Advocates look for support after victim surcharges shot down

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This article was published 16/12/2018 (1950 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AS the legal community celebrates the end of mandatory victim surcharges in Canada, a Manitoba advocate is calling for the justice system to look beyond court fees to find ways to support crime victims.

Before the Supreme Court declared mandatory court costs “cruel and unusual punishment” in a sharply worded decision last week, many Manitoba judges had for years been finding ways around them. The 7-2 majority decision struck down victim surcharges as unconstitutional Dec. 14, after impoverished offenders in Quebec and Ontario challenged hundreds of dollars in surcharges they couldn’t afford to pay.

“Courts can support victims in a lot more ways besides money,” said Karen Wiebe, executive director of the Manitoba Organization for Victim Assistance, a non-profit that supports families of homicide victims. Her son, T.J. Wiebe, was murdered in 2003.

“I’m certainly never going to say that we couldn’t use money, because that’s not true, but there’s so much revictimization that happens in our justice system, that revictimizes people through inhumane measures over and over again.”

The end of the surcharges means those fees will no longer be funnelled into provincial victim-support funds.

It’s unclear how much money Manitoba was collecting from the court surcharges. A Manitoba Justice spokesperson didn’t provide more information Monday. The fees were going into the Victims’ Assistance Trust Fund, which would then be used toward expenses such as victims’ compensation.

While she said the surcharges shouldn’t be eliminated for offenders who can afford to pay, Wiebe suggested justice officials could do more to accommodate victims and their families directly. By making physical space for them in rural Manitoba courts, for example, or devoting a portion of funds to cover families’ unpaid time off work while they’re attending court.

The Supreme Court’s decision, known as R. v. Boudreault, compared ordering fines to imposing “indefinite” sentences on impoverished offenders, who are then subjected to debt collection processes that can be “more like public shaming,” Justice Sheilah Martin wrote. The decision means judges across Canada will no longer be able to order any surcharges.

A federal bill that proposes to bring back discretionary fines is before the Senate.

It’s been common for some judges in Manitoba to give convicted criminals no time to pay the mandatory fines, which were ordered under federal legislation five years ago as an attempt to support crime victims.

Judges would immediately find the offender was in default of payment and sentence them, on paper, to one day in jail, which they would typically note as having been served by their appearance in court that day. In other cases, judges would allow several months or years for offenders to either pay the fees or register for community service to work them off.

“It was always something that was difficult to stomach because the sentence didn’t always fit the offender and the crime for which they were being sentenced,” said defence lawyer Chris Gamby, spokesman for the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association.

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay