An excerpt from the transcript of discussions regarding The Tackling Violent Crime Act. We don’t appear to have been very convincing. The Senate passed the Bill with apparently little comment.

Senator Oliver: What does that case say about reverse onus?

Mr. Boyd: It is critical of reverse onus because of the issue of liberty.
Again, I understand what you are saying about care with respect to Charter compliance and so on, but this is really an issue of principle. As Canadians, we have traditionally not taken away individual liberty unless we discharge the traditional burden of proof in criminal cases. We should only deviate from that norm in exceptional cases.
I think the onus is on the government to make the case here. What is the data telling us about the dangerous offender provisions or, more specifically, about how these dangerous offender hearings have been conducted today? Are there 10 or 15 cases? Is there this great number of cases that we can point to to suggest that, see, courts have let very dangerous people go free? Where is the demonstrated need for this? I think we would all say we do not want to put something in place unless there is an extraordinary need to do so.

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I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you this morning regarding Bill C-2, The Tackling Violent Crime Act. My general observation of the Bill, an attempt to address the amalgam of firearms offences, dangerous and high-risk offenders, impaired driving, and the age of consent, is that it is not motivated by the best available evidence regarding the effectiveness of various kinds of sanctions in responding to crime. Instead, it is a patchwork quilt of somewhat moralistic and punitive sentiments, applied to these rather disparate issues of firearms crime, the classification of dangerous offenders, drugged driving, and adolescent sexuality.

I’d like to be as precise and evidence-based as I can in responding to the proposed legislation, as I view this as its principal weakness. My two greatest concerns flow from the reverse-onus provisions to be employed in dangerous offender hearings, and the raising of the age of consent from 14 to 16 — albeit with the caveat of a less than five year age difference in place as a potential defence for the latter, as outlined in s.150.1 (2.2 and 2.2). I am supportive of increased penalties for impaired driving, and for attempting to control existing loopholes in the law, though I do have a number of practical concerns about how the legislation might actually change existing practice, and how impairment by cannabis is to be judged. I have similar kinds of concerns – about the limited extent to which changes will impact current practices — with respect to amendments to firearms legislation.
I begin with section 753 (1.1) of the Bill:

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