11/12/2020
In the coming months, I hope to learn how to make posts on my Facebook law office page. So I can make commentaries on many aspects of criminal law, procedures, Covid, the police and the Courts.
For today I’ll say that in September and December 2019, there were hundreds of amendments to the Criminal Code that came into effect as a result of of Bill C75. 
Bill C75 is one of those insidious things that escape attention until someone gets hit with its thagomizer!
This Bill was created by the Trudeau government to make the court system more efficient. And it was certainly successful in doing that, much to the chagrin and consternation of criminal defence lawyers and clients.
Among hundreds of changes, the preliminary hearing is now only available for offences punishable by 14 years or longer. which means that there are many extremely serious types of charges where a person is no longer able to test the evidence and discover additional evidence about a case when the police investigation was left wanting.
The government also lengthened the punishment available where the Crown proceeds by way of summary conviction offense (misdemeanour for those of you who watch TV crime shows) from the maximum of six months to two years.
What the government did not do, as promised, was to repeal some of those unfair laws which create mandatory minimum jail sentences.
Meanwhile on the streets, many older police officers are retiring and are replaced by very junior officers.
When taking a statement from a witness to a crime, or an alleged crime, police were taught to not just take the statement, but to consider carefully the evidence given and ask the witness a number of follow-up questions to give clarity and important further detail to their narrative. More and more we see now, even in more serious cases, situations where the investigating police officer gives the witness a blank statement form and asks them to fill it out, and these forms are passed on to the prosecution service without the police asking the witness any follow up questions. Situations like this create greater need for old style preliminary hearings.
There are many other changes to the criminal code, and rules of evidence, which handcuff our ability to defend someone from unjust, inaccurate or false information.
In upcoming episodes I hope to provide information on how good defence lawyers can combat some of these insiduous amendments to criminal statutes.
Have a great day and look up “Thagomizer” in your Wikipedia!
