Call it the One Breath Rule.
When politicians table legislation, they should be able to answer the question “What does this bill do?” without running out of breath.
The answer doesn’t have to be comprehensive. Well drafted bills contain lots of detail. But even something like Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, which has well over 100 provisions, can fairly be summarized as “legalizing pot.”
That’s necessary in a parliamentary democracy. Legislators are given the blunt instrument of yay or nay votes on proposed laws. It should be simple for them to say, in general, whether they support it. The public is entitled to the same.
So, what about Bill C-75, the hotly debated justice reform legislation that the Liberals tabled last week?
If passed, it would – deep breath – speed up the administration of justice, make juries more equitable, give special consideration to Indigenous people in the bail process and strengthen the penalties for domestic abuse – among many other things.
A minister with experience trekking at high altitudes might be able to say all that in one breath. But only just.
If you wanted to cheat, you could simply say the bill reforms the justice system. But that would be too vague. In fact, the bill is a crazy quilt of proposals, with a range of motivations and without a common theme or goal.
Consider the double-barreled impetus behind C-75.
The first and arguably most important impetus was the Supreme Court’s R. v Jordan ruling, which set time limits on criminal proceedings in an attempt to end the country’s unconscionably backlogged court system.
The government has had no choice but to respond. Charges as serious as murder and sexual assault are being dropped because of multiyear court delays that the Supreme Court ruled are unconstitutional.
The other impetus was an apparently all-white jury’s acquittal in February of Gerald Stanley in the killing of Colten Boushie. The defence used so-called peremptory challenges to exclude potential jurors who looked Indigenous. Many observers called for the tactic to be banned or reformed.
That’s two worthy goals rolled into one bill.
But about that rolling. If speeding up the court system and boosting the diversity of juries were the government’s only goals with this bill, there would already be a case for tabling distinct Speeding Up the Court System and Boosting the Diversity of Juries acts.
The Liberals’ chosen ways of accomplishing those goals – ending preliminary inquiries before trials for all but life-sentence cases, and ending peremptory challenges, respectively – are controversial and, in fact, somewhat contradictory. More wrangling over jury composition might actually slow down trials. In any case, it’s not hard to imagine an MP supporting one proposal and not the other.
Meanwhile, the government has folded parts of three other stalled justice bills into C-75, making it woollier still. The law would also tackle domestic abuse by formalizing harsher treatment for choking or strangling, and by making it harder for people accused of domestic violence to make bail, among other things.
That sounds like a good change. In fact, there’s a lot to like in this bill. Reducing criminal charges for people who violate bail conditions and other administrative rules is sensible, humane and likely to unclog the court system. It’s also wise to limit preliminary hearings, given that their value has been greatly reduced by mandatory disclosure of evidence.
But the government has erred in trying to push through so many disparate reforms at once, apparently in haste and with little outside consultation. Ending peremptory challenges will be especially controversial, given that defendants of colour often use them to achieve more racially diverse juries. It will be a shame if that or any of the other manifold proposals in C-75 derail the morally necessary and legally required work of speeding up the court system.
In opposition, the Liberals railed against Conservative omnibus bills that rammed a slate of government priorities through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny. Now they are doing exactly the same with major reforms to an infinitely sensitive and controversial file.
They should slow down and split up the bill into its component parts. The issues in C-75 need to be debated properly. Why is the government unwilling to allow that?