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The national inquiry also recommended automatic first-degree murder charges in homicide cases where there is a pattern of domestic violence. The government has not acted on that proposal.

However, Rudin said it was “unfortunate” to see the government moving so quickly on these particular recommendations from the national inquiry. “What (these changes) will accomplish is likely having more vulnerable people, including Indigenous people, jailed for longer periods of time,” he said. “I think these are steps backward.”

Rudin said the changes will likely encourage Crown prosecutors to take “much more aggressive positions in terms of sentencing,” and will push some judges to dole out stiffer punishments.

Meanwhile, the government is compromising on another controversial aspect of Bill C-75: preliminary inquiries, which are court hearings to determine if there is enough evidence to move to trial. As originally drafted in the legislation, the government planned to remove most of them in order to reduce court delays, and also to prevent the “re-victimization” of requiring two rounds of testimony — particularly in sexual assault cases. The original bill only allowed them for the 70 Criminal Code offences carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

But many legal organizations criticized this move, arguing preliminary inquiries were a tiny drain on overall court time but still provided a valuable early test of the prosecution’s evidence — and in some cases even helped reduce court delays by avoiding a trial. The Senate voted to restore preliminary inquiries for nearly all indictable offences, with the condition that the judge ensure the impact on complainants is mitigated. This change would have boosted the number of qualifying Criminal Code offences to 463.

The government decided to find a middle ground, proposing to allow preliminary inquiries for offences with a maximum sentence of 14 years and above. That would bring the number of offences for which preliminary inquiries are available to 156.

• Email: mforrest@postmedia.com | Twitter: MauraForrest

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt