Parliamentary Committee Notes: Summaries of Relevant Proposed Legislation
Private Member’s Bill C-320, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (disclosure of information to victims)
On March 8, 2023, Conservative Party of Canada Member of Parliament (MP), Colin Carrie (Oshawa), introduced Private Member’s Bill C-320 in the House of Commons. The objective of the Bill, according to MP Carrie, is “to better meet the needs of victims of crime by providing them timely and accurate information upon sentencing of an offender, thus avoiding the false comfort of misleading eligibility dates”.
Bill C-320 proposes amendments to the CCRA to provide victims of crime with an explanation of how an offender’s eligibility dates and review dates with respect to temporary absence, work and statutory release, or parole are calculated, including detailed updates each time these dates are recalculated. Specifically, the Bill proposes the following amendments to the CCRA:
- “section 26(1)(a)(iv) eligibility dates and review dates applicable to the offender under this Act in respect of temporary absence or parole, and an explanation of how those dates have been determined;
- section (1)(c)(i) the date, if any, on which the offender is to be released on temporary absence, work release, parole or statutory release, and an explanation of how that date has been determined;
- section 142(1)(a)(iv) eligibility dates and review dates applicable to the offender under this Part in respect to unescorted temporary absence or parole and an explanation of how those dates have been determined; and,
- section 142(1)(b)(iv) the date, if any, on which the offender is to be released on unescorted temporary absence, escorted temporary absence if the Board has approved the absence as required by subsection 746.1(2) of the Criminal Code, parole or statutory release, and an explanation of how that date has been determined.”
The issue of providing information to victims aimed at enhancing their understanding of how eligibility and review dates are determined has been raised in both the House of Commons (HOC) and the Senate. There have been a number of PMBs dealing with information provided to victims aimed at enhancing their understanding of sentence calculation and eligibility date determination.
The Government has reviewed the Bill carefully and determined that the proposed changes respond to an information need raised by victims to provide them with greater transparency. As such, the Government supported this Bill.
Status: On October 18, 2023, the Bill received its Second reading and was referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
PMB C-351, An Act to Amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (Maximum Security Offenders)
PMB C-351 was introduced in the House of Commons on September 18, 2023 by MP Bernard Généreux (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, CPC) and was added to the Order Of Precedence on September 20, 2023.
C-351 proposes amendments to the CCRA that would require that inmates who have been designated to be a Dangerous Offenders (DO), or convicted of more than one count of first degree murder, be assigned a classification of maximum security and confined in a maximum security penitentiary or area in a penitentiary by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) for the full duration of their period of incarceration.
Under the current framework, federal inmates are to be designated as maximum-, medium- or minimum-security, and are placed or transferred to a federal institution accordingly. In all cases, decisions are informed by a thorough assessment of an inmate’s case-specific factors and individual risk.
In contrast, C-351 proposes the creation of a new subsection (30 (1.1)) in the CCRA which stipulates, “The Service shall assign a security classification of maximum to any inmate who has been found to be a dangerous offender under Part XXIV of the Criminal Code or who has been convicted of more than one first degree murder within the meaning of section 231 of that Act.” In addition, s. 28 of the CCRA currently states that, “if a person is or is to be confined in a penitentiary, the Service shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that the penitentiary in which they are confined is one that provides them with the least restrictive environment for that person”. The amendments proposed in C-351 would revise this language, replacing “the least restrictive environment for that person” to “an environment that contains only the necessary restrictions”. As currently written, C-351 appears intended to apply to the defined group of inmates both in the future and currently serving their sentence. This is expected to have the immediate effect of removing impacted inmates from their current institutions of a lower security level, and placing them in a maximum-security institution.
At the end of Fiscal Year 2022-23, there were 921 total inmates who would have met the criteria and been impacted by C-351 at that time. Of these,1.5% were women and 32.2% were Indigenous.
Status: Presently, it is expected that Bill C-351 will commence its first hour of debate in the House of Commons on November 23, 2023.
PMB C-342 An Act to Amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (Maximum Security Offenders)
PMB C-342 was introduced in the House of Commons on June 14, 2023 by Member of Parliament (MP) Tony Baldinelli (Niagara Falls). Bill C-342 is currently outside the Order of Precedence in the House of Commons.
The Bill is effectively identical to PMB C-351. The difference between C-342 and C-351 is that the latter stipulates that its provisions come into force within three months of receiving Royal Assent.
Status: As it is currently outside Order of Precedence, it is unlikely to be debated in Parliament in the near term.
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