Roundup: A badly needed review

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The Criminal Code is a mess. The government knows it, and the judicial system knows it, but the question is whether anyone has the guts to do anything about it – particularly because it’s been a particularly easy target to do one-off laws without worrying about the broader consequences. The number of private members’ bills dealing with singular tweaks to the Criminal Code are innumerable, because it’s seen as something that individual MPs can use to take a stand on some issue or another while at the same time considering it to be something that won’t impose a cost on the government as no dedicated spending must be attached to it that would otherwise require a Royal Recommendation. (This is wrong – there are tremendous costs attached to it, but it’s a loophole in the rules that there is no appetite to plug either). And when governments want to increase sentencing to look tough on an issue, they pass new laws to “crack down,” to the point where there is no semblance of a logical sentencing grid any longer. I remember sitting in on a Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee meeting during the Harper years when they were passing another marijuana bill and the Liberal senators were expressing frustration that things were such a mess that these new pot offences were giving more jail time than some child sex offences.

The government’s recent move to repeal some archaic laws around gay sex (including an unequal age of consent) is an example of one place where the government is doing something about a “zombie law” – one that has been struck down by the courts, but remains on the books because Parliament has yet to take the time to actually repeal it. (This was another case were the Conservatives outright refused to when given the opportunity when they were raising the age of consent for hetero teens). But there are plenty of zombie laws still sitting on the books and nothing is being done about them. The CBC has a look here at some of those laws, and expert urging to deal with them – particularly given that murder trial in Edmonton where the judge accidentally handed down a verdict that was predicated on a “zombie” law and he had to go back and give a lesser verdict after the fact to correct the mistake. Clearly this is a problem, but the government isn’t promising much action beyond vague assurances that these sorts of things will be part of their broader criminal justice review – the same review that will be looking at doing away with a number of mandatory minimum sentences. But this is something that they really do need to get cracking on, not only dealing with “zombie” laws, but also sentencing reform so that there is a coherent sentencing grid once again. Part of the problem, however, is that the justice minister and her office are moving at a glacial pace. Everything they’ve been doing, from judicial appointments to moving on certain bills, is taking far longer than it reasonably should, and that’s concerning especially when this criminal justice review is so badly needed. Let’s hope we hear more about it sooner rather than later.

Good reads:

  • As he heads to the APEC summit in Peru, Justin Trudeau plans to spend the time there trying to rescue trade deals like the TPP, and to a certain extent NAFTA.
  • The opioid epidemic conference convened over the past couple of days wants an unprecedented public health emergency declared over the issue.
  • At the Halifax security conference, delegates are not too concerned about Trump’s NATO talk, but they are concerned about Russian moves around Baltic countries.
  • From the COP22 conference in Marrakesh, we hear that Canadians are not prepared for the magnitude of changes necessary to meet 2050 climate targets.
  • Some of the social conservatives in the CPC caucus are balking about repealing those Criminal Code provisions that equalise the age of consent for gay sex.
  • Apparently the Canadian Forces’ recruiting site was not hacked and no information stolen, but its DNS was changed to redirect users. (Or something).
  • Vox Pop Labs offers more about the electoral reform survey they’ll be running for the government.
  • More of Kellie Leitch’s former staffers agree that her “values” pitch is a ploy and not backed up by actual beliefs.
  • Kady O’Malley wonders about the closed-door deal-making going on as the electoral reform committee writes its report.
  • Paul Wells reminds us that there doesn’t need to be a Canadian angle to every American action, and that Trudeau may indeed be acting shrewdly with NAFTA.
  • Andrew Coyne thinks an electoral reform referendum should have a ranked ballot between different systems, not just a binary yes or no on one choice.

Odds and ends:

Scott Brison talked to one public sector union about the lessons learned from the Phoenix pay system debacle.