Mandatory minimum sentences set for review

OTTAWA • The Liberal government is set to begin tackling mandatory minimum sentences this spring, but advocates for reform have been waiting a long time for the promise to play out.

“It’s something the government promised long ago and its delivery is overdue,” said Eric Gottardi, a Vancouver defence lawyer and pastchair of the criminal justice section at the Canadian Bar Association. “We are all kind of looking forward to it with bated breath.”

The Liberal campaign platform was silent on mandatory minimum sentences, but then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tasked Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould with reviewing changes to the criminal justice system and sentencing reforms the previous Conservative government brought in as part of its tough-on-crime agenda.

Many of those changes involved imposing — or increasing — mandatory minimum penalties for dozens of offences, which critics decried for taking away the ability of judges to use their discretion in handing down a punishment that fits not only the crime, but also the person convicted.

The push to finally begin introducing legislative amendments on that front came as part of the response to the worsening problem of backlogs in the courts, which took on new urgency after the Supreme Court of Canada last year imposed strict limits on the length of time an accused can wait to stand trial.

Changes to bail, preliminary inquiries and the reclassification of offences are other policy areas where the federal government is looking for solutions to that problem.

“Was it a kick in the butt?” Wilson-Raybould said after an April 28 meeting with provincial justice ministers on whether the ruling accelerated plans for reform. “I think it was a call to action for all of us, absolutely.”

Yvon Dandurand, a criminologist at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C., said the Liberals could bring back some more flexibility to judges by creating special exceptions to some mandatory minimum penalties, an option he outlined in a report provided to the Justice Department last year.

Dandurand said he suspects the coming legislation will include a mix of adding special exceptions to some mandatory minimum sentences while abolishing others. He said he also thinks, based on what he has heard from Wilson-Raybould and her officials during consultations, that they will go beyond reversing the last decade of changes.

“(They) said this sentencing reform they are contemplating is not just a matter of setting back the clock and changing what has happened during the Conservative government ... but going back to principles and more fundamental changes to the sentencing regime that we have,” Dandurand said.

The last overhaul of the sentencing provisions in the Criminal Code happened in 1996.