Thank you for the lovely privilege to table this petition today on behalf of the residents of Barrie–Innisfil. I’d like to table:

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas the federal government is increasing the escalated carbon tax by 14%, on April 1, 2023;

“Whereas carbon tax cost increase will put more pressure on consumers who are already struggling with inflation;

“Whereas we call on the federal government to stop the carbon tax, which is a tax hike that Ontarians and Canadians cannot afford;

“Whereas the government of Ontario is helping to reduce the cost of living by keeping taxes low, freezing and eliminating licence plate renewal fees and scrapping the requirement to have licence plate stickers for passenger vehicle, light-duty trucks, motorcycles and mopeds and building on these measures in Bill 85, Building a Strong Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2023, the government continues to help Ontarians with the cost of living;

“Whereas we call on the Ontario government to urge the federal government to halt the carbon tax increase, that will raise the cost of everything;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To support the passage of Bill 85, Building a Strong Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2023.”

I will affix my signature and pass it to the page.

I am pleased to rise in support of this bill, Bill 102, Strengthening Safety and Modernizing Justice Act, 2023, on behalf of the residents of Barrie–Innisfil. Over the course of the past few months, the issue of law and order and justice has been a primary focus of the residents of Barrie–Innisfil, and they have told me time and time again it didn’t require striking any sort of round table or consultation, but simply taking their phone calls, listening to their emails. And now this bill is wholeheartedly supporting much of their concerns.

It builds on previous actions of our government, and that is to let the residents of Barrie–Innisfil and all Ontarians know that this government has their backs. We will ensure that they are safe. We will have the backs of those law enforcement officers, whether they’re the Barrie Police, South Simcoe police, OPP officers or police officers throughout this province so that we’re all safe and sound. And those officers who are out and have boots on the ground, they know they have the tools, they have the resources and the next generation of recruits to help them do their jobs.

Speaker, it’s no clearer than the statistics that are in front of us today. That is, in Ontario alone, we’ve seen an increase in serious violent crime and reoffending, especially when it comes to bail compliance. We have an increase in crime of about 9%; violent crime, 20%; the firearm use rate has increased by 129%. Speaker, now more than ever, we do need more boots on the ground. Part of this government’s groundbreaking initiative was to encourage more people to join the police forces by not having them have to have the requirement of post-secondary education.

I spoke to a local police officer in Barrie about this. In fact, he serves on the York Regional Police force. His name is Gary Harvey. He’s also a local Barrie councillor so he understands the full scope of community safety, both working in the heart of it but also being a public servant in many regards. This is a good example of people who really put duty above self, whether it’s serving our council or serving on police forces. He said this is going to provide equal opportunity to so many Ontarians who want to either serve their community or serve their province and be a police officer, but they can’t afford the tuition. So now that door is open for them to serve and do it well.

We have so many examples. I know, growing up, my next-door neighbour, Andy Atkinson rose through the ranks of being a York Regional Police officer, and he didn’t need to go to university or college for policing. He grew through the ranks and ended up being a homicide detective and did really well, and now he’s retired. I really want to thank Andy for all his work. But it’s people like that who we really need to count on to keep us safe. It’s people like our police chiefs and our deputy police chiefs—and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that tonight, as we are debating this bill, the South Simcoe police force is celebrating and swearing in their new deputy police chief today. She has 34 years of policing experience in her career, and that is Inspector Sutton. Congratulations, Inspector Sutton, for your great leadership. She has been a mentor in various roles. She really rose through the ranks as well. In 2021, she was an inspector and she has served in various different divisions, including patrol operations, support services, investigative services divisions.

Speaker, she is really breaking glass ceilings here. Inspector Sutton is the first female officer to join the emergency response unit, also known as ERU. In addition, she worked in the criminal investigations bureau as a sexual assault and child abuse investigator. She is also the first female to hold the rank of inspector at the service. She is a graduate of the Georgian College law and security administration program at the Barrie campus.

Congratulations, Inspector Sutton. We really appreciate you dedicating your career to the South Simcoe police. You, of course, started your policing career in Toronto back in 1988, and now we’re so grateful to have you in Innisfil as deputy chief to our great chief at South Simcoe police. Congratulations.

Speaker, in Barrie–Innisfil we’re very lucky to be surrounded by so many great individuals who dedicate their time to policing. Again, just two notes that I want to make as we also have new police chiefs coming in. We were able to commemorate and celebrate Police Chief Van Dyke who is now the new South Simcoe police chief, and I want to thank him for answering the call of duty. He served as the incoming chief during a very difficult time in the community of Innisfil when we lost Constable Morgan Russell and we lost Constable Devon Northrup—very dedicated police officers—in the line of duty. I want to thank Police Chief Van Dyke for really providing strong leadership during a very difficult time for the whole community, the whole police force. Again, I want to thank you for dedicating so many years of your service to policing and now stepping up to the plate as police chief.

Likewise in the community of Barrie, we also have a new police chief as well, Chief Rich Johnston. I want to welcome him and thank him for everything that he is doing in Barrie to keep our community safe as well and thank him for all his service and for answering the call of duty for the residents of Barrie.

If you look at local newspaper articles these days and over the past few months—and I was talking about things that residents have talked to me about. The most striking is when you hear back-to-back stories of something like, “Police Arrest Suspect After Vehicle ‘Taken at Knifepoint.’” This happened just a few days ago: “A 31-year-old man is in custody after the Barrie police responded to a report of a carjacking on Monday morning.” They were able to apprehend the individual and the car that was stolen. They were lucky at that point, considering what was involved in terms of a violent instrument.

But then again, we had, just in the summer, a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old who are now charged after attempting a carjacking and a shooting in Barrie. So crime is on the rise, and we definitely need more boots on the ground, and we need more of those officers who answer the call of duty to be able to go to these particular scenes. I’m grateful that we have our great police forces locally that are able to do that, but they need our government and they need a responsible government who is willing to step up to the plate to give the tools to do that.

In this legislation, we talk about many things, some of it being things like technology that’s going to help our investigators do things that they need. In fact, this came up a few months ago and also a few days ago, when, despite a search involving a police drone and a canine unit, investigators said that the suspect had fled, and in the case of my local area, the Barrie police said they were able to identify a suspect following a brief investigation by the service’s criminal investigation division, and they were able to use the technology of a drone, but this is again more resources, more boots on the ground and a government that understands that obviously things are advancing. We’ve been able to help police like the Barrie police through different grants through our government so that they are able to buy that particular technology to help with their forces.

It’s stuff like updating our facilities. We talked about justice centres, which are also part of this bill, that are coming across this province, but it complements some of the resources that we already have. In Barrie, we’re very lucky we have a really nice facility where people are able to give their disclosure, where feel a bit more safe, and so that victim doesn’t have to be re-traumatized because they’re in a more sound and respectful setting. That’s another good example for us locally.

And, of course, the mental health supports that are needed: We saw when, unfortunately, South Simcoe police did answer the call that of course ended tragically. The individual involved in that particular case, in that call in Alcona, did have a history of mental health issues. So, in that circumstance, if the police officer had a mental health worker with them, could things have been different? We don’t know. But in this legislation, we are obviously aware of that and the mental health supports that are needed with our policing and how it will help them.

But it’s not only just the resources for policing to make sure all Ontarians feel that they’re safe and know that they are safe because the resources are there, the legislation is there to back them up, and we continue with the recruiting, it’s also thinking of the other side, and that’s the judicial side of the equation. So this bill marries those two very well.

I remember talking to Josephine Fernicola about her issue of being a victim of domestic violence. She’s very grateful to see that Keira’s Law, which was a motion passed by the member from Oakville, is also codified in this bill. So I want to thank the member from Oakville North–Burlington for her work on Keira’s Law, which is built into this bill, which will help many advocates like Josephine. Josephine has become a big advocate because in her personal life, this is something that she experienced.

She sent me her personal statement, and I just wanted to read a few excerpts from it. I met Josephine—actually, I was selling poppies at the local No Frills in Innisfil—and she and her children were selling candies for their local Brownies chapter. At the time, I would have never known she was exposed to domestic violence, and she was going through difficult times. But I saw her a little bit after that, and she came up to me and explained to me what had happened, everything she’s been through and how great the help was from the women’s and children’s shelter in Barrie and how great the resources were to her. But her journey really started back in 2016, when she made a life-changing decision to end a very abusive marriage.

She said to me in her statement that after being together for 12 years and married for nine, she knew she and her five children desperately needed help. She had quite the journey. She said in her statement, “The sad reality is that once you leave, the court system allows the manipulation, control and fear to continue. I was dragged through the court system, leaving me completely depleted ... financially and emotionally.”

Speaker, she ends her statement by saying finally, “On April 19, 2023, ‘Kiera’s Law’ was passed in Ontario. This means that judges will receive education on domestic violence and coercive control in intimate partner and family relationships. Women who have experienced our court system know that changes like these are long overdue.”

Again, Speaker, you see that our government is—as we’re often talking to many Ontarians, many in our community, we have legislation that we’re debating and introducing every day in this Legislature that responds to the needs of everyday Ontarians like Josephine, whose daughter now has a really bright future in front of her, and she has a very strong mom, who was very brave to share her story, to stand up. And now she’s a huge local advocate. She goes to the flag-raisings to raise awareness about intimate partner violence and, of course, on femicide, which one of my colleagues had spoken about earlier today.

I want to go back to thanking the member from Oakville North–Burlington, because it all started thanks to her motion, which was adopted in this particular bill, so I want to thank her for those efforts and her work on that particular issue.

Speaker, it’s not just Josephine. We’ve seen a lot of groups in Barrie, like OAITH, which has done a lot of work with women fleeing these particular situations. For them to see that this is now a law is a huge game-changer, so I definitely want to thank all the advocates for everything they’ve done on this part.

Speaker, this bill touches on a lot of different areas. I’ve only touched on some of them, and certainly there’s more to go over, but I think it comes down to one fundamental point, and that is that we need to use every tool we can as a government to tell Ontarians that we are amending the necessary laws or acts or adding to things that we need to create a stronger and safer community for everyone, whether it’s the great grants that our Solicitor General is sending out to communities, whether it’s faith-based communities—I know a lot of our faith-based communities in Barrie–Innisfil are really grateful to the Solicitor General because they were beneficiaries of those grants, to be able to strengthen up the security efforts. For example, our Chabad in Barrie is very grateful; it’s a growing Jewish community and, of course, they’re very thankful to the minister for this particular grant.

There’s a lot to say about this particular bill, and I just wanted to take the opportunity to say that our community in Barrie–Innisfil has been through quite a lot. I talked about Constable Russell and Constable Northrup. I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Constable Greg Pierzchala, who was 28. He also grew up in Barrie; he ended up serving in Haldimand county and worked for the OPP there. He was 28 years old, on his first day of service, and unfortunately the first call he received did not go according to anyone’s plan on the first day of the job. Unfortunately, he was going out in the good service of his heart. He saw a car that was pulled over on the side of the road and, unfortunately, the folks who were near that vehicle had ulterior motives; one of them was out on bail for serious offences, and they killed the constable. Many of us attended that particular funeral, and that’s one life too many lost because of that particular failure in the system.

Again, part of this bill is building on the previous work that our government has done calling on the federal government to strengthen the bail system to stop that revolving door of criminals going out and being able to reoffend and, of course, harm constables like we had with Constable Greg Pierzchala, who obviously died at a very young age and spent his whole young career living up to that moment, whether it was serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, whether it was being a member of the Simcoe-Grey foresters, which is a local regiment in Barrie, in Simcoe county—his dream was to be a police officer, and that dream was cut short. It could have definitely been prevented if we had a strengthened bail system, so one loud and clear message that our government has and I have, too, for the residents of Barrie–Innisfil is, they know that this government stood up very strongly, not only through our own motions in this Legislature—we called for stronger bail provisions—but also talking to our federal counterparts saying that enough is enough, and this revolving door needs to stop. We’re hearing in our area various strong examples of why that needs to happen.

And so, this government doesn’t take those types of issues lightly, which is why we have the bill before us: To do everything we can, not only to strengthen our policing system and recruit more people into the profession, but also simultaneously strengthen our justice system, as well, at the same time.

Speaker, I think that’s a good example of how this government can do many things at once to help the people of Ontario. We can both help them with the ongoing cost of living, and at the same time the rate of crime that is happening on our streets. I think it’s clear to everyone that everyone wants to be able to come home knowing that they have a safe community to live in, whether they’re walking to get their groceries or taking their kids to soccer practice. Everyone deserves to be in a safe community, but that can’t happen without the actual boots on the ground, so I want to commend the leadership of our Premier and, of course, our Solicitor General and our Attorney General for the fact that they had the foresight to make the recent changes that they did, to give more people the opportunity to pursue a great career in policing.

I’ve met a lot of individuals who’ve gone through Georgian College, and they really enjoyed the different police foundations courses which led them to their policing, but of course there are others who would love to enter the profession and have a real passion for it, real community advocates who are out there doing numerous initiatives, but simply maybe—that particular tuition threshold can be sometimes up to $15,000 or more, and they can’t, of course, meet that requirement. Now that will bring a lot of people who have that passion for policing, which will strengthen our communities and make our communities better, because we’ll be having people who serve and answer the call of duty, who are passionate for what they do every single day.

Many of us could just turn to police officers we know in our community. I was chatting with the Barrie Police team, and the fact of how they work in every part of the community to be able to help—they’re not just there to always be the enforcers; they’re also there to be community champions. They’re there whether it’s Kempenfest during the summer months or whether it’s in schools to inspire the next generation of police officers. They’re always out there in the community, not only providing that cover of safety, but also that inspiration for individuals who want to go into, again, the call of duty for their community.

The programming these days is just incredible. With Barrie Police, of course, there’s a lot of focus on mental health, a lot of focus on how they can help with gender-specific violence. They’ve even changed their community service vehicle, so that it’s more inviting and more pleasant. I know when some people drive by Barrie, they’ll see this bright blue and bright green coloured vehicle and they’ll say, “Oh, that’s an eyesore,” but it did its job. It got people’s attention, and when that’s out in the community, they know that the police presence is there and they can go up and talk to police officers. It’s a little more inviting.

And so I want to thank Chief Johnston, because I know we had a discussion about this very recently, and he and his team who obviously came up with that campaign. I’m really excited for everything they have planned this summer in terms of their community involvement, and want to thank them for continuously pushing the envelope in terms of what they’re doing in the community. Not only are they answering these calls when we have serious things like a takedown for an auto theft—which was incredible; I want to thank the officers involved in that—but also being out in the community, going above and beyond the call of duty.

With that, Speaker, I’ll just wrap up my remarks with a quote from Peter Leon on this particular bill. He’s a corporate communications officer with the Barrie Police, and he says, “This bill will provide professional policing in Ontario the resources and the ability to keep our communities safe for years to come and for people considering a career in policing, the opportunity to work in a rewarding, honourable profession that puts community first while assisting and helping those who are victims of crime or in the need of assistance.”

I think our government is clear: We’re taking swift action. We see a problem, and we want to come up with a solution. We talked about bail reform before. We’ve introduced a motion within this Legislature. We have members of this Legislature, like the member for Oakville North–Burlington, like the member for Etobicoke–Lakeshore, who have been working on law-and-order legislation of their own that they’ve introduced in this House. We’re constantly talking to our community members. We’re constantly introducing different kinds of legislation. We’re building on this legislation. We’ve always got our ear to the ground.

And as the Premier says, he’s the biggest advocate for the Ontario Provincial Police; he’s always got the back of our OPP.

If you see the backgrounds of Chief Johnston and Chief Van Dyke, certainly, they’ve pursued a lot more post-secondary education. Chief Johnston is even pursuing a master’s right now at one of the universities in the United Kingdom, online, and he started with a degree in psychology. So I think the reality here is that police officers can come from all different walks of life.

One thing Chief Johnston and Chief Van Dyke say is that they have a huge recruiting challenge. They have the tools within their police force to be able to give the training necessary. However, they need the people and the bodies to come in through the front door that they can bring up to speed, on the ground, with the experience to get them trained and helping the community, because they can’t afford to wait.

This is not just something I hear in my community, but it’s something that we hear from places like the president of the Ontario police association. He says that these grants provide the necessary financial resources to support active engagement in monitoring of bail compliance. The ability of police services to utilize these financial resources will be limited by ongoing staff shortages and competing organization priorities. He goes on to say more things, but at the end he’s very supportive.

In addition, our Attorney General had mentioned some of those concerns in his remarks this morning when he talked about the fact that we can now train provincial judges, we can train our JPs, justices of the peace, with this piece of legislation, thanks to the work of the member from Oakville North–Burlington on the Keira’s Law piece. That also builds on some of the work the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore is doing with Clare’s Law. There you have it, Speaker. Many members of this Legislature are working towards an improved court system.

In that case, as we know, if they knew that that particular member had a history of violence towards his wife, it may also trickle down to the children. That’s how we lost Keira, unfortunately, and that is one person too many who could have been prevented from us losing that young girl who had her whole life in front of her, but with this piece of legislation, with the leadership of our Attorney General, we’ll be able to prevent those cases in the future.

Report continues in volume B.