Stephen Harper’s empty promises to victims of crime
TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Full of legal holes and carrying only a paltry financial commitment, the Tories’ victims’ rights bill will achieve far too little.
Aug 03 2015. By: Irvin Waller Michael Kempa
Stephen Harper´s Victims Bill of Rights, which came into force late last month, was launched with noble promises to respect victims of crime. But, full of legal holes and carrying only a paltry commitment of $54 million, it will achieve far too little.
Fundamentally, the bill does not provide “rights” in the proper meaning of the term. Law students learn early that for a person to have a right there must be a legal remedy for any violation that is enforceable in court. The new legislation does not provide for this. American victim advocates have learned that calling a statute or even a constitutional amendment a “bill of rights” for victims will achieve next to nothing without clearly articulated legal remedies. Likewise, the ambiguous Ontario Victims’ Bill of Rights has been shown to have no legal teeth.
The second problem is that the bill does not clarify who will provide the promised rights, inadequate as they are. Canada has a patchwork of programs to provide compensation to victims of violence. Unfortunately most eligible victims are not informed of the best program for them, and the issue dies with the police who receive the initial complaint.
In 2006, the Ontario Ombudsman described the province’s system of criminal injuries compensation as “adding insult to injury.” Embarrassed, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals asked the retiring chief justice — Canada´s most famous judicial statesman, Roy McMurtry — to propose some clear, achievable solutions. His most important recommendations stressed the need for the police to inform victims of the services at their disposal, and measure whether the programs in question met their needs. These obvious solutions continue to gather dust on shelves somewhere within Queen’s Park.
Harper’s bill hopes to get judges to order restitution from the offender to the victim: a long overdue development. But the victim then has to enforce the order in civil court: an extremely difficult and costly process for the average victim.
A better practice comes from the state of Vermont, which pays the victim restitution and then collects from the offender. Alternatively, Saskatchewan has had for some time a fine-option program to help victims get court ordered restitution. The Correctional Service of Canada could also have been required to collect restitution if offenders earn a living wage or have other means.
Canadian victims should expect rights at least as good as those in Europe, where the EU sets standards for information, services, protection, restitution, restorative justice, and rights in court. Europe also goes beyond putting it on paper to deliver actual training, funds to help countries meet those standards, and evaluation to assess outcomes. The EU is 28 countries speaking 24 languages. Surely our 14 federal, provincial and territorial governments with only two official languages could do the same.
As they were drafting their new legislation, the Harper government promised to provide “dedicated funding to support the implementation of the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights.” The harm to victims is equivalent to $83 billion in financial, health and other losses each year. If we doubled the billion we spend on victims’ services every year (out of a total $21 billion spent on criminal justice in total), we would get a very good return on investment. The bill’s commitment of $54 million will barely move the needle.
Elsewhere, governments are doing a better job of putting money behind their sympathies for victims’ rights. The U.S. Congress has tripled its generous funding to encourage state and local governments to implement victim services and provide proper compensation. England and Wales have established a victim commissioner to ensure action on complaints — another of Justice McMurtry’s recommendations for Ontario that continues to rot on the vine — along with a minister responsible for victims of crime who is tasked with representing victims’ interests in all government business. While trimming costs in other areas of criminal justice, the UK has managed to increase funding of these offices by 25 per cent.
In contrast, Canada’s first federal ombudsman for victims of crime was established in 2007, but continues to fight for proper funding and sufficient legislative authority.
Any Canadian government could do far better than Harper did last week by following these well-founded, global best practices.
Irvin Waller is a professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa and author of Smarter Crime Control, which inspired this article (@irvinwaller). Michael Kempa is an associate professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Earlier this year, he withdrew from the open Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest to make way for the party’s preferred candidate, Bill Blair.
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Tags: corrections, crime prevention, jurisdiction
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