C-336 – The Strengthening Reporting Obligations for Sex Offenders Act (Noah’s Law) – increases the length of time and frequency that a sex offender needs to report to a sex offender registry centre if they’re likely to reoffend.
Criminal Code
The first set of changes C-336 makes are to the Criminal Code.
First up is what gets someone on the sex offender registry. Currently if someone’s found guilty of a sexual offence, are found not guilty due to mental illness, or committed a different offence with the intention of committing a sexual offence they can be put on the Sex Offender Registry. C-336 makes it so they can also be put on the Registry if the prosecutor can prove there’s a chance of them reoffending.
If the courts decide someone’s likely to reoffend then they’ll be listed in the Sex Offender Registry for 30 years. Currently the Criminal Code sets the duration based on the maximum jail time of the crime, either 10 or 20 years. The current laws also put people on the Registry for life if the maximum jail time for the crime they’ve been convicted of is life, if they’ve been convicted of multiple sex crimes, or if they were previously convicted of a sex crime.
If someone’s put on the Registry for being a risk to reoffend they can apply to be removed from it after 20 years. To compare that with the current laws, someone can apply to be removed after 5, 10, or 20 years if they’re on the Registry for 10 years, 20 years, or life respectively.
Author’s Note
Just going to put a quick note here that I’m not sure how well this would stand or how often it would be used. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn’t really like people being punished for things they haven’t done yet so the bar for existing punishments based on risk (such as denying bail) tends to be pretty high.
Sex Offender Information Registration Act
C-336 makes a few changes to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, starting with adding an emphasis on the Act’s need to “protect the public”.
There’s two other main changes to the Act, the first of which is the need to report to a registration centre every six months. Failure to do so is an offence punishable on summary conviction.
The second change involves changes of address. People on the registry will need to report to the centre at least a week before changing their address to inform the registration centre of where they’re moving to and when they’ll be moving. They’ll then need to report to the registration centre that serves the area the new address is in within a week. If they don’t then the police will be notified.
Progress
C-336 is currently outside of the Order of Precedence.