This enactment amends the Criminal Code to add, as an aggravating circumstance for sentencing purposes, evidence that an offence was directed at persons or property that were vulnerable due to long response times by emergency services or due to their remoteness from such services or from an established community and, for the purposes of some offences, the fact that a person carried, used or threatened to use a weapon or an imitation of a weapon.

It also requires that a court, when exercising its discretion to grant credit for time spent in custody in determining the sentence to be imposed on a person convicted of an offence, consider the reasons for detaining the person in pre-sentence custody.

His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

Aggravating circumstance

348.‍1 If a person is convicted of an offence under section 98 or 98.‍1, subsection 279(2) or section 343, 346 or 348, the court imposing the sentence on the person shall consider as an aggravating circumstance the fact that the Insertion start place, within the meaning of paragraph 348(3)‍(a) or (b) Insertion end , was occupied at the time of the commission of the offence and that the person, in committing the offence, knew that or was reckless as to whether the Insertion start place Insertion end was occupied and

• (a) used violence or threats of violence to a person or property; Insertion start or Insertion end

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  (b) carried, used or threatened to use a weapon or an imitation of a weapon.

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  (iii.‍11) evidence that the offence was committed against a person or property that was vulnerable due to long response times by emergency medical or police services or the remoteness of the person or property from emergency medical or police services or from an established community,

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Considerations

(3.‍01) In exercising its discretion under subsection (3), a court shall take into account the fact that the person was detained in custody for the reason stated in the record referred to in subsection 515(9.‍1).