Statutory review of Part XVII of the Criminal Code / : Report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights

STATUTORY REVIEW OF PART XVII OF THE CRIMINAL CODE Report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights Mike Wallace Chair APRIL 2014 41st PARLIAMENT, SECOND SESSION Published under the authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons SPEAKER’S PERMISSION Reproduction of the proceedings of the House of Commons and its Committees, in whole or in part and in any medium, is hereby permitted [...] Courts are also required to make interpreters available to assist the accused, counsel and witnesses.6 Before Bill C-13 was introduced, studies by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages7 and an inquiry conducted by the Department of Justice8 identified barriers to full and equal access to the criminal justice system in the official language of the accused’s choice. [...] During his appearance before the Committee on the study of the Supplementary Estimates (C) 2013–14, the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Peter MacKay, said that “[o]ne of the big challenges … is the lack of francophone judges able to conduct sometimes very sophisticated, complex trials, both civil and criminal, in French.”28 The Minister of Justice added that a language training program is avai [...] In 2013, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages published a study on the exercise by Canadians of their language rights before the country’s courts.36 Conducted in partnership with the Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick and the French Language Services Commissioner of Ontario, this study focused on the bilingual capacity of the superior and appeal court judiciary in [...] As the Commissioner of Official Languages so aptly put it: “If the point is to ensure equal access to a court process in the language of the accused's choice, that right shouldn't be limited to the trial, but should apply to the entire process.”72 3. RECOMMENDATIONS RECOMMENDATION 1 The Committee recommends that Parliament amend the French version of subsection 530(3) of the Criminal Code to read