:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[English]
An hon. member: [Inaudible--Editor].
Mr. Réal Ménard: I don't want to rush you. I know you are very sensitive.
An hon. member: [Inaudible--Editor].
Mr. Réal Ménard: No, don't go slow. Don't push your luck.
[Translation]
I'm somewhat disheartened, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that you are new to this position and that you want to serve the committee well. However, you have to understand that you cannot tell colleagues that the committee is not sitting at 5:30 p.m., and then turn around and call a meeting for 7 p.m., and again for 9 a.m. the following day. Members had already rearranged their schedules. Two colleagues who normally would be in attendance are not here.
In my opinion, it would have been preferable for us to rearrange our schedule and prolong the meeting. I respectfully submit that members need a minimum amount of lead time to rearrange their agendas when the need to do so arises, and it is not your prerogative to randomly ask them to do so.
The witnesses are here. I know that there was no bad faith on your part, but when members are informed that the committee will not be meeting at 5:30 p.m., you cannot turn around and call a meeting for 7 p.m. The witnesses took the trouble of coming here. I hope this does not become a habit. Out of three scheduled committee meetings, two have already been rescheduled. We are prepared to work with the government, but we expect to be treated with a modicum of respect.
I realize that you are new to this job and that you are eager to learn the ropes. We will let it go this time, even though proper procedure wasn't followed. I will not table a motion to adjourn, even though we would have liked to see things proceed differently.
I have to say that I agree with Mr. Ménard on the point that he's raised. I think I can safely speak on behalf of my Liberal colleagues when I say that we do appreciate the efforts to try to make this committee work smoothly and to get through the work that we have all agreed needs to be done on Bill C-2 in order to properly report back to the House as per the instructions of the motion.
So I would suggest, as my colleague Mr. Bagnell has done, that those of us who are prepared to provide our cell phone numbers to the clerk do so, and that those of us who are also prepared to provide our personal BlackBerry e-mail address do so. I would also suggest that in future, prior to a notice being sent out, the members be contacted to see if they would be available. If there are enough members so that we have quorum, then accordingly a notice could be sent out. Members would be called and BlackBerried to let them know that this was happening.
I had made other plans for this morning, and luckily my assistant actually went into our office e-mail account yesterday evening fairly late, saw the notice, and immediately BlackBerried me so that this morning when I got up and checked my e-mail, I saw that--oh, my God--we were going to be meeting at nine o'clock. Then I had to scramble to change my agenda in order to be here.
So the process needs to be worked on a little bit, because I know everyone here is of good faith, we do want to get through this, and we want to do it in a proper fashion so that nobody feels as though we're being bousculé.
[Translation]
I don't know the word in English.
[English]
I appreciate the efforts you're making to try to get the committee to work well together.
:
I want to thank all members for their input this morning, and I certainly appreciate the way in which it was delivered.
I will in fact make the commitment to folks that, number one, if we can get cellphone numbers from any individuals, those numbers will belong to just the clerk. In fact, I won't even have them. They will be with the clerk.
The point I will make is simply this. The clerk and I are quickly becoming fast friends, because we're speaking on an almost hourly basis to ensure that we can deliver our meetings to the committee in obviously as professional a manner as we can and to make sure that we have quality witnesses, as we do this morning. We did contact folks by e-mail last evening, and in fact also by phone to offices. I know that all of you didn't necessarily get those messages. Mr. Comartin isn't here this morning, and I obviously will endeavour to listen to what he has to say as well.
I do make the commitment to you that, in future, if we do have a change, as we did yesterday, we will contact you directly, not just to inform you about the decision but to find out if it works for you. But I appreciate the comments and the vein they were delivered in.
I would like to get started. We have a couple of witnesses this morning and they have come from different parts of the province.
I certainly want to welcome both Mr. Muise and Mr. Cooper this morning.
As you are the first outside witnesses we've had presenting, I want to quickly outline the procedure. You'll both have ten minutes to deliver your opening remarks. The process we will work with then is that there will be a round of questioning. We have an order that we will go through. The first round of questioning will be seven minutes in length. The second round and the following rounds will be five minutes in length.
I'll try to give you a little bit of a wave when you get close to the ten minutes. I'll also give you a similar-type indication in the seven- and five-minute rounds so that you will be able to finish your comments.
I know that the committee asked me, when we started to put together the committee and the process we were going to use, that we try to keep as strictly to those timeframes as we can. I'll ask all committee members to do likewise, and that when I do look over and make mention of time, we try to stick to that. We're going to try to accommodate everyone and give everyone the opportunity to ask specific questions.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Cooper to begin, with Mr. Muise to follow.
:
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Terry Cooper. I am currently counsel to the director of crown operations for the east region, Province of Ontario, Ministry of the Attorney General.
I began my career in the administration of criminal justice as a police officer in 1975, which I continued for about seven years in the city of Kingston. After seven years of continuing post-secondary education, I resumed at a lower salary as a crown attorney for the Province of Ontario, and I've been there ever since.
For the last five years, I've been immersed in dealing with part XXIV of the Criminal Code, regarding dangerous offenders and long-term offenders. At the moment, I manage approximately 32 cases that are outstanding in the east region of Ontario. That's the ten crown attorneys' offices from Belleville and Picton to Pembroke to the Quebec border. One crown attorney in the Perth office, for example, has three of these cases pending herself, so these have come a long way from what we used to have when I began my career in the crown attorney system in 1990.
I am not here as a representative of the Ministry of the Attorney General per se. I am not here to comment on policies from my minister's perspective. I am here as a practitioner who has been involved in many of these cases at every conceivable level, and I have a great deal of experience where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, on how to manage these cases. I would like to share with the committee the practical process involved in assembling a case for a part XXIV application, because it might not be what you think. Indeed, in every part XXIV hearing, I make opening remarks to the court to explain the process in some detail, and even judges who have heard these things once have asked to hear them a second time on a second hearing in which they are involved.
Bill C-2, which, I must admit, I read for the first time last night while I was handing out chocolate bars, contains a number of provisions that will assist me as a practitioner, a few that are neutral, and at least one that may prove to have some unintended consequences that could potentially cause some difficulty.
There is also something I would like to address, and which is the biggest single obstacle to the crown putting forth a part XXIV application, and that is the collection of evidence and the preservation of evidence. Section 760 of the Criminal Code, one of the last sections in part XXIV, addresses some preservation issues but not all. I'd like at some point to be able to comment on that and on the fact that none of the mechanisms of search warrants, production orders, and subpoenas is designed to gather evidence related to sentencing at the pre-conviction stage, and that's what we need to do to move these cases forward for the benefit of everyone involved--the offender as much as the crown, and of course the court.
In every part XXIV hearing, the crown must deal with two things, the first of which is the pattern of behaviour. I mention behaviour because that's the word that's used in the Criminal Code. It's not a pattern of convictions; it's a pattern of behaviour. I have had two cases in the east region in which individuals have been declared long-term offenders, one of whom had never had a traffic ticket, so far as I know, in his life. Another one had no previous convictions, although he was convicted for a number of historic sexual offences at the predicate offence.
Frankly, that first step is the easy step. I've never had difficulty bringing a case to the court for which I didn't have that pattern-of-behaviour evidence well in my briefcase before we went. I very strongly emphasize the gatekeeper role that is my responsibility in managing these cases, and my supervisor's responsibility. After that process, it goes to our head office, where a number of lawyers examine the case before it gets to the deputy attorney general and the attorney general of the province. There are countless safeguards involved in these prosecutions as we bring the matter forward. Probably an average of 200 years of prosecutorial experience goes into the consideration of a single case when you consider the prosecution experience of the trial crown, of me, of my supervisor, of the three lawyers at head office who examine it, and then you go upstream to the assistant deputy minister, the deputy minister, and eventually the attorney general himself or herself.
The second step that is involved in every part XXIV hearing is the assessment of the risk posed by the offender and the method of designing something to manage that risk in the community or in prison. Right from the start of this process, we're planning on the exit strategy for the offender. How is the offender going to be managed in the community--if the offender can in fact be managed in the community. That's the very first thing we consider when we embark on one of these proceedings.
The first step, the pattern of behaviour, is very easy. The second step occupies all of my time. The preparation and time involved in one of these cases is approximately 600 hours, including 300 hours of police preparation time and 300 hours of crown preparation time. In the course of the last year, I've been able to trim probably 100 to 200 hours off that simply by building relationships with other members of the administration of justice so that I can obtain records quickly.
I should indicate that we're always interested in obtaining the best possible records for the judge to consider and for the expert to consider. The judge is required by statute to review the assessment report submitted by the expert. The expert in turn will indeed use actuarial instruments to assess the risk posed by a particular individual. The risk assessment instruments in turn depend on a wide variety of materials that far exceed the four corners of the criminal conviction.
So the evidence-gathering process takes a considerable amount of time. We begin with the end in mind, with the expert's needs in mind, because the expert's needs are the court's needs.
The issue of record-keeping, as I mentioned at the outset, is the central problem for us. The administration of criminal justice in Canada is somewhat flawed at almost every level when it comes to preserving evidence within its control. The police shred information. The crown's office doesn't retain information in an accessible way. The courts dispose of information routinely. Worse than that, they don't do it in any predictable pattern. The National Parole Board doesn't keep the audiotapes of its parole board hearings indefinitely. Only the Correctional Service of Canada seems to have a relatively good record at file retention.
The national flagging system is one place we go to as one of our first stops. The national flagging system was designed for a crown counsel to supply certain file information for an individual who is not quite at the stage of being declared a dangerous or long-term offender. That information is retained centrally--or provincially, but accessible from anywhere in Canada.
As I mentioned, section 760 of the Criminal Code is not the subject of Bill C-2, but it has the strange requirement that it doesn't.... It requires the following of the court in every case in which it finds an offender to be a dangerous offender or a long-term offender:
a court shall order that a copy of all reports and testimony given by psychiatrists, psychologists, criminologists and other experts and any observations of the court with respect to the reasons for the finding, together with a transcript of the trial of the offender, be forwarded to the Correctional Service of Canada for information.
Curiously, it doesn't deal with the situation where the court makes the determination that a determinate sentence, a numerical sentence, is necessary. The court is not given any direction under section 760 for that scenario.
In fact, I would submit that it would be appropriate that section 760 apply to cover the evidence in every case where a designated offence is tried and the person is convicted of one of the listed designated offences, regardless of the sentence imposed. Even if it was a provincial sentence, it would be valuable to me as a practitioner to have that information preserved and retained by the Correctional Service of Canada so that it's accessible when we come to the next hearing, because that's always a difficulty.
The other suggestion I would make is that certified copies of informations and transcripts be made, not simply copies.
That still doesn't begin to cover the wide range of human behaviour that we need to acquire information on. Even in terms of criminal convictions, we often find evidence related to break and enter counts and to dangerous driving counts where, for example, the individual has used his car as a weapon to try to run down his estranged wife. We still have a lot of searching to do, but if the designated offences were preserved, it would bring us a long way toward being able to properly present one of these cases in court when the time arises.
As I mentioned at the outset, neither the traditional search warrant, the general warrant, or a production order are designed to assist in the collection of evidence related to sentencing before conviction.
An amendment or an addition to part XXIV, to the effect that, notwithstanding any other portions of the Criminal Code, these mechanisms apply for the collection of materials relevant to the behavioural history of an accused person before or after conviction in relation to whom the prosecutor intends to make an application under subsection 752.1(1), would be of immeasurable assistance.
:
Thank you, Mr. Dykstra.
My name is John Muise. For those of you I haven't met before, I'm a recently retired 30-year veteran of the Toronto Police Service, where I've spent six of my last seven years on secondment to the Ontario Office for Victims of Crime, where I provided policy advice to a succession of attorneys general in the province on issues around criminal justice reform, public safety, and support for crime victims. I then returned to the police service, where I spent my last year at the homicide squad in charge of the major case management section and the retroactive DNA section that we formed arising out of legislation that was passed shortly before Karla Homolka was about to get out of jail after serving her 12 years.
I note that because part of being in charge of the retroactive DNA section provided me the opportunity to look at hundreds and indeed thousands of criminal records of serious offenders. It gave me a slice of the kinds of offenders that would be captured by this bill, particularly as it relates to the legacy Bill C-27 section.
I'm currently the director of public safety at the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness. We're a not-for-profit charitable organization. I provide consultation support to the organization with respect to the issues that relate to abused children and other people at risk. I do these kinds of things, like coming to committee, and try, where possible, to assist in having legislation changed to enhance public safety.
I appeared previously on Bill C-10, Bill C-27, and Bill C-35, which are all part of this bill. I submitted briefs at the time, and I suspect they've all been translated appropriately. As was the case with Mr. Cooper--although I read the bill last night for the second time, and I did that between serving candy to children--I don't have a brief today, and I apologize for that. In any event, I'm familiar with it. What I'll do is, for the most part, speak to the new sections of the bill that have come up in Bill C-27, in particular, since the introduction of the previous bills.
In addition, I would add that although I didn't testify on Bill C-22, it's probably one of the most important bills for our organization, with regard to the age of protection. We are the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness and Child Abuse. At the time I happened to be halfway around the world and unable to attend the hearings when they were scheduled.
I'll briefly go over some of my comments on the original Bill C-27. I referred to a number of cases. I made the point about whether Bill C-27 was fair and arbitrary, and about whether it was the least restrictive or intrusive measure possible in light of the purpose of the bill. I made the point in the brief that yes, indeed, I believed it was. I believe it is. I think the amendments that have been included, I understand at the urging of a number of provincial attorneys general, are good amendments.
I'll say right now that the bill as currently written in Bill C-2 is one that the CCAA does support. CCAA encourages all the members of the committee, once you have done your due diligence, to pass it at your earliest opportunity. I fundamentally support it, and our organization believes that children and others at risk will be protected.
To focus on who some of these offenders are as that relates to the Bill C-27 section, for the most part these offenders will have numerous and varied convictions, likely over a number of years, with a large majority of them being sex offenders.
A recent case that has been in the news and for which much of his criminal history is a matter of public record is the Paul Douglas Callow case. He was also known as the balcony rapist. Mr. Callow has a record dating back to the early 1970s that includes a number of convictions for property and violent crimes, including break-and-enter and assault. Mr. Callow also has a conviction for loiter by night--being a peeper--on his record. He has a rape conviction, a historic offence--that is also, in accordance with Bill C-27, a primary designated offence--for which he was sentenced to four years in prison, and an offence for which he was subsequently recommitted as a mandatory supervision parole violator. We now call that statutory release. Then again he was sentenced in 1987, which is his most recent conviction, for five counts of sexual assault, and those were the balcony rapist convictions. Of course sexual assault convictions are primary designated offence applicable. He was given a total of 20 years in prison. Mr. Callow served every single last day of that sentence and was released, to much public scrutiny and fanfare, and was put on a section 810 order, which applies to sexual assault offenders, in the Vancouver area.
There are more than a few people who are wondering why he wasn't declared a dangerous offender at the time of his conviction in 1987. Be that as it may, he wasn't. I suspect there was a plea negotiation. Quite frankly, the sentence, in the context of the criminal law here in Canada, was a pretty good one.
The important thing for this committee to recognize is that it will be the likes of the Paul Douglas Callows that will end up being captured by the legacy Bill C-27 provisions of the current proposed Bill C-2. If he went out and committed, for instance, another sexual assault of any kind and the judge saw fit to provide him with a sentence of two years or more, the old Bill C-27 section would kick in. And this is an offender for whom the crown would have to declare whether he or she was proceeding, and it would fall within the realm of the contemplated section.
Are there other Paul Douglas Callows out there? Absolutely. I don't think there's any doubt about it. And those are the kinds of people who would be captured, much like the current and ongoing dangerous offender sections of the Criminal Code. I think about 85% of those who are dangerous offenders--and I understand we have between 350 and 400--are sexual offenders like Paul Callow.
The end result, particularly in light of the kinds of offences that have been designated PDO, primary designated offences, will be that we are going to capture more people like Paul Callow. Keeping in mind that it is three separate convictions where somebody does penitentiary time of two years or more--in the main, offences that are sexual or sexually based or sexually based against children--at the end of the day, those are the kinds of people who are going to be captured. In essence, we'll capture more dangerous offenders than we already do. I understand there have been estimates of potentially 25 more a year across the country. I'm guessing. I suspect that is probably sort of a best guess. I suspect that it's not far off.
From my reading of the many criminal records that I did review when I was in charge of the retroactive DNA team, my recollection is there are not a lot of people who have two separate sexual assault convictions and are going on for a third. If anybody is worried about capturing hundreds and hundreds of people and making them dangerous offenders, I just don't see that happening. In any event, however many it is, with the new amendments to the legislation we see that the judge, in making a declaration of dangerous offender or not, is still going to have the option of saying “I am going to sentence you to an indeterminate sentence” or “I'm going to sentence you to a determinate sentence with an LTO, long-term offender order after that” or “I'm going to sentence you to just a determinate sentence without an LTO order”. There is a good fit with the new amendments.
I would add that the amendment that responded to the concerns of the provincial attorneys general, which, in effect, brings somebody back and says, hey, what are we going to do with you now, is a positive amendment and will assist in identifying those who just can't stay out of trouble.
One last thing I would like to point out is that I did not testify on Bill C-22. There was one section that was added to the definitions. I'm not talking about the transition section. I'm talking about the section that was added with respect to people who got married and there was an exemption for the age of consent. I understand that was around concerns with folks in the territories. Although, of course, we support this legislation, and we support it going forward, I can tell you that if all of you could see fit to remove that particular amendment, it would be a really good thing. The specific reason is this. When people in places like Bountiful, B.C., cotton on to this, it will be a recipe for...I can't be any more blunt than this: “Girls, come on down and get married because the law is allowing us to continue to get married.” I ask you to think about that.
I'm happy to respond to questions.
I only have one question for Mr. Cooper, but just before that I will make a couple of comments.
Thank you for the Bill C-27 amendment, the good amendment on the long-term offenders. I have to compliment our critic who proposed that and got the attorneys general to agree to it, and the government agreed. It's an excellent amendment. Of course, on the age of protection, on October 26, 2006, and March 14, 2007, we offered to fast-track that, so that actually could have been law now.
That being said, Mr. Cooper, I agree with your point that the collection, storage, and retrieval of data and statistics need a lot of improvement. We've learned that in committee, but that's not what my question is about. Our critic made the good point yesterday that in this law there could be 100 dangerous offences and an application never has to be brought, but the Attorney General does have to say whether he reviewed that option. My question is not about that either.
My question is about what Mr. Lee raised yesterday in committee, and that was this. If you can put yourself on the other side for a moment, on the defence side, with all the data you mentioned you had collected and the effort you have to make to make your case under the existing system of proving they are dangerous under one of the various categories, (a), (b) or (c), I believe, in the Criminal Code, you pick one and use your data to prove that. Now the onus, if the application is actually brought, will be on the criminal. Mr. Lee's question was how would you then proceed as a defence lawyer? Which of those categories are you going to try to defend? The onus would have been on the prosecutor to prove you are a dangerous offender. As a defender, where are you going to start in your defence? Under which category? All categories? What would you do to try to suggest that you are not a dangerous offender?
Two of the categories are distinction without a difference. When you review the wording of subparagraphs 753(1)(a)(i) and 753(1)(a)(ii).... I have never encountered a case that would satisfy the wording of one yet not satisfy the wording of the other. Those two disjunctive tests are really a distinction without a difference. They both deal with patterns of behaviour, repetitive behaviour or persistent aggressive behaviour. They amount to the same thing in law in the cases I reviewed.
The third, subparagraph 753(1)(a)(iii), deals with brutal behaviour, and that is a test that is so high that I have never personally encountered it. Of course, it would likely be covered by the other two as well, although it could conceivably be a one-off situation.
The test in subparagraph 753(1)(b) is strictly dealing with sexual issues, so that is a distinction, although that quite often could blend in with either subparagraphs 753(1)(a)(i) or 753(1)(a)(ii) above it because it could be part of a pattern of repetitive behaviour or persistent aggressive behaviour, etc. The end result is you're dealing with risk posed by the offender, and the risk can be manifested in any number of ways. Every side deals with it.
I should pause to say this. The work I do with dangerous offenders is not adversarial. In fact, when I do the initial opening remarks, the trial crown is always there, and they sometimes look at me like I am the defence counsel because I insist on presenting everything to the court in an objective, dispassionate manner; the issues here are so important to the court, to the offender, and to society.
Thank you very much to both of you, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Muise, for coming before this committee in such short order and for taking time out of your Halloween celebrations to refresh your memories on Bill C-2.
Mr. Cooper, you mentioned that there are very serious difficulties for crown attorneys in attempting to put together a dangerous offender case, in terms of collecting all of the records that would be documentary evidence presented to the judge; and that there is absolutely no coherent policy governing record-keeping across Canada, across the various institutions that would be expected to have evidence that would be useful in a dangerous offender hearing, whether it be the individual police services, the courts themselves, the prisons, the penitentiaries, or the halfway houses. Someone who has been repeatedly convicted of the kinds of crimes that could lead to a dangerous offender may at one point have been out on parole, may have been in a halfway house, may have been ordered to go into a detox centre, and so on. There is no comprehensive policy for record-keeping for the kinds of offences that could lead to a dangerous offender hearing.
You've said that section 760 should apply in every case, regardless of whether the sentence applied is a provincial sentence--i.e., two years less a day--or a federal sentence, two years and more.
Do you also believe the federal government has a role, or should be playing a role, in trying to encourage the provinces as well to develop a comprehensive policy in terms of record-keeping for institutions that come under them, such as the police, for instance? Federally we could require certain things of the RCMP, but not necessarily of the municipal and provincial police, of the provincial prisons, for instance, of the halfway houses, the transitional houses, etc.
Is that something that you think would go a long way, not just for dangerous offenders but simply for prosecution of anyone being charged with serious crimes?
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For the court documents, sir, we need certified copies of the information or indictment. We need certified transcripts. We need the exhibit list and all the documentary exhibits that went with it. All of that material, as well as the police materials, is relevant to the court process. It goes far broader than that, and I'll start to answer one of your other questions, if I may, briefly.
I'm reading from a book called Without Conscience, by Dr. Robert Hare. Dr. Hare is the creator of a PCL-R, psychopathy checklist-revised. It's a risk assessment instrument that is used throughout the world, and it's probably the leading risk assessment instrument. In fact, it forms the basis for many of the other risk assessment instruments.
For example, there has to be consideration given to how the individual was behaving at the point in time when he was reaching puberty. Dr. Hare indicates that these factors--and I'll go through them very quickly--are relevant: repetitive casual and seemingly thoughtless lying; apparent indifference to or inability to understand the feelings, expectation, or pain of others; defiance of parents, teachers, and rules; continually in trouble and unresponsive to reprimands and threats of punishment; petty theft from other children; apparent persistent aggression, bullying, fighting; and it goes on with sexual precociousness, vandalism, bedwetting, fire-setting, and cruelty to animals.
That's the information we have to gather about one individual as a child. When the individual is an adult, such things as glib and superficial personality, egocentric and grandiose character, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of empathy, deceitful and manipulative shallow emotions.... And I've just covered half the list for the adults.
:
In the 32 that are outstanding at the moment, I'm counting dangerous offender applications, long-term offender applications, and breach of long-term supervision order cases as well, because all of these require the same amount of work.
In terms of the breach of long-term supervision order applications, the Kingston crown attorney's office, with I think nine counsel, has eleven cases. Two of them are individuals who didn't get out of the supervision of the Correctional Service of Canada. These are pending cases, so I'm not going to mention names. One was in a halfway house when he allegedly sexually assaulted another inmate in the halfway house. He was already a long-term offender, so obviously we have to move on, take the next step, and have him declared a dangerous offender. Another individual, similar, only he didn't even get to the halfway house. He was in Kingston Penitentiary, in the maximum security area, when he allegedly assaulted somebody quite severely.
The unique situation in Kingston generates an awful lot of individuals dealing with breach of long-term supervision orders. I think the highest sentence in Canada was just issued in Kingston for a breach of a long-term supervision order, a three-year sentence.
So Kingston explains about a third of our work. The city of Ottawa, of course, is a fairly large city, and that explains another third of our work. The remaining third is scattered throughout the region. There's been an aberration just recently in the Perth office, where we've had so many.
What we're seeing come forward in higher numbers now are domestic assault, domestic violence individuals who have done this time and time again with a series of partners. We see those cases coming more and more into the system. For some of these individuals, it's shocking, when I examine their files, that it's taken this long to catch up with them, so to speak.
Up to that point, it's mostly been.... A large number of our offenders are pedophiles, and another large number are adult sexual offenders; they sexually offend against adults.
So in a year, of the 32, I would expect we'll deal with perhaps a third or half of that number in the course of a 12-month period. As to an increase in the number, I don't know that this is going to be the case with Bill C-2, because my standards are higher than the three-offence section of the Criminal Code to begin with. So I don't know that this will bring anything additional to my plate in terms of reviewing these.
I should say that we try to identify these cases at the bail hearing stage, because it takes so many.... That 600 hours is over a period of six or eight months to collect this information. You send out a letter, you send out a subpoena, you wait, you read the material you receive, and that causes you to send out more subpoenas and more letters. So it takes a long time to deal with this many cases.
:
I can't say that it doesn't, of course.
We have very strict policies in Ontario that we are not to bind the Attorney General. We are never to undertake, for example, to pursue a long-term offender designation as opposed to a dangerous offender designation. When the consent of the Attorney General is required, we take instructions from our client, the Attorney General.
In all other situations, frankly, we are the local minister of justice. But where the Attorney General's consent is required, as it is in many different parts of the Criminal Code, perhaps three dozen times, we take instructions. We don't bind the Attorney General's hands by agreeing to something that would bind his or her discretion if we make an application.
Now, the decision as to whether to make an application to begin with is the trial crown's decision. What we've done in the east region, and probably the reason we have so many of them, is we've tried to reduce the barriers to trade, so to speak. We've raised the awareness among crown attorneys in the east region as to what is involved in one of these hearings. We've tried to do an enormous amount of case law research so they don't have to climb that learning curve every time. We've developed forms and precedents that make the paperwork a lot easier.
:
I'll briefly repeat my point about the amendments that are contemplated in relation to both those who breach and those who commit another serious personal injury offence while on a long-term order. These are the very people who....
As I stated before, sex offenders make up approximately 85% of the dangerous offender population. If you accept the truism that it's a small minority of offenders, particularly when it comes to sex offenders, who commit a disproportionate amount of this kind of crime, and those very same people just keep coming back to the well, the amendments that the provincial attorneys general have said we should include will be very good in terms of identifying those particular people.
If you put that together with the amendment that in effect creates a hearing where somebody is declared, the way the legislation is written is that rather than having to go through the dangerous offender hearing down the road, the hearing then converts to a situation where this person has already been declared, and now it's up to the judge to decide what to do. This person was originally put out on an LTO, potentially, and now what to do: am I going to now create an indeterminate sentence, or is there evidence to convince the court that yet again he can be put out on another LTO?
So I think the two amendments, those two pieces, are going to do a good job of making the court and the criminal justice system aware of those particular people and bring them back in a way that is not overly onerous. It puts it back yet again in front of a judge. It's not saying, “You struck out on the LTO, you're going to be indeterminate sentence.” It's not even that far. It's back in front of the judge.
Also, for those who were concerned that it might appear like a three strikes and you're out, I believe nothing could be further from the truth. I think it strikes certainly a balance that should, I hope, satisfy most.
:
I want to thank you both for a lot of the information that you have brought before us.
Mr. Muise, when you came before the previous committee that was dealing specifically with Bill C-27, you talked about Paul Callow, also known as the balcony rapist. I believe there may have been one or another witness who also raised that case as an example of a repeat offender who normally should have been designated as a dangerous offender, received an indeterminate sentence, etc., and who has now been released and presents a high risk.
I was contacted over the summer by a member of Mr. Callow's family, because he is out; he is a under a section 810 recognizance order. The member of his family was quite upset with the way he is being portrayed today and the risk that he represents today and sent me a report that was compiled by Professor Michael Jackson, Queen's Counsel, at the University of British Columbia faculty of law. It was done on June 5, 2007. It's a documentary review of all of his files, all of the assessments done, the programs he participated in or did not participate in, correctional files, you name it.
It's 56 pages, and he uses the actual reports and quotes the actual reports stemming all the way back to 1987, I believe, when he was first convicted and all the way up to his actual release in February 2007. I would like to table this, because I think it's important that we don't simply rely on one or two words. I would like to quote from page 1 of this report.
In the extensive media portrayal of Mr. Callow at the time of his release, based upon information provided by the correctional and law enforcement authorities, he was in fact described as an untreated dangerous sexual offender who has either refused to undertake treatment or not responded to treatment and had shown little or no remorse for his crimes. This portrayal has fanned the flames of widespread public fear and political calls for changes to the law, including indefinite civil commitment of those believed to be dangerous sexual offenders. This portrayal of Mr. Callow is however misinformed....
He provides the documentary evidence. With the agreement of the members, If members are interested in reading the actual documentary review done by Professor Michael Jackson of Mr. Callow's case and forming their own opinion following that as to whether or not Mr. Callow remains an untreated dangerous offender with a high risk, I would ask the indulgence of the members to table a copy of this actual report.
Thank you, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Muise, for joining us.
Mr. Cooper, this is the first opportunity I have had to hear you testify about a proposed piece of federal legislation. Thank you.
I quite liked the comparison that you drew. You stated that since leaving the police force, your income has declined. There's a saying in Quebec that if you want to demote a police officer, from a salary standpoint, you give him a job as a Crown attorney.
Mr. Cooper, I'd like to hear your views on something that's very important to me. Like Mr. Muise, you said that you read the bill yesterday. In your opinion, will Bill , as tabled by the government, resolve—and I use the word cautiously—the problem of violence against women?
In Quebec, as in your home province and elsewhere in Canada, there have been many reported cases of repeated violence against women. In the past, there was no possibility of declaring the perpetrator a dangerous offender or some such thing, and after a while, he would end up killing his spouse. Two or three famous cases come to mind, including one in your province. Can this bill help us to resolve this very real problem in both of our provinces?
Elsewhere, Mr. Cooper, do you also believe that this bill will help to address the problem of child abuse? I'm thinking here about abuse of a sexual nature, among other things. Sexual predators manage to slip through the cracks and at some point, they must be caught.
Since you have read the bill and since you may be required to work within its parameters, do you believe that it will help to address these two major problems, namely violence against women and child abuse?
:
There are several provisions, as I mentioned at the outset, that provide me as a practitioner with significant assistance in terms of bringing forward to the court all of the information that the court needs to make a decision. So in that sense, of course the bill is quite helpful. And because it's more helpful, it will undoubtedly enable us to deal with more cases. So the answer to your question in both respects should be yes. That is a good prediction of what should happen, in effect.
The number of cases will no doubt change somewhat. I don't know that it will be a dramatic change. It does assist us in bringing forward particularly the assessment provision for the breach of long-term supervision order. That is an enormous assist.
What I haven't mentioned to the committee yet is that you may be under the impression that these assessments are conducted in an institution. Five years ago, that would have been the case. When I first gained an interest in these cases, almost all of them were done in an institution. We would get reports not just from the psychiatrist but also from the psychologist, the nurses' notes, from the recreationalist, from the master's of social work people. We'd have a very comprehensive report. Now in Ontario there are only two locations that offer beds at all--the Royal Ottawa Hospital on occasion, and I think there are two beds, for the entire province of Ontario, available at Penetanguishene.
So the vast majority of our cases, if not well in excess of 95%, are assessed at the jail in perhaps a four-hour interview. That's a long way from where we were five years ago. The facilities are simply not there at present. I just wanted to clarify that. The ground we're gaining is sometimes compromised by the reality of what's available to us in the community.
On the whole, I think the assistance rendered to us as practitioners will move us forward significantly. In terms of providing the material to the court, what the court does with it is, of course, the court's call. The best we can do as crown attorneys--and as defence counsel, for that matter--is to assist the court as fully as possible.
:
Victims of serious violence, particularly sexual or child sexual in nature, carry that with them for the rest of their lives. They often end up hurting themselves or hurting others, or both. For many of them, particularly victims of child sexual abuse, it's a lifetime thing.
I can tell you that they also feel further victimization because of the justice system when they see it as not operating appropriately. I'll give you an example.
Gordon Stuckless was the offender in the case of Martin Kruze, the young man who committed suicide and in whose memory and honour the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness works. Two things happened there. One, the original judge gave a sentence of two years less a day. Four days later, Mr. Kruze jumped off the Bloor viaduct. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. The appeal court did change the sentence five years later, but that was too late for Martin.
Three and a half years into the five-year sentence, the many Maple Leaf Gardens survivors, dozens and dozens of them, found out that Gordon Stuckless was getting out at the end of two-thirds of his sentence. We attempted to intervene with the Correctional Service of Canada to convince the commissioner that there were several good reasons why they should gate Mr. Stuckless. In any event, they didn't, but they did put him on a shorter community corrections leash.
I will never forget the day when, in the tiny little CCAA office—it was one of my first contacts with the CCAA—all of these adult survivors of sexual abuse were in there wondering, trying to understand why Gordon Stuckless was out after serving three and a half years of his sentence. It was a continuing victimization. Many of these men will go on to commit suicide or hurt other people--
:
I'd simply like us to agree on certain things beforehand.
When the motion was drafted as part of the negotiations with our respective leaders, even though it wasn't specified in the text of the motion, I had understood that there was a gentlemen's agreement of sorts whereby the committee would devote 16 hours to hearing from witnesses before moving on to the clause-by-clause study stage. Of course, that's not counting organization meetings at which technical matters are discussed.
I don't wish to harp on procedure, but as I see it, if I discount the organization meeting and tally the hours that we will be devoting to witnesses when we return, that is the three two-hour meetings planned, that gives us a total of 11 hours devoted to witnesses.
As I see it, we should hear from a minimum of four, not three, witnesses per meeting. On occasion, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has even managed to squeeze in five witnesses. I must admit that it does seem we would be moving fairly quickly if we vote on a bill after devoting only 11 hours to testimony from witnesses. First, let's try to see what kind of information we need.
I would ask the committee to invite four witnesses to testify at each meeting. That's not so unusual. I will check with my leader and ask my Liberal colleagues and Mr. Comartin to do likewise, but it was my understanding that we had an agreement, not officially stated in the motion, to hear from witnesses for a total of 16 hours before proceeding to the clause-by-clause study stage.