Blog C-10 Hearings 2012 02 16 – Canadians Imprisoned Abroad

Blog C-10 Hearings 2012 02 16 – Canadians Imprisoned Abroad

This bill gives the Minister flexibility to refuse Canadians return to Canada.  The Conservative position is that all Canadians abroad want to serve their sentence in Canada because Canadian jails are more comfortable and they are likely to gain their freedom sooner.  In some countries they will serve 85 % of their sentence before release and in many countries there are no objectives to reform or rehabilitate the prisoner so no programs for that.  Conservatives want to know why we should bring dangerous criminals back to Canada so they can walk our streets sooner, endangering Canadian society.

Furthermore, foreign jails may have barbarous conditions and prisoners may be subjected to torture. 

The advisors to this panel were:

Nathalie Des Rosiers, Canadian Civil Liberties Assoc.

John Conroy, Lawyer representing such inmates from Abbotsford BC

Fannie Lafontaine, Prof. of Law, University of Laval.

All of these put a very different point of view.  Nathalie Des Rosiers cautioned the Senators that refusing Canadians return to Canada would open the door to Charter challenges on several different grounds. 

Both Fannie Lafontaine and John Conroy emphasized that these prisoners will complete their terms and come back to Canada.  It is to our advantage that they experience some treatment programs before they are released.  It is to our advantage if they are entered in the Canadian Criminal Record Data Base.  It is to our advantage if they are assessed by Canadian Corrections officials as to their risk to reoffend, and if they are released with supervision so that we can monitor their behaviour.  We can do none of this if they come back having finished their sentence abroad.

It seems perfectly clear to me that it is in the public interest to bring Canadians home, and that the attempt to keep them away is perhaps a cost-saving measure and more likely a vision that punishment is best with no regard for either investigating the circumstances of the Canadian’s conviction under a different system of law or ensuring public safety on their eventual return to Canada.  I agree with Civil Liberties – we will see Charter challenges with this.