Bill C-238 amends subsection 738(1) of the Criminal Code to let courts order restitution to persons that are not individuals and that provide front-line services to a community when those organizations incur specific expenses as a result of offences connected to human trafficking or certain Controlled Drugs and Substances Act offences. The change explicitly lists categories of recoverable costs — emergency shelter and medical supplies, harm reduction programming, security measures, counselling for staff, and added operational expenses to meet demand — and limits payments to reasonable amounts that are readily ascertainable.
The measure targets the direct financial burden placed on community organizations by drug- and human‑trafficking crimes. For compliance officers and legal counsel, it creates a new class of restitution claimant, a predictable set of expense categories to prove at sentencing, and fresh evidentiary and administrative questions for prosecutors, defence counsel and sentencing judges.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill inserts a new paragraph (f) into Criminal Code subsection 738(1) authorizing restitution orders payable to non‑individuals that provide front‑line community services for specified offences and enumerates five categories of recoverable expenses. Payments are capped at the actual expense amounts, subject to a reasonableness test and the condition that the expense be readily ascertainable.
Who It Affects
Directly affected are community organizations — shelters, harm‑reduction groups, victim support agencies, and service providers — and offenders convicted under ss. 279.01–279.02 of the Criminal Code or ss. 5, 6 or 7.1 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Judges, prosecutors and defence counsel will also need to adapt sentencing practice to accommodate organizational restitution claims.
Why It Matters
This creates a statutory pathway for collective, community‑level harms to be addressed in sentencing rather than leaving costs solely to public funding or charitable supports. It changes who can be compensated through criminal sentencing and establishes specific categories of loss that courts can recognize, which could alter plea and sentencing negotiations and post‑conviction enforcement priorities.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The bill modifies the Criminal Code's restitution framework so that courts can order offenders to pay community organizations — defined as persons other than individuals — for certain expenses those organizations incur because of crimes tied to human trafficking or specified drug offences. Instead of treating restitution as exclusively a remedy for individual victims, the amendment creates a statutory route for organizations that provide emergency shelter, medical response, harm reduction, security, counselling for staff, and increased operational capacity to recover those costs directly from offenders.
Practically, an organization will need to ask the Crown to seek restitution at sentencing or file materials for the court to consider. The measure limits recoverable amounts to actual expenses and requires them to be reasonable and "readily ascertainable," which imports an evidentiary focus: receipts, invoices, staffing records, program budgets and similar documentation will be what persuades a judge.
The bill also states that these payments are made independently of other amounts ordered under section 738(1), signaling that organizational restitution can be added on top of restitution to individual victims or other financial sanctions.For courts and counsel, the amendment raises routine sentencing questions: how to assess reasonableness, how to prevent overlap with other ordered payments, and how to apportion scarce offender funds among multiple claimants. It does not change enforcement mechanics for collecting money from an insolvent offender, nor does it create a priority scheme among claimants — those operational details will be resolved under existing enforcement and execution provisions unless further legislative or regulatory guidance is provided.Because the bill lists specific expense categories, it narrows the universe of compensable harms compared with an open-ended restitution power, but it also requires courts to engage with organizational financial records in a way sentencing judges have not routinely done.
That will increase the evidentiary and administrative load at sentencing and may shift negotiation leverage between Crown and defence when restitution is at issue.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill inserts paragraph (f) into Criminal Code subsection 738(1), creating a restitution route specifically for "persons other than an individual" that provide front‑line community services.
It applies only to offences under Criminal Code ss. 279.01–279.02 (human‑trafficking‑related provisions) and to ss. 5, 6 or 7.1 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
Recoverable expenses are limited to five enumerated categories: emergency shelter and medical supplies, harm reduction programs, security measures, counselling for staff who experience workplace trauma, and costs to respond to increased service demand.
Payments must not exceed the actual amount of those expenses and are payable only to the extent the expenses are reasonable and "readily ascertainable," placing an evidentiary requirement on claimants.
The paragraph specifies these organizational restitution payments are payable independently of any other amounts ordered under s. 738(1), meaning they can be ordered in addition to restitution to individual victims or other financial orders.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Purpose and policy context
The preamble frames the amendment around harms caused by drug and human trafficking and the administrative and financial burdens those crimes place on community service providers. It signals Parliament's intent to recognize community reparations as a sentencing objective and to permit community organizations to obtain restitution — context that guides judicial interpretation but does not create operative legal obligations beyond the amendment itself.
New statutory path for organizational restitution
This is the operative change: the bill adds a new paragraph permitting courts to order offenders to pay certain organizations for expenses caused by designated crimes. The technical mechanics are simple — a new head of claim in the existing restitution provision — but the practical effect is to create a new class of claimant in sentencing hearings and to require judges to make findings about organizational losses.
Enumerated categories of recoverable expenses
The amendment enumerates five specific categories of expense that organizations may recover: emergency shelter and medical supplies (explicitly including overdose‑reversal supplies), harm reduction program costs, security-related expenses, counselling for staff trauma, and operational costs tied to increased demand such as hiring or training. By prescribing categories, Parliament constrains judicial discretion to those types of community harms, which simplifies some determinations but invites disputes about whether an expense fits a listed category.
Reasonableness, ascertainability and independence from other orders
The bill caps awards at the amount of the expenses and requires they be reasonable and "readily ascertainable," which imports an evidentiary standard (documentation, invoices, payroll records). It also states these payments are to be ordered independently of other amounts under s. 738(1), making organizational restitution a separate line item that can be added on top of individual victim restitution — a drafting choice with immediate implications for how judges prioritize and allocate limited funds.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on this topic across all five countries.
Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Front‑line community organizations (shelters, harm‑reduction agencies, victim support services): They gain a statutory route to recoup costs directly from offenders for specified expenses incurred responding to trafficking and drug offences.
- Staff of service providers: By allowing counselling costs for workplace trauma to be ordered, the bill recognizes occupational harms and can improve access to staff mental‑health supports funded through restitution.
- Local public health and safety programs: Programs that run overdose prevention and infectious disease control may recover program costs tied to criminal activity, reducing reliance on municipal or charitable funding.
Who Bears the Cost
- Convicted offenders: Any restitution ordered under the new paragraph will increase the financial obligations imposed at sentence and compete with other financial penalties and victim restitution for limited offender assets.
- Crown attorneys and courts: Prosecutors must identify, document and prove organizational expenses at sentencing; judges must evaluate business records and make factual findings, increasing administrative and evidentiary burdens.
- Community organizations themselves: To obtain awards, organizations will need to prepare financial documentation and potentially participate in sentencing proceedings, which imposes staff time and legal costs that may be substantial for small charities.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill balances two legitimate goals — compensating community organizations for harms and costs caused by serious criminal activity, and preserving fair, manageable sentencing procedures — but achieving both is difficult: compelling offenders to pay community organizations recognizes collective harm, yet it risks diverting limited offender funds, creating enforcement complexity, and imposing burdensome evidentiary requirements on small organizations.
The amendment creates practical implementation challenges that the bill text does not resolve. "Readily ascertainable" and "reasonable" are fact‑dependent standards; courts will need to develop consistent approaches to admissible evidence (invoices, payroll, program budgets) and to discounting or apportioning expenses connected only partly to the criminal conduct. The explicit independence of these payments from other restitution orders raises distributional questions: when offender funds are insufficient, courts and enforcement officers will face competing claims without a statutory priority scheme in this amendment.
There is also a potential administrative gap: small non‑profits may lack the records or legal capacity to make a convincing restitution claim, meaning the remedy exists on paper but is difficult to access in practice. Finally, ordering restitution to organizations does not change the fundamental collectability problem — an offender's sentence or assets still determine recoverability — so the amendment may increase awarded but uncollectible judgments, shifting costs back to communities and the state unless enforcement resources increase.
There's more to this law than the bill.
Codify Laws traces every connection across the legislative lifecycle.