CONTENTS
Tuesday 15 June 1993
Victims of crime
Irvin Waller
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
*Chair / Président: Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
*Akande, Zanana L. (St Andrew-St Patrick ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
*Duignan, Noel (Halton North/-Nord ND)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
*Mills, Gordon (Durham East/-Est ND)
*Murphy, Tim (St George-St David L)
Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC)
*Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND) for Ms Akande
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND) for Mr Malkowski
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:
Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC)
Clerk / Greffière: Freedman, Lisa
Staff / Personnel: McNaught, Andrew, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1539 in committee room 2.
Consideration of the designated matter pursuant to standing order 125, relating to victims of crime.
VICTIMS OF CRIME
The Chair (Mr Rosario Marchese): I call the meeting to order. The subcommittee needs to meet after this, so there's lots of work for us to do.
IRVIN WALLER
The Chair: Mr Waller, welcome to this committee. We have approximately one hour. You might decide to take 15 minutes, or longer if you'd like, for the presentation. We have an hour altogether, so in terms of your presentation you might want to speak for 15, 20 minutes or half an hour, if you like.
Mr Irvin Waller: I believe you've all received a copy of a series of graphics which I'm going to use to guide me through what I have to say. I wanted just to very briefly introduce myself. I'm a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. I'm the vice- president of the World Society of Victimology and was very actively involved in helping the United Nations General Assembly adopt the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, and I'm also involved in trying to help those be implemented in a number of countries across the world. I've most recently been appointed to the United Nations Advisory Committee to the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, and this is partly for my work in the area of victims but more specifically for my work in relation to the reduction of victimization. I'm involved with a number of countries and I would like to be involved with this jurisdiction in effective ways of reducing victimization.
I thought I would start with just a couple of introductory comments. One, you see a cartoon that appeared nearly 12 years ago now in the Ottawa Citizen, just before a major conference that took place in this province, the first major conference outside of the United States on victim assistance and victim rights. I think it says a lot about what the issue is in relation to victims.
The last 30 years have seen really significant changes in protecting the rights of accused persons and convicted persons, and that progress, I think, is important and one that this country and this jurisdiction can be proud of.
However, those improvements have left the victim of crime a long way behind. When victims of crime calls for help they do not get the minimal sort of help that they should be getting, and I'm going to be arguing that this jurisdiction is well below international standards in terms of the ways that it should be responding to victims of crime. That doesn't mean to say that there aren't some wonderful things going on in this province, but they're not happening everywhere and they're not happening in a very consistent way.
The second introductory comment I wanted to make was just to remind you that we are all citizens in a country that allowed the Kitty Reynolds case to take place. Kitty Reynolds was a native woman who was raped and battered in Ikaluit. Some three to four months later, she was arrested by the RCMP. She spent one week in various jails and prisons across Canada, including a prison in this province, and was then driven from the local jail to the courthouse in the same paddy wagon as the person who raped and battered her and who had previously confessed to the police that he had done this.
While the investigation into this by the RCMP Public Complaints Commission clearly states that this is totally intolerable in a democratic society such as our own, it is my view that it could happen just as easily tomorrow to any woman, native or not native, or for that matter any man or child in this province, because there is not the legislation, there are not the programs in place, that would show basic respect for the needs and individual rights of victims.
If you turn to the second page, what I'm going to be arguing is that Ontario should have, urgently, a victim justice act with principles in it, principles very similar to those that are before this committee. However, I would add that it needs a board to ensure that those principles are implemented, and it needs some sort of complaint procedure, possibly similar to that in the Ontario Police Services Act, and it needs funding. I do not think that the issue of providing services and rights to victims is one of whether you have a bill of rights or not; it's a question of whether you put in place the implementation mechanisms to ensure it happens, and I think any major jurisdiction in North America today already has such a bill of rights or set of principles or statement of principles.
For me, it's frustrating that Alberta and Ontario remain the only two jurisdictions that have not chosen to do this, and I think this is very much reflected in the way victims are dealt with in this province.
I'm secondly going to conclude that while Ontario has a model piece of legislation on policing, the Ontario Police Services Act, which under principle 4 talks about respect for victims of crime, that this act in relation to victims of crime has basically not been implemented, and this is primarily because the guidelines have not been developed and training has not been put in place.
I'm thirdly going to argue briefly that the sorts of principles in the Ontario Police Services Act should be put in place for the whole administration of justice and that basically in the same way that police officers are required to treat victims with respect, so judges, prosecutors, lawyers, people working in the corrections system should be required to do the
same thing.
I'm fourthly going to briefly argue, because I realize this is not the time and place, that what this province needs is a high priority to establish the sort of crime prevention mechanisms that exist in every major industrialized jurisdiction except the United States and that ultimately the number one right of victims is not to be victimized and to have sensible policies to prevent that victimization.
On my third slide I'm obviously going to try and improve respect for victims. I'm going to talk about bringing Ontario standards up to the other standards in Canada and to generally recognized international standards, and I'm going to do this without threatening other basic interests like costs or people working in the system.
In 1985 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a declaration on justice for victims of crime and abuse of power. What's significant about this declaration is that it says that victims suffer. This may sound very obvious to all of you sitting here today, but if you look at the way criminal codes and criminal procedures have been written, they do not recognize that victims suffer. Victims are basically witnesses in that process, a process where in this province it's the crown attorney, not the plaintiff or complainant's attorney, who represents the so-called interests of the victims; it's the crown who's represented. So this is quite a major statement to say that victims suffer.
It goes on to make four points: one, that victims need to have access to information, a possibility to have input and a possibility to participate in the process. It talks about restitution being a significant measure to be used from the offender to the victim. Where the offender can't pay the restitution, the state has some minimal role. It talks about assistance and support that might come from health and social services, that might come from the police, that might come from other citizens. It also talks about abuse of power, and if there is some interest in talking about jurisdictions beyond Ontario, for instance the establishment of the international court in relation to the Bosnia situation, I would be happy to talk about that in relation to questions because very much the same issues arise in relation to that.
My next slide, I don't propose to dwell on the numbers, but I think it is important to see that a lot of people are affected in this province by crime, some deaths, some aggravated sexual assaults, more commonly thefts and break-ins, and these figures are obviously approximate figures, just to give you a general idea of the issue.
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In terms of impact on the victim, I think the issue of financial loss is obvious to most people. These are not negligible amounts of money. The average break-in in Ontario will result in a $1,000 loss. I think a $1,000 loss for most people in this province is a significant amount of money. Roughly half of that money will be insured, so a $500 net loss is, I think, for most people a significant amount.
Physical injury is fortunately relatively rare, but it's important when it occurs.
Probably the most important part of crime is the emotional trauma, now recognized by doctors. Its technical name is post-traumatic stress disorder. A fairly significant and long-term consequence, it results in people not only having difficulty in their family relationships but missing time off work, being less effective in a competitive society. I could go on.
Let me just mention the exclusion from the process, because that is one of the most important parts. Basically, a typical criminal investigation and trial in this province makes the victim feel totally excluded from the investigation, powerless in relation to prosecution and sentence. First of all, the victim is made powerless by some random offender. Then the state comes in, supposedly to protect them and to provide justice, and to some extent does the same thing, in a cumbersome, slow and painful process that could easily be changed.
If we look at what the UN declaration has basically advocated in terms of community victim assistance, a country such as England is now totally covered. Every community has a victim support scheme. The coordinator of these schemes will be paid out of money coming from the central government. Many of the people will be volunteers. The probation service will be a participant. The police will be a participant. Britain is probably the furthest advanced, but many other jurisdictions have similar programs. I don't know what proportion of Ontario is covered by victim assistance, but if it were 5% of the population of the province I would be very surprised.
Sexual assault crisis centres: Ontario is doing a bit better on sexual assault crisis centres comparatively recently -- some good news.
Transition houses for battered wives: Ontario is also doing better recently on transition houses for battered wives.
Police and social agencies, which are probably one of the best responses that you can make to any form of family violence -- child abuse, wife battering, elder abuse -- still remain a rarity, although research shows that these are very effective, London, Ontario, of course, being the originator in Canada of those sorts of programs, a cost-effective and a very good way of getting victims referred to the right agencies and dealing with the underlying problems, but no government in Ontario has chosen to ensure that those are spread across the province.
The next slide just talks to the role of the police. In a jurisdiction that probably has, at least according to its citizens, the best police anywhere in the world, I think it's disappointing to see that they have not been encouraged to make a greater commitment to victims.
They are the first agency contacted by victims, although many victims do not contact the police because they're not well treated by the police. Many do. They're the first agency contacted, and their sensitivity to trauma, the information they give, their ability to refer the victim to the appropriate agency, through the 911 system or through a central system, their ability to return property, I think are obvious things to the ordinary citizen.
However, if one looks at what is actually going on, these are still comparatively rare. Fortunately, Peel region has Chief Lunney, whose pioneering work in Edmonton has brought him international prizes. There are other examples of programs for victims, but basically the ideals of the Ontario Police Services Act in relation to victims are not there in terms of the concrete ways, the practical ways that victims are dealt with by the police. This does not mean to say that police abuse victims. It does mean to say that they could be doing a lot more: sensitivity, information, thorough property return, crime prevention, crisis protection, and they can do it easily within their own budgets. Not only can they do it within their own budgets, but it's a win-win situation. In cases where they're wanting more resources, more information, what better than to have the victim on your side?
I think the Edmonton police department in the late 1970s and early 1980s demonstrated that if you treat victims with simple respect and you go through the simple information, referral to agencies, property return schemes, then the police agency benefits and ultimately the community benefits. Ontario, I think, has an enormous amount of ground to make up in that area.
I've included the main principles from the Ontario Police Services Act, and if you look at principle 4, it talks about respect for victims of crime. The full phrase actually refers to sensitivity as well. So you already have legislation that supposedly should help get the respect for victims and understanding of their needs. Unfortunately, the lack of training, the lack of guidelines, the lack, in my view, of political leadership to say that this is a priority is one of the reasons why this is not universal across the province. Again, I am aware that there are some police departments that are doing these things and are doing them very well.
I've also included for you the guidelines of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. I'd like to draw your attention to the little subclause under the title, "to establish procedures and train personnel to implement the incontrovertible rights of all crime victims." In my view, you need legislation that sets out the principles, but you also need ways to ensure that these principles are followed through in reality, and this is exactly what the chiefs of police said in 1983.
Most Ontario chiefs of police, certainly of the bigger police departments, are members of this association, so they have their own guidelines. This of course was developed at the time of the Presidential Commission on Victims of Crime in the United States, a fairly landmark report that was produced at the same time as a deputy minister from this province led a federal-provincial task force on victims in this country.
I'm going to go through the others relatively quickly, because I assume these things will come back in questions. I've simply listed some of the reparationist use. It's not just court-ordered restitution. This province, for instance, has delayed the implementation of the C-89 sections that relate to restitution, and in my view that's one of the most obvious things in the sentencing process that has to be encouraged.
I've included on the fourth line a reparation to community. One of the obvious ways of funding programs for victims is to have the big-time offenders, involved in economic crime, organized crime, drug crime, ensure that some of their money is paid, which can help fund services for victims and prevention. Most recently, the federal government, in its proceeds-of-crime legislation, tried to have all this money go back to reduce the deficit. Your Attorney General, I understand, or our Attorney General, fought to have that kept open, so I hope some of the proceeds of crime might be used in relation to victims as well.
I would be happy to respond to questions on compensation. I just merely want to say that I tell my students in Ottawa-Hull, "If you're going to get raped, make sure you go to Quebec, because you'll get three times as much money than if you stayed in Ontario." The compensation levels in Ontario are very low. The efforts to inform victims about the availability are very low, and for a province that is clearly substantially better off, even in this present crisis, than Quebec, I think it's very disappointing that more effort has not been made to bring those amounts in line with Quebec.
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In relation to the process, I am a strong believer that it must involve not only information but it must involve some effort to look after the safety concerns of victims, the reparation concerns of victims. I think this is the main purpose of the victim impact statement. Again, while it's permissive in the federal Criminal Code, this province does not have a policy on victim impact statements -- this policy is not universally applied across the province. It doesn't mean to say that there aren't some people who use victim impact statements; there are, but it's not used universally.
Your victim witness programs exist in a few communities, very lucky communities -- I come from one of them -- but these are not universally available.
On participation in the process, I would like to at least propose to you that consideration should be being given to a civil party system in this province. You control both the civil and the criminal and the family laws, administration of justice. A country such as France has victims represented in the criminal process by lawyers, legally aided if necessary. This is very important to sexual assault victims, to battered wives. It's also important to families of murder victims and, ultimately, to victims of serious property offenders. This has worked in France for some 20 or 30 years. They have problems of backlogs. It has nothing to do with the victim part, but it's a very good way of saving court time. I believe it is an interest of the Premier of this province to save money. Instead of having a criminal and a civil court and a family court all operating differently, you effectively bring them together, wherever you can, in one place.
I've listed, in the next slide, gaps between needs and services. In the interests of time, as I've made most of these points, I'm going to move forward.
The Manitoba act in 1986 was of course introduced by a New Democrat government. In fact, I would like to add that I've worked with conservative, middle and sociodemocrat governments in all sorts of different parts of the world. I don't see this as particularly a political issue, but it is particularly frustrating now that there is a neo-democrat, sociodemocrat government in this province, and the other provinces with such governments have legislation.
In most countries that have a sociodemocrat government, victims of crime have been a major priority in terms of getting services and getting information. They don't always agree with an active role for the victim in the court process.
I've already made the point that Ontario and Alberta are the only two jurisdictions in this country that don't have any basic victim justice legislation. I could, of course, if you wanted, tell you about the United States. Basically, some 48 states have victim rights legislation. There is a federal act that, as a result of Milliken and other affairs, has a lot of money to encourage states to improve what they're doing. But basically the North American approach has been a bill of rights with some sort of committee to implement it using a fine surcharge.
So I've listed some highlights of what a model act might look like, and I think this is just a summary. You need some principles like the excellent principles that are here. I might change one or two minor details in them, but they are certainly a very impressive set of principles, I think better than exist in other provinces' legislation. I would want to see these tied into the Ontario Police Services Act, because it already talks about this.
I'd like to see a crime victims board, whether you take the present Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and broaden it into a crime victims board or whether you set up a crime prevention board and give it victim stuff. There are a number of different models, but I've listed here membership and functions that you'll see in detail that actually come from the New Zealand legislation.
I would have a complaint procedure like in the Ontario Police Services Act so that a victim who doesn't feel he or she was treated with respect can complain to this board and there can be an investigation and there can be some efforts made to remedy it.
Funding: You can go to the fine surtax. This province, I think, is the only province in Canada where you've had judges actually deciding not to order the fine surtax. I find it quite horrifying that you have a group of judges who can say that they're above the law, but still I understand their views that until the province sets up some sensible way of using this money, there is no point in ordering it. I think this is quite serious cause to encourage the efforts to improve the situation of victims.
General revenue may be harder to do in this province these days, and then you've got various forms of drug profits or the proposals that are included in the bill that's in front of us where people write books or that sort of thing.
I've set out some principles in point 4. I've really covered these points and I think what I'd like to do is jump to the last page and just summarize.
I think one of the best ways to meet the needs of victims of crime in this province is to have a victim justice act, that if this act contained a set of principles like those before you or similar, or like those that were agreed by this province when it had a Liberal government, the federal-provincial-territorial statement of principles in March 1988, or like the set of principles that were proposed by the Conservative government when it was in place, any of those principles, and they all really amount to the same thing, those should be put in legislation with a board -- there are a number of ways of arriving at that board, a crime victims board -- a complaint procedure and funding, this would go a long way to bring this province closer to Canadian standards, the standards set by other provinces and to the standards set internationally.
I was looking for some examples of what had happened as a result of other legislation in other provinces. I thought I would just show you the difference between your province, with its limited number of experimental projects that could probably be put on one of my graphics, and British Columbia. This is British Columbia. British Columbia, by the way, has its own 800 number. My advice to any victim in this province who wants help is to call an 800 number that goes into the US that's linked to the National Organization of Victim Assistance. They will get support, they will get direction on how to claim criminal injuries compensation, they will get some direction on how to get in touch with such as crisis centres, domestic violence programs and all those things. This province does not have that and I think it's long overdue.
The three other things, with the Ontario Police Services Act, it's obvious that there has to be guidelines and training. I would like to see those same guidelines and training relating to judges. It's kind of obvious, I think, to have consistency between the progress that has been made in the policing area and what goes on in the courts, and obviously I agree with the present Attorney General that the number one priority for victims is to reduce victimization.
Several other provinces -- Quebec is the most notable -- have been working very hard on a crime prevention act. The minister of public safety and security of Quebec will be announcing some time in the next two weeks the release of their report, and I think that will be a model that this province will want to look at. The Horner report at the federal level has already made recommendations. So I hope this province will be able to move fast to make a difference to crime levels through prevention.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Waller. We have about half an hour and we'll start with the government members. Mr Frankford.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): I'm not regularly a member of this committee, but I'm a member of the standing committee on government agencies and in it we have been looking at police services boards and we have discussed the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board a little.
With police boards, the question of crime statistics has come up. It often starts with race and crime, but then I think it gets more sophisticated with the realization that other demographic data are as valuable or probably more valuable. The other day we interviewed a recent appointee to the Metro police board. I asked him what he thought about crime statistics and he said that he thought we should be collecting victim crime statistics, which I had never thought about before, but I think on reflection makes a lot of sense. Could you give your views and also just give some indication of what is available currently?
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Mr Waller: Yes, I think it would be a good idea for this province to undertake, on a regular basis, a crime victimization survey. This survey would not only give supplementary statistics to police statistics on the amount of crime; it would show some of the reasons for which victims are not reporting crime to the police. It would also show something about victims' experiences with the police and would give very useful data for crime prevention.
Canada, and therefore Ontario, is again one of the few major industrialized countries not to undertake victimization surveys on a regular basis. For instance, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands and Britain do these on a regular basis. A committee like yours, for Britain, for instance, would be able to have a little coloured, very readable graphics document that would show you the crime picture, the reasons why people aren't reporting, their views of the police and some of the characteristics of why particular people are victimized. I would be happy to make a copy available to this committee for you to see.
I definitely think this province should either undertake its own survey or ensure that Statistics Canada undertake such a survey. I would want to see the regular survey supplemented by a survey in relation to victimization of women. Statistics Canada is doing a national survey in relation to criminal victimization of women and I would like to see that done on a more regular basis.
I would also like to see these done in major cities like Metro Toronto or the Ottawa-Carleton region. These are well established, well known, well used. I've just come back from a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States. These are now being used in those states. I'm sorry to be so critical of Ontario, but Ontario is really a long way behind the rest of the world in responding to the problems of crime in a reasoned and effective way, and that includes victims. I feel very strongly about the urgency to get a government which will act and do something about this.
This particular sort of survey is an important prelude to avoiding having places like Toronto or Ottawa-Carleton become the next Chicago or Philadelphia. I think it has to be thought of in those terms. These are tools used by other national governments and other city governments as one of the main ways of trying to prevent violence and ensure that the victims of violence are dealt with in an effective way.
The Chair: Mr Frankford, we're going to move on. There are two other speakers.
Mr David Winninger (London South): I'd like to thank you, Professor Waller, for making a number of very constructive suggestions today.
As the parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General, I have a considerable interest in improving the system as well, of compensation and services to victims of crime. I don't mean to defend the status quo. Certainly, officials from the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Attorney General herself have suggested that there's a lot of work to be done, particularly in the areas of education and community development, and that a bill of rights per se would be meaningless unless we provide the programs and the services and the resources required to give real meaning to such a bill.
I would also ask you to comment perhaps with regard to your statistics on compensation for victims of crime with regard to Ontario, because I understand that in fact Ontario is the fourth highest of the 10 provinces in terms of average award per victim, and that it is second only to British Columbia and Quebec with respect to the maximum payable.
The third comment I would make is that notwithstanding that Quebec has the highest average award for compensation to victims, it also has, as I understand it, the narrowest qualifying criteria for these awards. I wonder whether it's not possible to have a much higher average award if you only award that compensation infrequently.
Mr Waller: First of all, Ontario has done a lot in the last certainly three or four years to improve the amount of compensation paid, so it is making progress. The reason it's the fourth is that the top three all tie the compensation amounts to the worker compensation amounts. Whatever is paid for the loss of a finger in a working accident is what would be paid for a loss of a finger in relation to crime. So the principles for British Columbia, Quebec and Manitoba, which I assume is the third power, are different from Ontario's.
My analysis of the statistics, which are no longer made public so I don't have the most recent figures comparatively, is that the numbers of people to whom awards are made in Quebec and Ontario are roughly the same. The tight qualifying amounts I don't think make that much difference.
There are differences, of course, in the procedures, and I'm not necessarily arguing that it's better to use the Quebec procedure that doesn't allow a hearing, for instance. The Ontario one does. I would, however, add that I would expect Quebec to make a number of significant improvements. I'm not sure if they've introduced the bill yet, but there are plans to introduce a bill to make improvements.
Mr Winninger: There are in fact areas of compensation covered in Ontario that are not awarded in Quebec.
Mr Waller: Okay, and I think vice versa. I think what's important about Quebec, other than the amounts, is that it's also done a fair bit of research, and I mean independent research. In Quebec there's a group called Plaidoyers-victimes, which means roughly "victim defenders," which is a round table of all the major groups that work with victims: prosecutors, police, sex assault crisis centres, domestic violence groups, criminologists; all of those. It's a very exciting group. They were asked to do a review of the compensation program, which they did, a sort of careful research review looking at a bunch of cases, talking to victims. They made a series of recommendations and I understand that there are going to be some changes made.
I think Ontario should be doing similar sorts of research. I think Ontario should be encouraging similar sorts of groups. I don't mean to say that there's nothing good with the compensation program in Ontario. It was one of the earlier programs. There are many things that are good about it. But I think one has to set up a process whereby there's regular review and reform going on.
As a citizen of Ontario, I'm not happy with the fourth highest, particularly when we look at how far behind we are to other provinces like British Columbia or Quebec. The fact that we're better than Prince Edward Island doesn't make me feel that good.
Mr Winninger: I have a colleague who's going to ask a question. Maybe afterwards we can compare charts, because I have a chart that shows what Ontario has, and outlines in other provincial bills of rights, and it's very substantial indeed.
Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Do you want to share that with the rest of the committee?
The Chair: Approach me.
Mr Jackson: It was a request through the Chair. I apologize.
The Chair: Sure.
Mr Jackson: Will he share that with the rest of the committee?
Mr Winninger: I think I probably can, yes.
Mr Jackson: It would be helpful.
The Chair: Okay, we'll do that. Ms Harrington.
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Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I will be brief. In a conversation with one of my constituents just over a week ago, this woman made the comment that there's no justice for women. You also spoke about reducing victimization as one of our primary aims. Certainly, we agree.
What I want to ask you as an expert witness is that to me, reducing victimization entails changing some very basic attitudes in society and also probably gets into the area of increasing the economic power of women and the whole question of equity in society.
The second question I wanted to hear your comment on is, why is Ontario behind? Is it because for decades we've been thinking of ourselves as Ontario the good? Why are we behind?
Mr Waller: I'll answer the second question first. I think one of the reasons is that you have an Attorney General's department which brings together a traditional prosecuting philosophy and that's been very dominant right the way up to the deputy minister. That's why it's been so difficult to bring about change.
That is not true at the present time, so I'm hoping that we could see some changes. You see this in other countries. When you get people in a traditional -- who've been through law schools where victims were never talked about, where the only thing that counted was the rights of accused persons and convicted persons, which is after all what's reflected in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, almost exclusively. That's what they go for. Victims get in the way of that philosophy. They don't read the right to life, liberty and security of the person, or sections 15 or 24 as things that you have to worry about in a court of law.
As to your first question on the issues of how you go about prevention, I would certainly agree that both the points you made are important parts of that. I am a great advocate of what the Swedish are doing, who have made efforts along the sort of lines you talked about in terms of general policy. They have a permanent crime prevention council whose job it is to bring the research together, to evaluate programs, to make proposals to the different government ministries about what should be done.
I think in answer to both of your questions that what is needed in this province is some agency that will bring together the research, that will bring together the people who can make this happen, be they mayors of cities, be they women's groups, be they native groups, or be they police groups so that they have some focus.
The Ontario Police Services Act was a step in that direction, but it has to be implemented and the municipal police services board has to be given the power so that it can make sure that safety and security of persons and property is indeed a priority, and in relation to these issues, that the victim issue is a priority.
I could give a much longer answer to your question on prevention. I would be happy to share with you a lot of what's going on in other jurisdictions, including Quebec, on the sorts of issues you raised.
The Chair: Perhaps some of the members might want to ask that question again.
Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): One of the things you said in answer to one of the previous questions was that there were some statistics that were no longer made public. I'm wondering which ones you were referring to and who was no longer making them public?
Mr Waller: Okay. Statistics Canada used to produce a report on criminal injuries compensation in Canada. I think the last report was published in 1986. This was a very extensive report showing the policies in all the different jurisdictions and comparing the amounts paid and the numbers. You could use the crime data to have a look at whether there was more crime in the provinces, whether there were more people paid compensation and all that sort of thing.
I assume that the federal government, when it started withdrawing from its supplementary funding to criminal injuries compensation, decided it could no longer afford that report. You can get annual reports produced by the different provinces. The Ontario one is produced and you can get the Quebec one. However, it's quite difficult to make really useful comparisons because it's not just what's in the legislation; it's the way it's used.
Mr Murphy: In fact, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in Ontario didn't publish an annual report for three years and finally put one out within the last week or 10 days.
Mr Jackson: In the course of these hearings.
Mr Murphy: In the course of these hearings, so I understand your frustration. About 10 years ago I wrote a paper on criminal justice statistics and the absence of them in informing policy decisions.
I wanted to ask you a question about the victim justice act. During the course of these hearings, one of the things we've heard quite clearly, I think, is that a bill of rights is laudatory, but unless there's some kind of enforcement mechanism, some kind of real application of those principles, it may be worse than nothing because it raises expectations without delivering substantive services.
So I wanted to talk to you, because you've got a complaint procedure and a board and some kind of mechanism for enforcement, and I'm wondering how you viewed that complaint procedure working and against whom it would be made and how any decision of the board in response to a complaint would be carried out in police, judges, crown attorneys, for example.
Mr Waller: Okay, my model of a victim justice act would be a combination of the original Manitoba act and the New Zealand legislation. I would have a board, and I think on about the third last page, I've got a thing called a crime victims commission, with membership from police, judges, social services, women, native groups etc, and a series of functions. I would, within the legislation, include a complaint procedure somewhat similar to the Ontario Police Services Act.
In addition to putting it in the legislation, I would make sure that the people who are going to hear the complaints have some basic training and sensitization so that when a victim calls up and says, "I was a victim of sexual assault and I asked for a female police officer and the person said: `Well, we don't believe in that. I'm here. I'm just as good. I've been through this training,"' when she makes that complaint the people receiving it would have some idea of what's going to go on.
I'm not sure. The complaint procedure, in relation to police, might stay where it is, but then you've got to make sure that the people in that complaint system know about it. They don't. They have no idea that the Ontario Police Services Act has changed the previous act. So they have to know about it, and I would limit the complaint procedure here to those cases not covered under policing. In relation to courts, in relation to other agencies that are funded by the Ontario government, that would provide help.
Mr Murphy: One of the other things you made reference to is that Ontario and Alberta are the only two provinces that haven't put the 1988 statement into some kind of legal framework. I've looked through here and I don't see a summary -- it's perhaps because I'm just missing it -- of what that statement was. Is it in here? Am I missing it?
Mr Waller: I have copies with me. There are 10 of them, so I don't propose to read it to you. But they cover the same sort of ground as the bill that this committee's looking at. In my view, they don't do it quite as well. They're a bit vague and I think there is a need to make them more specific. They're very similar to the Quebec statement. Manitoba's were more specific than this.
This is all that I assume the federal government could get agreement from all the provinces on at one time. I think you can do better than this by taking the same principles and just making them a bit more specific.
Mr Murphy: If you could make one copy available, through you, Chair, that would be much appreciated.
You also made reference to -- I believe you called it a civil party system, which is sort of one system that applies to family, civil and criminal. One of the debates, I guess, we've had in this committee is the role of counsel for victims and the role particularly that they would play in a criminal justice setting and if you were to assume the current adversarial system of criminal justice. How far would a counsel to a victim go? Would you see them cross-examining the accused? Where does the role stop, if it does?
Mr Waller: I'd like to make a distinction between what I think you could do tomorrow and what you could do five years from now. I think you could put in place a victim justice act with a series of principles, with a board, making sure that there's research, all those sorts of things, immediately. I think all the experience is there, all the knowledge is there.
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In relation to what I said about the civil party system, I think there's a need for some limited experimentation, just as there was limited experimentation relating to unified family courts. I think one would want to find a particular court that is interested in this. There are quite a number of judges, by the way, who are interested in this in this province. I can see one of those judges or a series of judges who would be prepared to experiment with it. I call it the civil party system just because I'm basing it on what the French do. There are various different forms of this in other jurisdictions across the world.
Basically what it would do -- probably an initial experiment -- is start with the more serious cases, which would include murder, various sorts of sexual assault, family violence, robberies, some sorts of break-ins where there's likely to be a severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and would make some sort of duty counsel, victim counsel, available to them who would inform them of the process and who would ensure that their points of view were input into the process, so that it would go beyond the notion of a victim impact statement. Their job would be to ensure that the victims' interests, for victims' safety, for reparation, for privacy and for recognition of the harm done to them, were all respected in the courtroom. I would specify this in terms of the initial procedures.
Obviously, it has to be done consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I'm sure there would be some lawyers who would test it, but I think there is a way of doing it within the right to life, liberty and security of the person in section 15 so that you could actually make it happen. It would have to be experimented with by the province rather than the federal government, because the province has the jurisdiction over all these issues.
I don't know whether I would put the family stuff in there immediately. I would go for the civil and criminal immediately and maybe look at the possibilities in relation to family issues. It's getting more complicated because of the high-profile concerns about wife-battering at the moment.
Mr Murphy: Having succeeded in the seat from the former Attorney General, who instituted some elements of court reform, I just think of the hornets' nest some of that might cause. In any event, I would like to talk about it a lot more but I know I'm out of time. We only have a couple of minutes.
The Chair: Good. We're getting that photocopied before you leave.
Mr Jackson: Professor Waller, at the outset let me say that from the very first time I read of your work, both domestically and abroad, I found it to be perhaps the most concise and clear presentation of a combination of issues which have troubled jurisdictions all over the world and certainly troubled us here in Ontario.
Also, on a personal note, I have been trying to get you before some committee of this Legislature for the last four years, so today is a special day for me. I know I share the sentiments of all the committee that we're very, very pleased that you are here. Your testimony very clearly distinguishes you among all the deputants for the kind of information you bring and the expertise you bring. So, on a personal note, I want to thank you.
The second point I wanted to clear up is, although you've made three references in your presentation to what a fine bill Bill 19 is that I've tabled, I want to assure you that I would not have passed as one of your students because of the extensive plagiarism that I did on the many bills that you've impacted globally.
If the truth be known, this is simply a compilation of much of your life's work, and also with consultation from the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, their legal counsel, the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres and Metrac, which is the Metro Action Committee on Public Violence Against Women and Children. These individuals have participated in the development of this bill. It's really not quite my bill, since I'm not a lawyer, just someone who's deeply concerned about these issues.
Having said that, I'd like to start with the point that Mr Murphy was on, and the bill does -- you've been sent the most recent copy -- address a few of the issues on the point about a civil party system. There are currently some impediments. There are opportunities for judges to allow victims to participate more directly, to seek out restitution without actually doing a parallel civil suit.
I'm just going to identify one. For example, there are impediments by the imposition of security. A judge may also not disallow interest. He or she, the judge, has considerable power in terms of allowing victims to participate in the process. The bill that I've proposed offers some modest reforms into our system, not a full-blown civil party system, which clearly allows the three parties to be present at the one time.
Could you comment on some of those, instead of envisaging a larger reform system that involves all the participants, including the victim, a few key kinds of reforms that could occur under the current power of the Attorney General in order to allow victims to have a greater impact in a court situation and to have their case heard, to not frustrate them in their process of getting compensation and so on. Are there any examples that you might cite, any specific recommendations?
Mr Waller: I've already mentioned that the restitution sections that were proposed under C-89 -- I'm not sure if --
Mr Jackson: Can you expand on that because I think the committee has not received input on that, so that if you could take a moment and expand on that, that would be helpful for us.
Mr Waller: In 1989 the Parliament of Canada adopted a series of amendments to the Criminal Code that are usually referred to as C-89. These were the federal government's efforts to implement the federal-provincial task force on victims of crime, their recommendations, and they were done after consultation with the provinces and I assume therefore agreement as to what should be done. A major section, probably more than half the length of those amendments, was concerned with the establishment of restitution as a separate sentencing alternative.
Although it was adopted by the Parliament of Canada, it has never been brought into effect and I've never seen a clear statement about that, but I'm sure that if the government of Ontario had wanted it to be brought into effect that it could have been.
Mr Jackson: Can I interrupt you there? Are you saying that some provinces have and some haven't or are you saying that no province has?
Mr Waller: I don't know the details of negotiations between the federal government and the provinces, but I'm sure that if Ontario had wanted these sections in, they would have been brought in in some form. I'm not sure if there's still a bill in front of the federal Parliament, but there have been efforts to revise those sections.
But my position is that it would be important to amend the Criminal Code to make it mandatory for a judge to consider making a restitution order when a person's convicted, and you would do this after assessing both the damages to the victim and the ability of the offender to pay and you would effectively do it in the same way as you would in a civil procedure. The provinces can do that and this province has been the major block to that happening because it has gone to the Supreme Court and said that the federal government can't legislate.
There's a problem with the federal and provincial governments getting together around this. Restitution would be one. In order to assess restitution you have to give the victim some opportunity to talk and some possibility to cross-examine the victim in the court. In complicated cases, you can still go to the civil court, but most of these cases are not complicated.
Mr Jackson: And this would prevent much pressure on the civil system, which was your point earlier.
Mr Waller: Yes.
Mr Jackson: Thus, by allowing it to occur at that end, some victims might feel that having had restitution and having had their opportunity to state their case without being themselves put on trial was sufficient and would not require overburdening, or the potential for overburdening, our civil court system.
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Mr Waller: Correct, but it's also a simple way of recognizing the victim's needs. It also provides an alternative to prison. France, for instance, which uses restitution a lot, both informally and formally, is not as heavy a user of prisons --
Mr Jackson: They have a civil code system and we don't.
Mr Waller: Well, this is what the lawyers argue about. I would not accept that the differences, in relation to this issue, are that fundamental.
There are also in C-89, amendments to the Criminal Code, the victim impact statement provisions which basically require the Attorney General of each province to set up a set of procedures. I'm not aware of this province having set up those procedures. It requires defining a form, saying who's going to prepare this form, whether it's the police or the prosecutor or victim support, and making it universal across the province.
Also, one of the reasons I like the principles of the Ontario Police Services Act is that if those were included in this bill or in a separate bill, then there would be some obligation on judges to respect victims of crime and understand their needs, that judges have a common law jurisdiction to allow a victim to talk in the court. However, common law jurisdiction means that if the judge says no, there's no appeal, and there are appeal court cases on this. That could be changed by the province saying, "We want to see this." A general phrase like this would allow a lot of room to manoeuvre for judges to interpret and weigh.
The victim witness programs: Ontario's had, however many there are, 10 or 12 victim witness programs spread across the province, for a very small fraction of the present expenditures on criminal justice in this province. These could be spread all the way across the province.
I would go back to the policing thing. Basically, it doesn't cost anything to use some of the police training time in the development of procedures for policing to ensure that police officers inform victims of what's going to happen and in simple terms inform them what's going to happen when the case comes to court. You can send this with the subpoena or you can do it in a human way through the police officer.
There are lots of procedures used in other parts of Canada. This province is not doing these things. All of those would lead to victims having a better understanding, a better expectation, having some better input and having some feeling that they participated at least to a limited extent in the process.
Mr Jackson: Victims also have contacted me and made appeal with respect to the Ontario Board of Parole. I wasn't aware until recently that only a handful of provinces have parallel parole boards to the federal parole board. This was a mystery to me: why we have one when most provinces don't. They're for two-year-less-a-day crimes, but there's an awful lot of sexual assault and violent crime involved.
My colleague in the governing party referenced a recent committee review of that. We were quite shocked to learn that there were limited, if any, victim services, but the parolees had an increased number of rights afforded them to have testimonies, videotape, the right to a lawyer, whereas victim impact statements in a case for parole could be disallowed by the board, and a whole series of things.
Can I ask you to respond to that briefly? We have not had much deputation at all on the parole board and its impact on victims. This is an area I was hoping that perhaps the committee could offer some recommendations on. I personally -- and I'll get my bias off the table -- don't see a need for it. If we can get rid of the Ontario parole board, we'd have a couple of million dollars to put into victim services.
There's also the provision of notice when someone is appealing for early release, notifying. I have a woman in my community whose rapist boyfriend was released and immediately left prison and came with a gun and confronted her at her employment. Had we notified the police or the victim, we might have avoided the hostage-taking and the drama that was life-threatening.
There's a series of recommendations you've seen, and we haven't responded to them in particular, within the Ontario Board of Parole. If you can take a moment to go over a couple of those recommendations, it would be helpful.
Mr Waller: There are four provinces that have parole boards, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, so the major provinces have parole boards. There's a federal law called C-36 that is probably the best piece of victim legislation in Canada, that does go most of the way to implement the UN declaration in relation to federal corrections and the federal parole board. It doesn't go the whole way, but it goes very closely to the whole way. So there is a piece of legislation that could be very easily applied at the provincial level.
I would just draw your attention to the guidelines being used by the British Columbia Board of Parole, where it has for some time tried to make restitution a condition or partial condition of parole. Basically, they're encouraging people to make sure that they have made restitution to the victim before they will consider their release. I think there are good models. My understanding is that the Ontario parole board has been quite interested in what I call victim-sensitive procedures used by other jurisdictions like North Carolina, South Carolina, British Columbia and the federal system. I think it can become a useful way of responding to victim needs.
In terms of the funding, I'm not sure we always have to choose to abolish parole boards as a way of funding victims. For me, the most obvious way to ensure that we have a rational criminal policy in Ontario or in Canada is to develop a rational criminal policy, and that would be like what we've done in the health area. Paying for prisons or paying for police -- these are scarce resources, so you set limits, just as you set limits on hospitals. You say: "Yes, we should be spending money on victims. Yes, we should be spending much more money in a much more concerted way on prevention. We're going to have to divide up the pie differently, so that means this level of prison use." Then you say to judges, like you say to doctors, "You work out which people have to be in there for the long periods of time and which people for shorter periods of time." That will give us a much safer and secure Ontario, to quote the Ontario Police Services Act. You do the same in relation to policing. A committee like this should be pushing that sort of approach, particularly given this Ontario government's concern about the deficit. This is such an obvious thing to do.
Criminal justice spending has just been going straight up without any obvious payoff in terms of limiting crime, without dealing with victims, without giving us the medium- and long-term prevention we need.
The Chair: Mr Jackson, we have gone beyond the time, but I realize there are more questions that need to be asked. Mr Winninger, was your question a very brief one?
Mr Winninger: It wasn't even a question. It was just a very short point in regard to Ontario introducing provisions which other provinces haven't. One example was restitution. You dealt with that earlier in your submission. I was just going to remind the committee that following the proclamation of section 15 of the Charter of Rights many challenges were based on the fact that certain remedies or sanctions were offered in one province but were not provided for in other provinces, so it helps to have a uniform approach to avoid charter challenges under section 15.
The Chair: Do you have a comment on that, Mr Waller, a comment on the comment?
Mr Waller: I don't think so.
The Chair: Okay. Professor Waller, thank you very much for your presentation. I think all of us have found it very instructive.
Unless there is anything that needs to be raised by any other member, we will adjourn and have the subcommittee convene for its continued work. Meeting adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1651.