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The Liberal government’s long-promised reforms to Canada’s bail and sentencing regime are now law.
Bill C-14, the Bail and Sentencing Reform Act, received royal assent on Monday. The new law amends the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and the National Defence Act to tighten the bail and sentencing framework across all three.
“We’ve taken a major step forward but we also know that there’s more to do,” Justice Minister Sean Fraser said.
The minister said the bill was crafted in consultation with police forces and his counterparts in the provinces and territories. He thanked them for their contributions which he said would help restore confidence in the justice system.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser said the long-term goal of the government’s bail reform bill that became law on Monday night is not to incarcerate more people but to ‘prevent crime from happening that demands incarceration in the first place.’
Fraser said the new law is central to the federal government’s public safety strategy and was specifically crafted to keep the country and its people safer by addressing their concerns.
The law is “designed to target some of the most frequent causes of concern we hear in our engagement with communities across Canada,” Fraser said, “whether that’s auto theft or home invasion, whether it’s extortion, whether it’s trafficking or whether it is assault or sexual assault.”
In a post on social media, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the new legislation makes “more than 80 changes to the Criminal Code to tighten bail and sentencing laws.”
Carney said the changes will “keep violent and repeat offenders off your streets,” and “keep you and your community safe.”
The changes to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, for example, give police the power to publicly identify a young person in cases where there is a threat to public safety.
Reverse onus bail
The legislation changes bail significantly by creating a new “reverse onus provision” that makes detention, not bail, the default. It means someone seeking bail must prove they should not remain behind bars while they await trial, instead of prosecutors having to prove denying bail is justified.
That provision will automatically impact anyone charged with:
- Violent auto theft.
- Extortion involving violence.
- Breaking and entering a private home.
- Some human-trafficking offences.
- Auto theft for a criminal organization.
- Committing a third violent crime.
- Choking, suffocating or strangling someone.
The legislation also puts a reverse bail onus on anyone charged with a violent offence involving a weapon who has been convicted of a similar offence within the last 10 years.
It expands the circumstances under which bail can be withdrawn as well.
Sentencing for civilian and military courts
The Bail and Sentencing Reform Act gives courts the power to impose consecutive sentences for repeat offenders in cases involving violence, vehicle theft, breaking and entering and offences committed on behalf of organized crime.
It restricts the circumstances under which a court can impose a conditional sentence — where certain sentences can be served in the community — for someone convicted of sexual assault or other sex crimes involving a minor.
Under the new legislation courts will also be able to impose steeper penalties for contempt in both civilian and military courts.
And the legislation gives the both military and civilian courts the power to hand out harsher penalties to people who repeatedly:
- Commit acts of violence.
- Assault first responders and transit workers.
- Commit acts of retail theft and other theft.
- Have been convicted of mischief to property offences.
The new law also gives courts the power to ban someone accused of extortion or any offence involving a firearm from being in possession of a firearm or “other weapon.”
Fraser said the federal government is providing the provinces with funding so they can track the impact of the changes contained in the Bail and Sentencing Reform Act, in order to inform government on how the law can be tweaked or improved in the future.
