Why Victoria Sees So Many Out Of Province Warrants

Well, it's an issue, I think, here in Victoria, perhaps more than other places, because, of course, this is a nice place to be, right? If you're going to be a fugitive, you might pick here.

To give some idea of the sort of scope and scale of the issue, the Victoria police dealt with 80 people in the first six months of this year who had outstanding warrants from other jurisdictions.

And so far, it would appear that few of those people, if any, have actually been removed.

And so I thought it would be useful to just provide some context in terms of the legal process involved, the system that's in place, and what might be done to improve how that's operating.

So first of all, it's important to know that in Canada, the criminal code, of course, is the criminal code of Canada, right? It's the same criminal law all across the country.

And so it's not like the Dukes of Hazzard where you can kind of jump into the next county and escape the operation of the law in Canada.

But it's slightly more complicated to execute a warrant outside of the province in which it was issued.

And the way that works, it depends on the type of warrant that might be outstanding for somebody.

Some types of warrants, like for indictable offenses and warrants issued by superior courts when, for example, somebody doesn't show up for their trial, are warrants issued under Section 597 of the Criminal Code, and those are just good all across the country.

For other types of warrants, which would be more common, and you can have warrants for somebody's arrest issued by a court for a variety of reasons, like a warrant of first instance to compel the person to show up for a charge or other failings to appear in court, whatever it might be.

With those, the more common type, when they're issued, in order to make the warrant effective in another province, you need to have a judge or a judicial justice endorse the warrant, and that's done under Section 528 of the Criminal Code.

And essentially, it's not really an exercise of discretion.

It's the justice or judge determining that the original warrant is valid, properly signed from that other jurisdiction.

And then they would endorse it or sign it, and then that's effective in British Columbia, for example, right? If you had a warrant from Alberta or something.

A judge here, a justice could look at that and say, yep, this appears to be a valid warrant issued out of there, initial it or sign it, and then it can be executed in BC.

Now, The practical reality, there are other practical realities which explain why it is, even though there's a process clearly in place in the criminal code to arrest people and have them returned to face trial in the jurisdiction where they're alleged to have committed an offense, there is a practical reality.

And the practical reality involves really an assessment of the cost of doing that.

And the starting point would be that the jurisdiction that the person has fled from would ordinarily be asked when the person's arrested by the police, if the police do arrest them, do you want this person back, right? And really the question being asked there is an economic one.

Do you want to pay for two police officers and three plane tickets, two of them return one way to get the person back there? Exactly.

Exactly.

When you ask that question, you know, if it's murder, the answer is going to be yeah.

If it's a yes, if it's not murder, if it's something else, the answer may well be no thanks, you can keep him.

Now, you can imagine that that economic analysis may be a different economic analysis for that original jurisdiction as opposed to, for example, Victoria.

Right.

Because let's say you've got somebody who's, you know, it would not be uncommon if you had somebody who's left other jurisdiction with an outstanding warrant and is now living out at BC.