The Canadian Constitution Foundation has exciting news! With the help of our friends at the Institute for Liberal Studies, we’ve just released a new report that takes a critical and comparative look at Canada’s provincial civil forfeiture laws. Here’s some of what we learned:
In Ontario and British Columbia, innocent people are losing their property to the provincial government even though they have never been charged with a crime;
Only in Alberta and Quebec do judges have sufficient discretion to avoid unjust results from provincial civil forfeiture laws;
In all provinces, it is unclear how the government spends the money collected through civil forfeiture; and
None of Canada’s civil forfeiture laws is achieving its purpose of deterring crime and compensating victims.
Our research shows that Canada has a serious and growing problem with civil forfeiture. It has become an abuse of power that treats innocent property owners worse than criminals. For the reasons we discuss in our report, this should be a significant concern for Canadians of all political stripes.
To download the full report, visit theccf.ca/civilforfeiture
If you’re appalled by the injustices you learn about, we hope that you’ll share this report on Facebook and Twitter.
