in particular, coercive and controlling behaviour.
No, the bill would not stop domestic violence, but because of the close connection between coercive or controlling behaviour and femicide, it may play an important role in reducing femicides in this country. The bill would provide an important tool to catch harmful and dangerous situations in interpersonal relationships earlier than we do now. This is what I heard very strongly from the frontline shelters and from the police. Right now, we lack a tool that recognizes and allows action before there are bruises and broken bones.
I am pleased to see virtually universal support for the bill. I am pleased that we have a good prospect of getting it passed next week and getting it sent to the other place. I am hopeful that the amendments we made address the concerns of some of the Senators and allow them to act expeditiously as well.
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Madam Speaker, New Democrats support, as all parties do, tackling the important issues that the bill before us seeks to tackle. We also know that there has been an explosion of sexual exploitation of individuals online without their consent and an explosion of child pornography. What we have to do is find those measures that would be effective in bringing an end to these heinous practices.
Like the member for Peace River—Westlock, I would like to support and salute the survivors who have told their tales, at much personal sacrifice and much personal anguish, publicly acknowledging what has happened to them and the impact it has had on their lives. We would not be making progress on these issues without that work by those survivors, so I think we all want to salute them for their bravery in taking up this problem.
However, the challenge with these issues is to find what will actually work to end sexual exploitation. We know that a lack of resources for enforcement is almost always at least equally important to any gaps in legislation. What we need to see is dedicated funding to specific and skilled police units to tackle these questions because it can become highly complex and highly convoluted in trying to bring these cases to prosecution, and we know that is one of the problems with the existing legislation. It is difficult to prosecute for these offences under the Criminal Code as it now stands.
We look forward, as New Democrats, to hearing from expert witnesses in committee on what measures will actually be the most effective in bringing an end to these practices, and whether and how the measures proposed in Bill C-270 would contribute to bringing an end to online sexual exploitation. The bill, in some senses, is very simple. It would require checking ID and keeping records of consent. Some would argue that the existing law already implicitly requires that, so is this a step that would make it easier to prosecute? I do not know the answer to that, but I am looking forward to hearing expert testimony on it.
While this legislation is not specific to women, it is important to acknowledge the disproportionate representation of women as victims of both child pornography and of sexual exploitation online without consent. However, I would also note that we have had a recent rash of cases of sexploitation or sextortion of young men who thought they had been speaking to other partners their own age online. They later find out that they were being threatened with the images they had shared being posted online and being asked for money or sexual favours to avoid that. Yes, it is primarily women, but we have seen this other phenomenon occurring where men pose as young women to get young boys to share those images.
Obviously, we need more education for young people on the dangers of sharing intimate images, although I am under no illusion that we can change the way young people relate to each other online and through their phones. Education would be important, but some measures to deal with these things when they happen are also important.
If we look at the Criminal Code, paragraph 162.1(1) already makes it illegal to distribute an intimate image without consent. Of course, child pornography, under a succeeding subsection, is also already illegal. This was first brought forward and added to the Criminal Code 11 years ago. I was a member of Parliament at that time, and the member for Peace River—Westlock joined us shortly after. It came in an omnibus bill brought forward by the Conservatives. In that bill, there were a number of things, to be honest, that New Democrats objected to, but when the bill, which was Bill C-13 at the time, was brought forward, our spokesperson Françoise Boivin offered to the government to split the bill, take out the section on online exploitation without consent and pass it through all stages in a single day. The Conservatives refused, at that point, to do that, and it took another year and a half to get that passed into law.
New Democrats have been supportive in taking these actions and have recognized its urgency for more than a decade. We are on board with getting the bill before us to committee and making sure that we find what is most effective in tackling these problems.
What are the problems? I see that there are principally two.
One, as I have mentioned before, is the difficulty of prosecution and the difficulty of making those who profit from this pay a price. All the prosecutors I have talked to have said that it is difficult to make these cases. It is difficult to investigate, and it is difficult to get convictions. Are there things we can do that would help make prosecution easier, and are the things suggested in the bill going to do that? I look forward to finding that out in committee.
The second problem is the problem of takedown, and we all know that once the images are uploaded, they are there forever. They are hard to get rid of. As members of the government's side have pointed out, there are measures in government Bill C-63 that would help with warrants of seizure, forfeiture, restitution and peace bonds in trying to get more effective action to take down the images once they have been posted. I am not an optimist about the ability to do that, but we seem to lack the tools we need now to make a stab at taking the images off-line. It is also important to remember that whatever we do here has to make our law more effective at getting those who are profiting from the images. That is really what the bill is aimed at, and I salute the member for Peace River—Westlock for that singular focus because I think that is really key.
We also have to be aware of unintended consequences. When subsection 162.1(1) became law, in court we ran into a problem fairly early on of minors who share private images between each other, because technically, under the law as it is written, that is illegal; it is child pornography, and it certainly was not the intention to capture 15-year-olds who share intimate images with each other.
Whenever we make these kinds of changes, we have to make sure they do not have unintended consequences. Whether we like the practices that young people engage in online or not is not the question. We just have to make sure we do not capture innocent people when we are trying to capture those who profit from exploitation. The second part, in terms of unintended consequences, is I think we have to keep in mind there are those who are engaged in lawful forms of sex work online, and we have to make sure they are not captured under the broad strokes of the bill.
Again, I am looking forward to hearing the testimony about what will work to tackle these problems. We know the images are already illegal, but we know we lack effective tools in the legal system both to prosecute and to get the images taken down. New Democrats are broadly supportive of the principles in the bill. We are looking forward to the expert testimony I am certain we will hear at committee about what will actually work in tackling the problem. I look forward to the early passage of the bill through to committee.
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- Nov/30/23 5:22:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I first want to start by saying that I do quite often resent the implication that anyone in the House does not have sympathy for victims and what happens to them, or that anyone in the House actually supports crime and criminal activity. What I support, and my background was in criminal justice for 20 years before I came here, are things that are actually effective in addressing those problems.
We know that if someone is let out on bail now with no supervision, with no access to programming, the chances they will reoffend while they are out on bail are very high. The bill before us, and what we are calling for, would provide for community-based bail supervision programs, which would help avoid exactly the circumstances the member raised in this incident.
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- Nov/30/23 4:59:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am a bit puzzled by the speech from the Conservative member, because, of course, his party was part of the House of Commons that unanimously supported the bill. His party was the one that called for swift action to deal with repeat violent offenders. Many of the groups the member cited in raising the problem now support the bill. It is a little puzzling to hear the tone of the speech, when I hope the Conservatives are still supporting a bill like this, which has been so broadly supported by the Canadian public, including premiers, police and victims associations.
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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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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this debate on Bill C-325 today, and I am going to be brutally honest: It is disappointing to see the Conservatives bring forward a private member's bill that builds on their campaign to exploit public fears about crime and public safety by emphasizing tragic incidents and tragic impacts on victims and continuing to ignore the evidence about what actually works in criminal justice. Of course, members of the House will know that I spent 20 years working in the criminal justice field before I came here. We know what reduces crime and what improves public safety, but the Conservatives seem to have no interest in any of those measures.
They repeatedly refer to the opinions of victims. I will, of course, agree with them that some victims are looking for harsh punishment for the perpetrators of crimes, but it is not all victims. The one thing that all victims of crime are looking for is that what happened to them does not happen to anyone else. If we look at all the scientific studies and academic studies of victims, we see that this is the one thing that all victims share in common. This means that instead of harsher measures, we need more effective measures to make sure that we do not have additional victims of crime in the future.
The main impact of Bill C-325 is to undo the reforms that were made in Bill C-5. Those were aimed at squarely attacking the problem of high rates of incarceration among indigenous and racialized people, those living in poverty and those living with mental health and addiction issues in Canadian prisons. The overincarceration of marginalized Canadians is not only unjust but also ineffective at improving public safety. Even short periods of incarceration cause major disruptions in people's lives when it comes to loss of employment, loss of housing, loss of custody of children and stigma, all of which make involvement in anti-social and criminal behaviour more likely in the future, not less likely.
The New Democrats have always supported measures that will be effective in improving public safety. This was true when we were talking about bail reform, which, again, is not the subject of Bill C-325, even though people would be surprised to find that out when listening to some of the Conservative rhetoric around it. We supported adding a reverse onus for bail in crimes involving handguns. We supported making community-based bail supervision programs more widely available in all communities, including in rural, remote and northern communities.
Community-based bail supervision will require upfront expenditures, and we have been calling on the Liberals to fund those programs. The John Howard Society runs three of those programs now in Ontario, and they have a 90% success rate. What does that 90% success rate mean? It means 90% of people in community-based bail supervision programs showed up in court when they were supposed to, and 90% did not reoffend in the period before they appeared in court. Why is that the case? It is because they had support and supervision. This is in the bill the Conservatives voted for, and now the Liberals need to come forward with the funding.
Community-based bail supervision programs are not the subject of Bill C-325, but I have to address them because Conservatives continue to act like they are. They save money in the long run because they are far cheaper: Putting people into community-based bail supervision programs is one-tenth the cost of putting them in incarceration. The problem in our federal system is that the federal government would bear the costs upfront of starting these programs, while the provinces would benefit from the savings in provincial correction systems.
Again, Bill C-325 is trying to undo the reforms that were in Bill C-5. What Bill C-5 did was to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for all drug offences and for certain tobacco and firearms offences, none of which are classified as violent crimes in the Criminal Code. Also, Bill C-5 widened the sentencing options available to judges by allowing them to use diversion programs and house arrest as penalties for a wider number of crimes. Why is this important? It is because there are direct victims of crime, but there are also the families of the perpetrators of crime. What we are talking about there is often spouses and children. The importance of diversion programs and house arrest means that oftentimes families are not deprived of the sole income earner in the family, or they are not deprived of the person who can provide supervision for children.
By using diversion programs and house arrest in additional offences, we can help keep families together and prevent crime in the future by keeping people's ties to the community and the wider family active and alive. This is particularly important in rural, remote and northern communities, where the sentence to incarceration means not only serving time in an institution but serving it in an institution many hundreds of kilometres away from the family and supports people need to prevent them from falling back into the problems that caused them to end up as convicted criminals.
According to the Conservatives' press release, Bill C-325 would “put a stop to the alarming number of convicted violent criminals and sex offenders who are serving their sentences in their homes.” This assertion is false. Even with the reforms in Bill C-5, judges are not allowed to sentence those who present any kind of risk to the public to serve sentences in the community. The statement that the many people who are convicted of the long list of offences the Conservatives like to cite are getting house arrest is not true. Judges are not allowed to grant diversion programs and sentences served in the community to those who present a risk to the public. That is very clear in our systems.
The Conservatives also claim that Bill C-325 would go after offenders who repeatedly violate conditional release orders. It is important to note that the provisions in Bill C-325 are about parole violations, not conditional release orders. There is nothing about bail conditions in this bill despite the Conservatives continually mixing the rhetoric about catch-and-release bail provisions with the provisions of Bill C-325. What Bill C-325 would do is make all parole violations a new criminal offence and require parole officers to report all parole violations, no matter how minor, to the police and the Parole Board. This would only result in the early termination of parole.
What does that mean? People say it is a good idea because people broke the rules and their parole should be revoked. With the revocation of parole, people end up back in institutions, and at the end of their sentences, they go into the community unsupervised. Therefore, by ending parole early, we end the period during which we supervise people's behaviour, which is to make sure they present less of a threat to the public, and let them out at the end of a sentence with no incentive to complete any of the rehabilitation programs, any of the mental health and addiction programs or any of the things that would keep them from being further involved in criminal activity.
Let me conclude my remarks today by reminding people that what we need to do is support measures that are effective at reducing crime and reducing the number of victims in the future. Bill C-325 would do nothing to advance those goals and instead would further contribute to the overincarceration of racialized and indigenous people and those living in poverty in this country. The New Democrats were proud to support Bill C-5 to try to make sure that we do what is effective when fighting crime and reducing the number of victims in this country.
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- Sep/20/23 5:43:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, here is the important message that I think we got from My Voice, My Choice: It is up to the victims to make the decision about whether they wish to have the publication ban. It is not really up to me, the prosecutors or the judges to make that decision for them.
Yes, I share concerns about the way victims of crime are still treated in the courts, particularly victims of sexual assault. However, sexual assault is the one area where we take away that agency and say that they are not allowed to talk publicly about what happened to them. That is the message we received quite clearly in the justice committee from My Voice, My Choice. It is to give that agency to the victims, to let them make that decision for themselves.
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- Sep/20/23 4:47:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, once again, I found the member for Kildonan—St. Paul's speech a little bit curious in that she made no mention of the other part of this bill, which is the part that allows sexual assault victims to have agency over whether there is a publication ban.
Many of them feel that publication bans restrict their right to help keep members of their friendship groups and families safe, since 80% of perpetrators in sexual assault cases are family or friends.
Does the Conservative Party support those aspects of this bill, which will give that agency back to sexual assault victims?
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- Jun/15/23 12:54:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I feel like I have wandered out of the wilderness into a strange country here today. When we are talking about victims, the justice committee heard from victims and victims advocacy organizations very strongly and came with a unanimous report with 13 recommendations. As I said earlier, there are procedures in the House to hold ministers accountable, and a concurrence report is not normally one of those.
My question for the member is this: What action is she going to take to make sure that the tactic the Conservatives have adopted today does not harm the ability to make progress on the 13 recommendations coming from victims that are contained in this report?
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- Jun/15/23 12:07:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I have said several times now, and I will say it again, when we are talking about ministerial accountability there are very good and robust measures in the House, question period being among them, where we can deal with questions of accountability. I do not think that a concurrence motion on a unanimous report is the place to do that.
His question about victims is an important one, but I want to give a caution here. There is a difference between listening to the victims of crime about what will help them recover and about what is needed for them to participate fully in the system, and taking traumatic incidents in our society and exploiting them for political purposes. I worry that this is what we see happening today.
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- Jun/15/23 11:59:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to stick to the member's question a bit more about what we heard from victims, because it is important to remember that this report is based on what we heard from victims of crime.
There are two general themes in what we heard. One of those was that victims wanted to ensure that justice was done, absolutely.
However, there is a second theme of victims that gets missed in some of the debates in the House of Commons. That second theme that was almost always there was that they wanted to ensure that no one else would become a victim of the same thing that happened to them. That compassion for others that almost all victims have displayed is how their trauma and terrible experience can be used to inform public policy so that this does not happen to any other family and does not happen to any other community. That is an important part of this debate and it is an important part of what is reflected in the report, which I hope we all respect.
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- Jun/15/23 11:45:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am of two minds about this debate this morning, because a concurrence debate about a unanimous report, which is on a very important topic, is a good thing, but I am also concerned if the real intent behind this debate is a diversion from others business of Parliament rather than actually talking about the important recommendations of this report.
Certainly, we heard from a wide range of people in the committee on this report. Many individual victims of crime came at a great personal cost and retold their stories of what had happened to them and the effects of being a victim of crime. We heard from many organizations that provide services to victims of crime. I want to pay particular thanks to the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which has a very active victims' advocacy program.
We heard from the victims ombudsman, and I want to pay respect at this point to both the previous victims ombudsman, Heidi Illingworth, and the current ombudsman, Benjamin Roebuck, for the important research and advocacy work they do on behalf of victims in this country.
I hope what we can do in this debate is maintain the focus on what we heard from those victims and those victims' advocates and the recommendations that were unanimously approved in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. An important function of this debate today could be to encourage the government, in the many different departments involved, to make progress on these recommendations.
There are other mechanisms available in this House for holding government ministers to account. I know the hon. members of the Conservative Party know that, they have been using those, so again I will stress my concern that we are not actually doing this debate for some other purpose when there are other mechanisms available. No matter what one thinks about that issue, they are there, they have been used and they can continue to be used. I hope the impact of this is not going to focus on another issue, which is important, yes, but another issue rather than the issues that were raised in this report. Again, I am concerned we keep that focus on moving forward on the recommendations in this report.
There are a number of chapters in this report, and it kind of amazed me that in the end, on a topic that has often been contentious in Parliament, we were able to reach a consensus on 13 recommendations. That is a bit of a miracle, especially in a minority Parliament and especially on an issue that has previously been so contentious.
I bring attention to chapter 4, which talks about services for victims of crime, and I will come to that in just a minute. There is a whole chapter on the right to information about the legal process in this report. There are recommendations on the rights of victims to participate in the legal process and how we meet the challenges victims face when they try to participate in this legal process. There is a chapter on the right to protection of victims while they are participating in the process, and I will return to that one a little later on.
There is an important chapter on the idea of restitution, on how often victims of crime cannot be made whole again in both financial and circumstantial areas. There is a final chapter on complaint mechanisms and remedies, so when the system goes wrong for victims what they have available to them to make that known to the system and to those who have the power to change that.
If we talk about services, one of the important things I learned from this is that in the Victims Bill of Rights there is no right to access to services for victims of crime. I think that is an oversight, and this committee, in recommendation 2, says that we should fix that. We know it is going to be a challenge. The federal government shares the justice field with the provinces and administration of justice belongs to the provinces.
That is why in recommendation 3 in this report it talks about working together to set some minimum standards of what is available to victims, in terms of support services and participation in the various parts of the legal process. I was very pleased to hear my hon. colleague from the Bloc Québécois agreeing we do need to work together to achieve some minimum standards. Again, that is part of the miracle of this report, which is that even on contentious federal-provincial issues we were able to reach agreement on how to better serve victims.
What do victims really need? There is a whole range of things, but the thing we heard most often is they need support services that are tailored to their needs and that quite often those needs are different.
Victims from different backgrounds have different needs to support them participating in the process and also to recover as a victim of crime. Lots of times, the services that we have available do not actually take into account the different circumstances, especially of those who are most marginalized in our society and especially of indigenous people. Having culturally relevant and culturally appropriate services available to victims is something we often fall down on and we do not do such good job.
When we are talking about services for victims of crime, we have tended to ignore mental health services. Again, my colleague from Comox has been a great advocate for mental health services. This report acknowledges that victims quite often need very specific kinds of therapy in order to get back to full participation in society, after having been victimized by criminal activity. I commend that chapter to everyone in the House. It is a very important chapter on the gaps in our approaches.
I was surprised to learn that is legal aid is generally not available, in any form, to victims of crime. Even though I taught criminal justice for many years, I had not really thought about this from the perspective of victims. We provide legal aid to defendants, and of course we have prosecutors who are paid for by the public. However, when it comes to victims of crime participating, legal assistance is generally not available to them. We depend on advocacy organizations to provide that advice and that assistance to victims of crime.
That brings me to the chapter on the right to information. Again, we did something peculiar when we established victims' rights and we said that the victims have rights to ask for information about the system. What we heard, again and again, from victims and their advocacy organizations is quite often victims do not even know what to ask. The system is so unfamiliar, so complex and so unforgiving. In particular for people who suffered trauma, it is so difficult to navigate that they do not even know what rights they have or to ask how to access those rights.
An important recommendation in this report, recommendation 4, is that we change the onus of providing information to an automatic provision of information to victims. Some jurisdictions do a better job than others in making sure victims understand what their rights are and what services are available to them. Again, we largely depend on those volunteer organizations to inform victims of their rights. However, if someone is not in touch with one of those organizations, they are left in the dark about how this very complex legal system of ours actually works.
Let us change this from saying that it is on victims to request information to it is on someone specific. We have not tried to solve that problem in this report, but we have indicated that it needs to be someone specific. We cannot just say there is right to information without saying who is actually going to deliver that information. It is up to the governments, again, because we have a justice system that is split over jurisdictions. It is up to those jurisdictions to work together to figure out who is going to make sure that victims actually do get the information.
One of the things we could do is provide core funding to victim organizations that are actually already doing this work. If we provided better funding to those organizations, they could make sure that victims were getting the information that they need on how to participate in the legal system, how to make sure their voices are heard in our legal system, but also on the very services that might be available to them in the community.
Now chapter 7 deals with the right to the protection of victims' identity and the right to privacy of victims. Again, this is probably one of the most surprising parts of the report. We heard very moving and effective testimony from victims of sexual assault, like Morrell Andrews, who talked about something we did many years ago in our legal system. We set up a system of publication bans so that the identity of victims of sexual assault would not become public.
Over the years our understanding of sexual assault has changed, and many of those victims of sexual assault were surprised to learn that they were subject to a publication ban, that they were not allowed to talk about what had happened to them in any way. Many of those victims of sexual assault also felt the publication ban, by protecting their identity, ended up protecting the identity of the perpetrator.
What we heard quite clearly in the testimony that was before us, and it was very eloquent, very difficult testimony for people to give on their personal assault experiences, was that the current arrangements take away agency from victims of sexual assault.
Therefore, in recommendation 11, the committee has recommended: first, that those who are subject to publication bans need to be informed and consulted before that publication ban is put in place; and second, that they need to have the right to opt out of that publication ban.
Many members know that I have spoken several times in the House about being an adult victim of child sexual assault. The veil of secrecy that was put around me at that time was helpful, but it was most helpful to the perpetrator, who had eight other victims. It would have been quite important for me, though as a minor I probably could not make that decision, for someone to make the decision that it was information the public needed to have. We have heard quite clearly from adult victims of sexual assault that they want their agency back. They want the ability to talk about their experience, they want the ability to warn others and they do not want to be treated as if they are minor children when it comes to the issue of sexual assault.
Those are just a few of the highlights in this report.
When I talk about trying to keep our focus on those recommendations so we can move forward, I want to talk a bit about one step forward that the government has taken as a result of this report.
We have Bill S-12 currently in the Senate. The last time I checked two days ago, the Senate justice committee was just about finished its consideration of Bill S-12. It would take recommendation 11 from this report and put it into law. When that recommendation is finished in the Senate, it will come back to the House and we will have the chance, in approving Bill S-12, to give that agency back to victims of sexual assault, to give them the right to know about publication bans before they are imposed and the right to have the ability to opt out of those publication bans.
When I say that focusing on these recommendations is important to make progress, there is a very specific example of the many things that are in this report so that, if we keep the focus on the unanimous support for those recommendations, I believe we will be able to make progress on victims' rights and services for victims.
Again, this is a minority Parliament and often fractious. However, in the justice committee, somehow, on very many issues we have been able to work together to achieve unanimity. The report on improving support for victims of crime is my best example of how Parliament can work, Parliament can be very functional and we can make recommendations that are important to the lives of everyday Canadians.
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- Jun/15/23 11:42:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the previous speaker raised a very important point, which is our dependence on volunteer organizations that deal with victims and the struggles they have to raise the necessary money not just to provide the services, which are sometimes done on a contract basis, but to keep the lights on and the doors open at those organizations. There is very little support for that core funding that is very necessary for those organizations.
I would like to hear a bit more from the hon. member on his views on core funding for victim support organizations.
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- Jun/15/23 11:28:04 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been a great pleasure working with the member on the justice committee. It is important to note that the justice committee has done an enormous amount of work unanimously in trying to move things forward for Canadians, despite sometimes being in a minority Parliament that is quit divisive,
My question for the member has to do with recommendation 3, which talks about the establishment of national standards for minimum levels of support for victims of crime. It calls for the federal government and the provinces to work together to establish those standards. Right now there is no right to victims' assistance and there are no common standards among the provinces.
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Madam Speaker, as a New Democrat, I am pleased to rise in the House and say that we do support this bill as part of our commitment to the protection of victims' rights. Also, we encourage all members of the House to support the attempts to provide victims with the services they need in terms of rehabilitation or to compensate for losses they have suffered as a result of being victims of crime.
We conducted hearings in the justice committee, where we heard from victims, and we heard very clearly that one of the things they want is accurate and timely information about the parole process. For that reason, I am quite happy to see this bill come forward and to support it. One of the additional things we heard from victims was on the specific case of sexual assault victims, who asked to be consulted and to be informed about publication bans, and have the right to opt out of publication bans on their assaults. Many of them felt a publication ban without their consent denied their agency and their ability to speak about their own experience, and often it inadvertently protected the perpetrators when their names were suppressed. That is in a bill that is before the Senate, Bill S-12. It was in committee in the Senate today, and I think most of us look forward to that provision getting here to the House very soon.
There are other important measures, and I thank the member for Shefford for talking about the attempt to move coercive and controlling behaviour into criminal law. That was originally in a private member's bill I sponsored, but it is now being brought forward by the member for Victoria as Bill C-332. I hope we will be dealing with that this fall. Again, by making coercive and controlling behaviour a criminal offence, we can prevent victims of violence in the future, since coercive and controlling behaviour in intimate partner relationships is almost always a precursor to actual violence in that relationship.
I spent 20 years, before I came here, as a criminal justice instructor, and one of the things I know from working with and talking to victims is they are concerned about public safety, and in the very specific sense that almost every victim wants to make sure we take measures to make sure the same experience they had does not happen to others. That concern for public safety is always front and centre with every victim I have met with.
It is unfortunate when rhetoric around crime, punishment, parole and bail veers off into what I would call an ideological position that tougher, longer sentences actually keep people safe. It really misunderstands the purpose and function of our parole system. We know that, in Canada, people are eventually going to be released from jail, except for a very small number of them. The parole system does not provide a “get out of jail free” card or earlier release; it provides incentives for good behaviour in the corrections system and it provides incentives for people to participate in rehabilitation, to take drug and alcohol counselling and to take anger management courses. It is hard to get parole if one does not engage in good behaviour in the system and does not engage in those rehabilitation activities. A person will not actually get parole and will not get the privileges of a phased release, being in a halfway house or any of those other things that are seen somehow as privileges. Those things are actually the phased reintegration of people into the community.
We know that people who successfully complete a parole process have a much smaller chance of reoffending. If we make parole almost impossible to get and if we insist on very long sentences, we actually have a negative impact on public safety, in that those who have committed crimes will serve their sentence in the institution, will not participate in rehabilitation activities and will be released at the end of their sentence with no supervision, no access to public services and no monitoring of what they are doing in the community. Parole is a way of keeping people safe; it is a way of promoting public safety. It is a way of encouraging rehabilitation. It is important we not lose sight of that. Having said that, victims obviously need to have accurate information about how this works and what is happening at each stage of the process. In that sense, of course, I am still supportive of this bill.
At this point, it is important to mention what I will call the unsung heroes of public safety, who are not as high profile as the police or as corrections workers. Those are the parole officers in this country. Parole officers work very hard with those who are being phased back into the community, to make sure they are successful. In doing so, they help promote public safety. I salute the more than 1,600, I think it is now, parole officers who work for Corrections Canada and belong to the Union of Safety and Justice Employees.
They have recently released a report, within the last year, that points out the challenges they face. Parole officers have very high levels of operational stress injuries in their occupation. That has to do with the stress of dealing with the offenders and the lack of resources in our system.
One of the things they have called for is the hiring of additional parole officers. This would help each of them do their job in a healthier manner, but also reducing caseloads would mean there is more time for those parole officers to spend on the people who are being released, so they can provide better supervision, more monitoring of things like curfews, or more monitoring of whether they are actually where they are supposed to be while they are on parole.
In addition, they called for increased mental health services for parole officers. One of the things they pointed out was that this, in actual fact, saves money. If we provide better mental health services, we avoid the burnout that leads to long-term operational injuries and long-term sick leave.
The other thing they asked for, and I think this is interesting because it shows their professionalism, is increased funding for more mental health professionals working inside our correctional institutions and as part of the parole system. Quite often what we see now, unfortunately, is offenders who have very complex psychological and substance abuse problems to deal with. We need those highly skilled professionals to help design the programs that would help rehabilitate them into the community with the least risk possible to the public.
Again, it is important, whenever we are talking about probation, parole or bail, to remember that things like parole and bail are designed to help keep the public safe—
An hon. member: Do we have quorum?
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Madam Speaker, I know that the hon. member is aware that the justice committee conducted hearings on victims' rights. In those hearings, we heard about the topic that he talked about, which is the importance of accurate and timely information for victims.
We also heard from victims of sexual assault that, very frequently, publication bans were imposed on them that prevented them from talking about their assaults and inadvertently protected the perpetrators. One thing they asked for was accurate information and the ability to give consent for publication bans. This is part of a Senate bill now and part of a private member's bill from the member for Victoria. Will the hon. member support that proposal when it comes forward to this chamber?
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- Mar/10/23 12:34:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yes, when we held hearings at the justice committee, it was made very clear to us that we ought not forget that not only are children often used as part of the coercive and controlling behaviour, but they are also the victims of coercive and controlling behaviour. To see this kind of violence used against their mother, as it is almost always the case of men versus women, has long-term mental health impacts on children.
We have tried to be aware, in writing these recommendations, of the need to consider those broader impacts, not just on the survivors, but on broader family dynamics.
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- Mar/10/23 12:30:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, before I came here, I was a member of a municipal police board, and I am quite familiar with the challenges police have, because we leave so many social problems to them to try to deal with rather than providing the services in advance that would prevent these problems from ending up in the legal system.
What was most striking to me at the beginning of the pandemic was when I phoned and talked with local police agencies. They were saying that “We have an increased number of domestic violence calls, and in many of those, we know that this will end up in violence, but with the way the law is structured right now, we have no way to offer assistance to those victims until there are bruises and broken bones.”
That phrase that I have been using came from one of those police officers who gets sent to those problematic relationships. So, it was from both police and women's agencies that the suggestion came that we needed to move that point where we provide assistance closer to those times when the victims actually need it.
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