Canada's provinces and territories are detaining near record numbers of "legally innocent" people on remand awaiting trial or bail, and their numbers account for more than 50 per cent of individuals in custody on any given day, according to a new report.

"It is clear Canada as a whole has a pre-trial detention problem," says the report, "Set Up to Fail: Bail and the Revolving Door of Pre-trial Detention," which will be released Wednesday by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

The report says the detentions in provincial jails could be justified if they ensured public safety, but that is not the case.

Most of the people remanded to provincial jail "are there for non-violent offences, and one in five people are there simply because they failed to comply with a bail or probation condition."

Breaking "restrictive" bail conditions - such as curfews, abstaining from drugs or alcohol, or bans on cell phones or computers - can lead to imprisonment even after an individual has been charged and let go awaiting trial.

In Ontario, the problem is made worse by "systemic delay," according to the report, which says that during a three-week time period, 20 people were returned to jail because the courts ran out of time to hear their case.

"The continued systemic violation of constitutional rights in Ontario bail courts is unacceptable."

The province and the Yukon also rely "heavily" on sureties, who must appear in court and agree to supervise the accused as well as pay a specified amount if any of the bail conditions are breeched.

"It is unconstitutional to impose unnecessary restrictions on liberty, conditions the accused cannot realistically comply with or conditions that are unrelated to the purposes of bail," according to the report.

The remand statistics, which are taken from 2012-13, are also at odds with the country's crime rate, which has been steadily falling for two decades. Violent crime is at its lowest rate since 1987.

Meanwhile, the country's remand rate has nearly tripled in 30 years and "2005 marked the first time in Canadian history that we had more people in pre-trial detention than we had in sentenced custody."