Provincial justice ministers meeting in Winnipeg are calling for an end to the double-credit system that allows criminals to serve significantly shorter sentences if they are kept behind bars while awaiting trial.
"Certainly Ontario's position has been that we should reduce the amount of pre-disposition credit, and there is unanimity around the provincial and territorial table that this is an issue we would like to have a good discussion about with our federal counterparts," Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley told reporters Wednesday during a break from a meeting with justice ministers from other provinces.
"We're saying that that provision should be tighter and should be restricted," said Manitoba Justice Minister Dave Chomiak.
The credit system is not set in stone under the Criminal Code — it's left to the discretion of the sentencing judge. The general practice that has developed over the years sees convicts given a credit of two months for every month they spent in custody awaiting trial, in recognition of the fact that prisons offer programs and services that remand centres do not.
The end result is that someone who spends six months in custody awaiting trial and is handed a one-year sentence can be deemed to have served their time already and be released.
Bentley said there is a perception that the system encourages some people to stay in custody longer before going to trial. Chomiak said it is one reason why the number of people in jail awaiting trial has skyrocketed.
A federal report released last year found about half the inmates in provincial and territorial jails were on remand, up from 28 per cent a decade earlier.
The provincial ministers want the two-for-one credit cut back to a maximum of 1.5-to-one, with clear direction to judges that they are free to go as low as one-to-one. They will press the issue with federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, who is scheduled to join the meeting Thursday.
Nicholson will face other demands from the provincial ministers, who agreed Wednesday to press Ottawa for more legal aid funding and for a quick follow-through on a throne speech promise to put 2,500 more police officers on Canadian streets.
If the new officers are divided according to each province's population, Ontario can expect to get about 1,000 of them.
Ontario is also continuing to push the federal government for stricter limits on handguns, although it doesn't seem to have much support.
"Handguns are effectively banned in this country," Chomiak said. "We haven't discussed that."
Federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said he had other priorities.
"We want to ban criminals from being on the street who use handguns. That's why we're proposing mandatory jail terms for people who use handguns in the commission of crimes," Day told reporters on his way into the meeting, referring to the Tories' omnibus crime legislation that is currently before Parliament.
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