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OTTAWA — A Senate committee has passed amendments to the government’s massive criminal justice legislation, Bill C-75, including changes that would require judges to consider harsher sentences for domestic violence against Indigenous women.

The changes are based in part on the recent testimony of Marion Buller, chief commissioner of the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. The inquiry’s final report will be released next week, but the Senate amendments mean a version of some of Buller’s recommendations could become law before the scheduled fall election.

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The amendments still need to pass a vote in the full Senate chamber, and would then go to the House of Commons, which could reject them. The Senate generally defers to the elected Commons when there are disagreements over a bill.

The Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee also passed an amendment to Bill C-75 that would bring back the option for preliminary inquiries for hundreds of criminal offences, reversing the government’s move to scrap them except for offences carrying a sentence of life imprisonment.