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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government tabled a new bill on Tuesday that proposes restoring more than a dozen mandatory minimum prison sentences that have been ruled unconstitutional.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
The federal government has tabled its second bill this fall to toughen the Criminal Code, taking aim at violence against women and children and attempting to reduce how many serious cases are derailed each year by court delays.
Ottawa billed the changes as among the most consequential to the Criminal Code in a generation.
Bill C-16, called the Protecting Victims Act, directly responds to a range of trends in recent years, from concerns about violence against women to challenges in the courts such as delays and mandatory sentences that had been ruled unconstitutional.
Tuesday’s bill follows a raft of measures to toughen bail and sentencing laws tabled by the federal Liberals in October. The back-to-back bills to toughen the Criminal Code represent a distinct shift by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government compared with a decade of Liberal governance under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
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The changes proposed Tuesday include categorizing murder motivated by hate, including femicide, as first degree – even if there wasn’t planning and deliberation, as is required for a charge of first-degree murder. Another change is to prohibit the distribution of non-consensual sexual deepfakes and increase penalties for distributing intimate images without consent.
Ottawa also plans to restore more than a dozen mandatory minimum prison sentences that have been ruled unconstitutional. This includes a Supreme Court of Canada decision in late October that struck down a minimum punishment of one year in jail for possessing or accessing child porn.
The federal government will provide a small amount of judicial discretion in the revised minimums so that judges are not forced to levy them in all cases. This specifically follows guidance to Parliament issued by the Supreme Court in previous rulings. Ottawa said this discretion means the new minimums would be “strong, enforceable and constitutional.”
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The federal government is issuing new guidance to the courts on how to deal with delays. In 2016, the Supreme Court created strict limits for criminal trials known as Jordan deadlines. The deadlines derail about 10,000 criminal cases a year, about 4 per cent of the total across the country.
On Tuesday, Ottawa said it will require courts to consider other options rather than a stay of proceedings – which effectively ends a case – when a court finds that an accused person’s right to be tried within a reasonable time has been violated. Ottawa said this will “reduce the number of cases being thrown out due to court delays.”
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association on Tuesday morning said it strongly opposes the idea of opening up other options beyond a stay to address unreasonable delays, calling a potential stay “the strongest constraint requiring the justice system to run on time.”
To further address the problem of cases thrown out because of delays, Ottawa is providing guidance to the courts about delays and potentially complex cases. The guidance will include factors, such as the sometimes-lengthy processes during the early stages of a trial.
Among the many other changes in Bill C-16, the legislation seeks to amend the Criminal Code to deal with challenges with evidence in cases of sexual offences. Ottawa called it a move to clarify and streamline the procedures. Cases of sexual assaults are particularly vulnerable to being derailed by the Jordan deadlines, because of an increasing complexity of evidence in recent years.
