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Status

• Bill C-242 received first reading on September 22, 2025. It proposes amendments to the Criminal Code and the Department of Justice Act; it is not presented as enacted law.

Criminal Code

• Bail principles: Replaces the principle of restraint with a requirement that police, justices and judges give primary consideration to public safety and protection. It adds public safety to considerations governing police detention and release conditions.
• Major offences: Creates a category of “major offence” drawn from specified reverse-onus bail offences. Police could not release a person arrested for a major offence under the affected release provisions.
• Reverse onus: Adds several offences and alleged circumstances to the reverse-onus bail provisions, under which the accused must show why detention is not justified. These include specified violent offences and offences allegedly involving violence against a peace officer or first responder.
• Repeat major-offence charges: If a person is charged with a major offence allegedly committed while on release for another major offence, and was convicted of a major offence within the preceding ten years, a justice must order detention. Only a superior court judge could then grant release, on a reverse-onus basis.
• Public-safety detention: Changes the assessment of future offending or interference with justice from “substantial likelihood” to whether it is “reasonably foreseeable.” The decision-maker must consider criminal history, particularly major-offence convictions, past breaches of release conditions and reoffending while on release.
• Citizenship and passports: A justice assessing release must consider whether the accused is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and, if not, whether an attempt to leave Canada is reasonably foreseeable. The bill requires passport deposits for non-citizens and non-permanent residents released by police undertaking or under the specified reverse-onus judicial release provision.
• Sureties: Prohibits naming as a surety someone convicted of an indictable offence in the preceding ten years.
• After a guilty plea or finding: Introduces reverse-onus detention rules for people who plead guilty to, or are found guilty at trial of, an indictable offence. Different release rules remain for summary offences.
• Other changes: Defines “first responder” to include employed or volunteer firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians, and permits the federal government to add classes by regulation. It also changes the wording governing a judge’s decision on a forfeiture application.

Department of Justice Act

• Requires the Justice Minister to prepare an annual report on judicial interim release and table it in each House of Parliament within that House’s first 15 sitting days after January 1.
• The report must cover release outcomes, compliance, reoffending, incidents requiring public attention, the effectiveness of conditions, and accessibility and disparities between groups.

Costs and timing

• The supplied text does not specify implementation costs or a coming-into-force date.