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ICCLR President Presents
to Parliamentary Committee
On May 27, 2008, Mr. Daniel C. Préfontaine, Q.C. was invited by
the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International
Development of the House of Commons to make a presentation
in relation to the Committee’s study of a draft report
on the Canada-China Bilateral Human Rights Dialogue. See presentation
in English
and French.
Projects:
ICCLR began its programme of engagement with China in 1995 with the launch of the China-Canada Criminal Justice Cooperation Project (CCJCP). This was when the country’s judicial reform process was just getting into high gear, the beginning of an historic period of transition to the rule of law. The Chinese partners on the project were the country’s first two Centres of academic excellence devoted to providing research support to the criminal justice reform process: the Research Centre for Criminal Jurisprudence (RCCJ) at Renmin University (now Research College for Criminal Jurisprudence at Beijing Normal University) and the Centre for Criminal Law and Justice (CCLJ) at the China University of Political Science and Law. This programme, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and the Ford Foundation, focused on providing expert input into the ratification and implementation of human rights standards, assistance to the Expert Drafting Group for amending the law of Criminal Procedure of China in its preparation of a draft Code, and assistance for the development of legal aid legislation.
In particular, through its relationship with the partner Centres and institutes, ICCLR provided support to an Expert Drafting Group for Amending the Law of Criminal Procedure and jointly published a book on UN standards and their application to the reform of Chinese criminal law and procedure. This was the first publication to present a systematic review of international standards and their implementation in China. As well under this first program, the Centre developed a collaborative relationship with the Central Prosecutors College (now National Prosecutors College), the national institute responsible for the training of all senior prosecutors in China, and in September 1996, ICCLR sent a delegation to a Sino-Canada Training Workshop on Criminal Procedure and Commercial Fraud at the College. This turned out to be a seminal event in the internationalization of judicial training in China as it was attended by over 200 chief prosecutors, including 110 from ethnic minority areas. Without the curriculum reform of the country’s legal training system exemplified by this event, the reform of the judicial system itself would not have been possible. As this work was going on, ICCLR was also working with the Chinese public prosecution agencies to promote prevention of crime, a fair and timely trial process and protection of human rights in criminal justice.
The initial ICCLR/RCCJ/CCLJ institutional linkages project in support of criminal justice reform grew into a sector-wide, comprehensive Canada-China criminal justice reform program. In 1997, the programme was renewed for another three years. In 2000 there was support for the Canada–China Cooperation Project for the Ratification and Implementation of Human Rights Covenants in China. Then in 2003, it took on another life until 2007 under the title of Implementing International Standards in Criminal Justice in China and with an additional partner – the China Prison Society – which expanded the programme field to also include human rights in prison , prison reform, and in particular community corrections.
Separate but building on the original project, ICCLR began in 1998, with funding support from CIDA, a two year cooperative programme to assist with the development of a nation-wide Legal Aid System in China. The project provided assistance to the National Legal Aid Centre (NLAC) of the Ministry of Justice, PRC for the development of the first national legal aid law and a legal aid system in China. This project eventually became a much larger CIDA legal aid support project managed by the Canadian Bar Association and IBM Canada. Then in 2003, ICCLR was able to further develop its relationship with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate which had begun under the CCJCP to begin a five year CIDA-funded project aimed at strengthening the country’s prosecution service and profession.
In order to successfully implement these six projects, and to enhance the benefits to both countries ICCLR drew upon the large pool of Canadian criminal justice expertise including the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of the Secretary of State (Asia & Pacific), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Ministry of the Attorney General of British Columbia and Ontario, the RCMP, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Vancouver Police Department, National Parole Board, Correctional Service of Canada, the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, the Canadian Bar Association (BC Branch), the Law Society of British Columbia, the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, the University of the Fraser Valley, Universities of Toronto and Ottawa, and the Simon Fraser University School of Criminology.
After thirteen years of programming in China, what ICCLR started grew exponentially in size, scope and reach. In the beginning, programming was delivered through a simple institution-to-institution linkage arrangement; later it was grounded in longer term partnerships involving universities, professional associations and government ministries. Where once it focused mainly on advocating reform, it was later directly involved in implementation of reform initiatives. Certainly it involved a great many more actors in both countries and covered virtually the whole gambit of criminal justice processes, including international human rights implementation, law making, women and the law, reform, policing, prosecution, trials, corrections, defense counsel, legal aid, implementing international standards and mutual legal assistance. Most importantly, ICCLR’s China programme was no longer a stand-alone effort; rather it was part of a larger programme, and so the beneficiary of all the advantages to be derived from a ‘programme approach’ to aid delivery.
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