People take part in a vigil at the Women's Monument in Petawawa, Ont., in June, 2022. Bill C-16, tabled by the federal government on Tuesday, takes aim at violence against women and children.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The federal government has moved to toughen the Criminal Code for the second time this fall, in a new bill focused on violence against women and children, as well as court delays that have derailed many serious cases in recent years.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government described the changes in a statement as an overhaul of the Criminal Code, and “one of the most consequential reforms” in a generation.
Bill C-16, called the Protecting Victims Act, follows an array of moves in October to toughen bail and sentencing laws. The back-to-back bills to add stricter measures to the Criminal Code are a political shift by Mr. Carney’s Liberals, compared with a decade of governance under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
For example, the new bill, tabled Tuesday, reinstitutes more than a dozen mandatory minimum sentences that had been ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Three years ago, Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals repealed 20 minimums.
The changes were welcomed by advocates, but some lawyers and other critics on Tuesday expressed a mixture of skepticism and opposition.
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Among the many proposed changes in Bill C-16 is a plan to categorize murder motivated by hate, including femicide, as first-degree – even if there was no planning and deliberation, as is otherwise required for a charge of first-degree murder. The bill would also prohibit the distribution of non-consensual sexual deepfakes, and increase penalties for distributing intimate images without consent.
Advocates for stronger rules on violence against women supported the government and cited data that indicate a woman is killed on average every second day in Canada, often by an intimate partner.
“This is a statistic that should shock the conscience of every Canadian,” Justice Minister Sean Fraser said at a news conference in Ottawa Tuesday.
Another key element of the new legislation is an effort to address long-standing delays in the justice system. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada created strict time limits for criminal trials known as Jordan deadlines. The Globe and Mail last week reported the deadlines derail about 10,000 criminal cases a year, about 4 per cent of the total across the country.
On Tuesday, Mr. Fraser said reducing the number of cases derailed by delays, especially in situations of sexual violence, is essential.
“It does not feel like justice to survivors of sexual violence when at the end of the process there is no conviction,” Mr. Fraser said.
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In the legislation, the federal Liberals have proposed creating a new part in the Criminal Code that details unreasonable delay.
The right for an accused to have their case heard within a reasonable time is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A decades-old Supreme Court precedent, the Rahey ruling from 1987, states that the only remedy for unreasonable delay is a stay of proceedings, which effectively ends a case.
The Liberals’ bill, however, tells judges that a court shall not order a stay because of an unreasonable delay unless they are satisfied that no other remedy is appropriate and just.
Other potential remedies were not named.
Many lawyers and groups reacted negatively to the plan. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association strongly opposes opening up other options beyond a stay to address unreasonable delays. The group called the potential of a stay “the strongest constraint requiring the justice system to run on time.”
Matthew Nathanson, a criminal defence lawyer in Vancouver, said the government’s idea would effectively “gut the constitutional right to a trial within a reasonable time.”
Other proposed changes aimed at reducing delays include guidance to the courts on complex cases, such as how to measure time elapsed during a prosecution against the Jordan deadlines. This is meant to address the sometimes lengthy processes in the early stages of some trials.
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There are also extensive changes, representing upward of 20 pages in the bill, to how evidence is handled in cases of sexual offences, addressing sections 276 and 278 of the Criminal Code. Sexual assaults have become an especially complicated area of law in recent years. More than 500 such cases across Canada were derailed by Jordan trial deadlines in 2023-24.
Adam Weisberg, president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association of Ontario, was not impressed by the proposals.
“All this bill will do is create lots of complications and lots more delay,” he said.
Cait Alexander, founder of the advocacy group End Violence Everywhere, called the legislation a foundation for change on violence against women, but incomplete. She said the success of the reforms would require widespread training throughout the justice system, from police to judges, to implement everything in day-to-day work.
Another major shift proposed by the Liberals is the restoration of mandatory minimum prison sentences that had been ruled unconstitutional by the courts. This includes a Supreme Court decision in late October that struck down a minimum punishment of one year in jail for possessing or accessing child pornography.
Ottawa will provide a small degree of judicial discretion in the revised minimums so that judges are not forced to levy them in all cases. This generally follows guidance to Parliament issued by the Supreme Court in previous rulings. The government said this discretion means the new minimums would be “strong, enforceable and constitutional.”
But there effectively would be an asterisk on discretion: If a judge chooses a sentence below the minimum, a jail term is still required. Lisa Kerr, an associate professor of law at Queen’s University, said discretion on minimums makes sense, but added: “This proposal doesn’t quite get there.”
Opposition reaction on Tuesday was muted. During Question Period in the House of Commons, the bill wasn’t raised in the Conservatives’ questions, which focused on issues such as a possible new oil pipeline and food prices.