It’s always an honour to be able to rise in the House and today on Bill 102, An Act to amend various Acts relating to the justice system, fire protection and prevention and animal welfare, as the critic for the Solicitor General. I think the one thing I’d like to open with: The Official Opposition, under Marit Stiles, and I think the government as well, all want to improve community safety. We perhaps have different visions of how to do that, but we all want to do that.

Before I go through the bill, I want to lay out a few facts. This is a technical bill, and it makes some important, relevant changes. It was introduced, I believe, yesterday. I’m not complaining. These are the facts for us, so we live with the facts. But it was introduced yesterday. It’s technical. The Solicitor General’s lead and the government’s lead was an hour ago. I listened intently. I like to listen to what people are talking about—people who have had time to study it; people who have made changes they feel are relevant, have had their ministries look into it.

It’s our job to give credible critique. Quite frankly, it’s impossible to give credible critique on 12 hours’ notice, so it’s going to be a very high overview of this bill.

Both the Solicitor General and the Attorney General—I’ve dealt with them many times, and they are thoughtful people, but the way that this bill has been presented to the people’s House is not thoughtful at all.

There have been other bills where at least the lead, the hour from the government, is done on a different day, so that gives you some time to actually listen to what the ministers say and think of tough questions. It’s our job to look for problems, because, as the parliamentary assistant said, no legislation is perfect, and if we can help find something, that’s a benefit to Ontarians.

The way that this bill is being put through the House—we will likely vote on second reading tomorrow—is not a benefit to Ontarians. It’s not using this House and the official opposition at their full potential. I can understand that the government perhaps doesn’t want us to do our job—and we will do our job despite the roadblocks that the government is seemingly trying to put in front of us. I don’t believe that the members sitting here, regardless of side, want to do that, because deep down, we all want the best for Ontarians. But that’s actually not how this bill is being presented.

There are many people and many organizations that are impacted by this bill—all Ontarians, but many individual organizations. We’ve reached out. They don’t even have time to call us back. So I don’t know how much consultation the government has done with some of these organizations, but they haven’t allowed the official opposition the benefit of that, or Ontarians.

There’s a reason we have an owl and an eagle on two sides of this House—especially on technical bills, on issues that impact everyone, on policing, on fire safety.

I’m going to talk a little bit later on the PAWS Act. We all voted in favour. All the livestock groups voted in favour. There are issues with the PAWS Act. They’re not reflected in these changes. Why not?

So that’s what I’d like to open with—that in this Legislature, the government could do a lot better at how it actually puts bills forward. I think you would find that the Legislature would be less fractious if that was actually the case. When the government puts bills forward under such short notice that it is physically not possible to actually contact stakeholders and have them turn around and tell us what their issues are with a bill, you think that somebody is trying to hide something. I’m not sure that’s the case, but you’re always looking for that, and perhaps for no reason.

If I go to buy something from a business and the push is really hard—“You’ve got to sign now”—I often walk away; I just don’t trust it. That’s the same feeling I’m getting. “We hope that the opposition fully supports this.” We have not had 24 hours to look at it. I wouldn’t buy a used car from somebody with that pitch. That’s a problem. But with this bill, it’s a big problem.

Anyway, let’s go talk about the bill and talk about the issues surrounding the bill. I’m going to try to follow the schedules as they’re presented in the bill. The first part of the bill, schedule 1, talks about community safety and policing. I think we all want to see safe communities. We also want to have—I think everyone wants police officers to be safe as well. They play a critical role in our society. They don’t play the only role in community safety, but they play a critical role.

I think everyone knows this: I often tell personal stories in this House as a way—well, to fill up the hour. I tell it like it is, okay? But I have a reason to tell them too: There’s usually a moral at the end of the story.

Everyone knows I was involved in this big issue locally, and we did some things that I probably wouldn’t do now. One time, I organized a protest, and we blocked the train for two hours. We let the police know before we did it, and 80 tractors—we parked our tractors on the tracks in my hometown. It was very tense, not with the local police, but it was a big issue in our area at the time, and there were tactical police officers. I don’t know what their exact term is, but there were tactical police officers, a lot of them.

Yes.

We told the police that we would go on the tracks at 10 and we would leave at 12, nothing would be damaged. We were making a point. But we were on with heavy equipment. We weren’t wrecking anything, but we were on with tractors and front-end loaders. We were there, and we weren’t moving.

The tactical police took a very aggressive approach, at which point we mounted our tractors, and we were going to get equally as aggressive. The first person on that line of tractors—and yes, I’m going to say his name in the House; he deserves to be recognized for this—was Louis Ethier, one of my best friends. He had a 100-horsepower John Deere with prongs on it. The tactical police was yelling at him to get off the tracks, and he said, “Okay, I’ll get off the tracks, but if I do, I’m going to put that cop car on top of that cop car.”

We all started walking back towards the tractors. That’s the only time in my whole activist political career I was truly frightened, because it was going to happen.

A local police officer, who knew the people, who knew the tension, stepped in front of the tactical police officer. He yelled, “John, you said from 10 to 12. Does that deal still hold?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Down,” and we all stood down.

That police officer—he’s retired now, Mr. Fisher—stopped a catastrophe, because he knew. He knew his local people, he knew—and it became somewhat of a party after that.

I’ve said it in the House before: I got charged for that, paid a penalty for it, because I organized it. But I want to make a point: That police officer knew how to de-escalate. He knew.

Interjection: Great story.

There’s a second part to that story. Actually, a few months ago, I was on Bear Island. Bear Island is an Indigenous community in my riding on Lake Temagami—beautiful community. They hold a justice day for their young people. They have justices of the peace who come from Bear Island. They have a couple of conservation officers who come from Bear Island and they have an Indigenous unit of the OPP. They were there to show young Indigenous people what opportunities there are in the justice system, to work in the justice system so that they can be better represented because they work in the justice system. It is a great day.

I was sitting there with an OPP officer and he said, “Hey, you’re John Vanthof.” I said, “Yes, I’m the MPP.” He said, “No, I remember you from before.” I said, “Really?” He said, “The day you guys blocked the train.” I said, “You were there?” He said, “Yes, I was there.” I said, “Well, I don’t remember you. Wait a second. You weren’t one of the gun-yelling guys in the back?” And he said, “Yes, I was. But we learned a lot that day.”

Interjection: No kidding.

But you also have to have community support. Not only does the community have to have support, but so do the police. So there’s a shortage. I’m going to continue the story, a local story—oh, I’m getting a note. They’re telling me to change subjects.

In my riding, in Timiskaming–Cochrane, we have lost one police detachment in Matheson and it looks like we’re going to lose another in Noëlville. I’m a rural guy and I don’t pretend to understand everything that happens in urban. I don’t understand. But a lot of people in urban settings don’t understand rural. And when we lose a police detachment, we lose access, potentially, to—when there is an issue, when you call 911—and not everyone in my riding can call 911. There are parts of my riding where 911 doesn’t exist. Can you believe that? There are populated parts of my riding where 911 doesn’t exist. People from southern Ontario are moving into my riding thinking that they can call 911. That’s something that we could maybe address.

In Noëlville, where they’re trying to save their detachment, thousands of people have signed a petition to save it because the OPP are their only 24-hour—you need to have a police officer if something goes wrong in the country; they’re the only people that are there. So we feel it when there’s not enough police officers. We feel it.

The thing that surprises me a little bit—not surprises me, but one of the things the government is talking about here is that they’re making a few changes to bring more police into the system. Now, there are a couple of issues there. How are we going to ensure that those police end up where they’re needed? That’s a legitimate issue because it’s hard to recruit professionals in rural parts of the province—any type of professional. That’s an issue.

The government seems to be focusing on recruiting new, but not focusing as much on why police are leaving, why they are not staying. In the OPP, for example, constables on long-term leave with PTSD made up 33% of the vacancies in Ontario. So I think police officers need help too. If you’re going to recruit more police officers, and if you’re going to make changes to make recruiting easier, the government needs to take into account how to make sure that those police officers can deal with the stresses they’re going to be put under because—I don’t pretend to be a scientist; I’m not. Everybody here knows what I am. I’m a farmer. But if a police officer is under stress and he or she is dealing with things slightly beyond their control, things could go wrong. They’re dealing with people who are also under stress. So making changes to make it easier to become a police officer without changing the training and support that police officers have available to help them do their job is not a recipe for success. If you’re going to keep recruiting and keep losing them at 30%, you need to invest in people who are going to do their job in the best way possible.

We want to invest in Constable Fisher. There’s a very good chance that if Constable Fisher hadn’t stepped in, I wouldn’t be standing here, because I probably wouldn’t have been eligible to be an MPP. I owe a debt to Constable Fisher. Constable Fisher was a great police officer. Actually, I think all the police who were there that day were trained and were good at what they did. But the tactical team, at that time, wasn’t there to de-escalate; they were there to control, and they didn’t realize that the people they were sent to control were as powerful as they were and maybe more determined. Constable Fisher realized that. Constable Fisher had the trust of his people, but he also had our trust.

Those are the people we need as police. Those are the police officers I talk to. Those are the people that we have, in the vast majority of cases. But when I talk to police officers, they get frustrated when the government doesn’t—how am I going to word this? With how things have changed, you see so many people who feel they have no more hope, so many people who are homeless, so many people who feel dejected and who end up breaking our laws, but they’re just going to break them again. As a professional trying to do their job, that has got to be incredibly frustrating.

So police officers can do the job they need to do—we do need police—we also have to look at what’s causing the issues that are making some types of crime rise. Some of those issues are societal. We can’t look at the policing individually, and we can’t look at the societal individually. We have to look at it together. I’m not sure that this bill, the policing part, actually looks at this.

I’m not going to focus on this at all, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it: There has been a change here that a police officer only has to have a secondary school diploma. I think many police forces have their own criteria. A police officer, to be an effective police officer, needs a level of education, yes, but needs a level of life experience to understand what their true role is.

I hope it’s not the government’s idea that—the Premier, I believe, in the press, said that this is going to create a pipeline of police. I disagree with the Premier, obviously, on many issues. I don’t want a pipeline of police. I want—we want an adequate number of police officers who are well trained, who understand what they have to face. They have to face incredible issues and have the communal support so that they can direct people who they deal with on a regular basis, that they have the community support so that those people can be helped.

It’s a sad, sad state in our province that for people with mental health issues, their first point of contact is the police. Now, if their first point of contact was the police and, actually, then there was a wraparound that the police could direct them to, to actually help them, it wouldn’t be a sad statistic. But that’s not the case. So then they have repeated contact with the police, and that frustrates the police, creates bad outcomes. It’s not just frustrating for the people, but it’s tragic, very tragic.

I might go back to that later, but there are a few things I would also like to touch on. I’m not going to touch much on the coroners part or on the courts of justice.

The training for judges, justices, justices of the peace: That’s good. Everyone in the justice system should have a high level of training so they understand the issues that they’re dealing with. I would say that that also includes police. The two don’t seem to fit together, that while we will, according to this legislation, whether it’s the government’s meaning or not, lower the educational standards for police, but education for judges—and education for judges and justices of the peace is incredibly important. I’m not trying to minimize that at all, Speaker. But it should be important for all people in the justice system because those people have the responsibility and the power to impact people’s lives more, almost, than anyone else. So I’m not going to focus a lot on that, but increased training so we don’t get tragic outcomes—we are all human, we all make mistakes, but the more training we can have, the better off we are.

I’m going to come back to that too, but there’s one that I would like to talk about—the PAWS Act. Everyone in this House voted for the PAWS Act. Animal welfare is very important. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone sitting here who wants animals to be abused. I think we can be fairly safe on that. But—and I hesitate with this; I’m not taking this lightly—there’s a difference between a pet and livestock. There’s no successful farmer who mistreats their livestock. It doesn’t work like that, because if they’re not healthy and happy, they’re not flourishing, and it’s not worth getting up in the morning if they’re not healthy and happy.

But the PAWS Act—and there’s a case I’m going to talk about. The livestock organizations are all in favour—again, because farmers do not want to have animals abused, but the PAWS inspectors have the ability to change people’s lives as well. Now the parliamentary assistant alluded to—I’m not sure if she was talking about the same issue—who pays? When an animal is deemed that there’s an issue and the inspector says that animal has to be removed, who pays for the care and control of that animal? That should be the liability of the owner, but there has been a case where the animals were completely healthy but the inspector deemed—it was a beef herd—that there was too much debris in the yard. The animals were completely healthy and they were removed and placed under supervision, and the bill was sent to the farmer. The bill was some $400,000. It would have been much better if they had just said, “Sell them.” They were healthy; sell them.

The farmer took it to the tribunal and he won. The bill was reduced to $14,000, which is much more, for lack of a better word, sane in commercial—the government’s appealing it. I can’t talk about the appeal. Neither can the government. That’s their line. But in that case, if this happens, then the PAWS Act destroyed that farm, and the animals were healthy. There’s no argument about the health of the animals.

Agricultural organizations are concerned. Farmers are concerned. I’ve talked to a few farmers, talked to a few organizations who didn’t know there were changes to the PAWS Act coming. They would have liked to know. When this bill goes to committee, hopefully they will accept some amendments or the government proposes amendments themselves, because that is a flaw in the PAWS Act.

No one should have the right to abuse an animal—no one. But when the animals are healthy, then we also have to look at common sense. Common sense would dictate that, okay, perhaps the owner isn’t capable of taking care of these animals, so perhaps there’s some way to help the owner sell the animals as opposed to boarding them and having a bill for far more than the animals are ever worth. That’s an issue.

It might only be one issue, but it’s an issue. I’d like to read into the record, if I can just—bear with me, Speaker. It’s legal now to use—

Yes, it’s legal now. I can use it now. News flash: This is the first time I’ve ever done this.

This is a news article: “Tribunal judgement saves farmer from almost $400,000 bill after beef animals removed for no reason.

“The 77-year-old” farmer “must pay only $14,276 of the $391,196 sought by Provincial Animal Welfare Services ... when its officers seized his healthy beef herd before Christmas and held them at expensive foster farms for months.” Again, this is a news article. I wasn’t there; I’m just going by the news.

“PAWS rounded up and removed 101 ... Angus-cross beef cattle December 16, after he failed to comply with orders to clean up ‘hazardous debris’ on parts of the 200-acre property where the animals roamed. Two animals were injured badly enough to be put down during the chaotic roundup involving the use of ATVs, and a contractor ended up in a Toronto hospital with serious injuries.”

That wasn’t the farmer who did that; that was PAWS. I think, now that we’re looking at PAWS, we need to look at how PAWS actually interacts. I take the parliamentary assistant at her word. When you create something, nothing is perfect. You need to look at how to make it better.

We all want to protect. We all have our favourite animals. The Solicitor General has got a rabbit; I have a dog.

Interjection.

But the difference is how to deal with an individual animal or how to deal with a herd. The animals were healthy. They weren’t healthy after the roundup, and neither were some of the people involved in the roundup. Again, the government, from what I understand, is appealing that. In the PAWS Act, perhaps that’s one of the amendments. But we always need to look at the cause.

I don’t want to leave the impression—and I’ve repeated it several times—that anyone in the official opposition or anyone in the agricultural community is okay with the abuse of animals—at no time. We have no problem with, if it’s identified that you have to act and you have to act quickly.

Speaking of quickly—and better minds than mine might know this better—if you are charged under the PAWS Act, you have five days to appeal. For a farmer, who could be very good at his job—it’s an allegation—five days in May is different than five days in November, because agriculture is very seasonal.

I’m not trying to disparage anyone. I don’t know any PAWS inspectors. I’m sure that they’re good at their job. But it’s so varied.

When it used to be under the SPCA—I don’t know if I’ve told this story before in the Legislature, but I’m going to tell it.

We had a dairy farm, and my wife had a little store across the road. We had a horse across from the store. It looked kind of cute. When people came to the store, they looked at it. The SPCA inspector at the time came to my wife’s store one day. She was a regular customer, a very nice person. And I’ll make this really clear: It’s the wife’s horse. I don’t like horses, and they don’t like me. Horses are pretty good judges of character.

The horse was lying sprawled out in the field. That’s how horses sleep sometimes. The inspector looked at my wife and said, “Oh, my God, that horse is dead.” She got really upset. And then Ria went, “Velvet,” and she went like this, and the horse got up and came to her.

Interjection.

I shouldn’t say this, but honestly, it wouldn’t have bothered me. I didn’t love the horse. I love my wife. I didn’t love my wife’s horse. I have no affinity for horses.

Interjections.

That inspector was probably very well trained at many things, but she didn’t recognize that. And I often think about that, because a PAWS inspector has a lot of power. If a PAWS inspector doesn’t know something, then that five days might not be enough.

There are very few other appeal processes where you only have five days. Now, I understand—I’m guessing why that five days is there is that if the animal is in crisis or near-crisis, you don’t want to give a 30-day period. I understand that. But there are all kinds of issues. Another one, anecdotally: The inspector didn’t know how to work the water bowl, so the animal didn’t have access to water. That’s not as silly as it sounds, because some of that stuff is very complicated. Like, I can’t use a cash machine. But when a person of power and who needs to have that power—we’re not disputing that that person needs to have that ability. But there needs to be some kind of appeal process, and it needs to be reasonable.

I think that’s something that has to be looked at if the government is now opening up the PAWS Act. Every piece of legislation, you should be able to open it up, and make it better. So if we’re going to open up the PAWS Act, let’s make it better. Let’s protect animals, but let’s make sure it actually works on the farm.

The livestock organizations all signed on. Many of them have their own internal processes, their own inspection systems, because they want to make sure that when they sell a product—I know a lot about dairy. When they ensure that the milk that you buy is produced by healthy animals that are housed in well-maintained facilities and that they have access to everything they need, Dairy Farmers of Ontario ensures that, but Dairy Farmers of Ontario also signed on to PAWS, to make sure that if there is any question that a third party can go in and say, “No, no. Okay,” that third party has to be reasonably appealable.

Now we’re going to go back—

Cows outside in the winter?

Cattle, especially dairy cattle, work hard. They work, right? Producing milk is hard. But for cows outside—so beef cows, who have thicker coats and who are used to it—it’s actually as healthy or healthier outside. As long as they eat more. It takes more energy to be outside. It’s better if they have protection, if you have protection from the wind. It’s a lot like us: If you’re ice-fishing in a tent or if you’re ice-fishing—

Interjection.

But that’s why I’m kind of out of my element talking about some of these issues, like policing, because I don’t know policing. I have an idea of what police officers face because I’ve seen some of the things they’ve faced. I’ve been involved. Police officers are unique: You’re either really happy to see them or not happy at all, right? And, tragically, in some cases, they never know what their next call is. They never know, right? And we have had tragic cases; tragedies have happened. They have an incredibly stressful job.

Anything that we can do to help them help us is good. But simply more faster, when we’re losing 30% due to PTSD? We need to look at what’s going on.

Policing is totally different, I think, in the city and in the country, but we need to make sure that they have access to the continuing training programs. We need to make sure that they are supported, but we can’t look—and this bears repeating, because I’ve got 11 minutes: We can’t look at it in isolation. You can’t just police yourself out of a problem. Even police will tell you that. You can’t just police yourself out of a problem, because your underlying problems continue to get bigger and you continually need to bolster your enforcement, and the same people keep getting recycled, recycled, recycled. That’s not a long-term solution. It’s not.

We need to look at what’s happening in our society, what’s causing some of the underlying issues and, yes, we need to make sure that there are enough police officers that are trained, supported, and that the justice system supports them and that the justice system—this bill speaks to it, partly, that in the justice system, the people, the judges, the justices of the peace are well trained. But also there has to be enough of them that we don’t have people languishing in provincial jails.

I toured the Monteith correctional facility a couple of times in my riding. And, I believe, the last time I toured it, 70% of the people in that correctional facility had never been tried for anything. They’re just waiting. Now, we have issues, and this House has discussed it, about violent offenders who have a high chance of—there’s a word for it—recidivism. So we need to concentrate on them, but we also need to deal with and help the people who have fallen in trouble with our system but really could be helped if they had access to justice in a more reasonable time.

I don’t often talk about Indigenous issues because I am not Indigenous. I have no lived experience. One of my colleagues is; I’ve learned so much from the member from Kiiwetinoong. But there is something that happens often in our ridings. If someone from one of the communities on the coast falls on the wrong side of the law, they go to Monteith. The courthouse is in Cochrane. If they get their day in court, and if they are found to be not guilty, they are stuck in Cochrane. They have no way to get back home. They just: “See you.” So they take you from Moosonee or wherever, they take you to Monteith, then you get your day in court and the courtroom doors open and you’ve got no way to get home, and you’ve got no money. And you wonder why we have issues with criminality.

Interjection: And homelessness.

And homelessness.

I’ve said this before: The district of Cochrane, the area covered by the Cochrane social services board—so that’s Cochrane, Timmins and the surrounding area, to the coast—has the highest number of homeless people per thousand in the province. The highest in the province. There is still a couple of feet of snow north of Cochrane. It hits minus 40 degrees regularly in Cochrane. It’s a great place to live but it has its issues. We know that; we live in northern Ontario. So we’re wondering why we have issues there. Let’s look at how to fix that and then we’re going to have fewer issues.

Are we going to solve everything? No. We are always going to need well-trained law enforcement; that’s a fact of life. That’s one of the things about a civil society: You need people to enforce rules and regulations when some people aren’t civil. But it is also the role of civil society, the role of our government, to actually look at the underlying issues, identify them, and try to deal with them.

I’ve had this job for 12 years. I can remember, when I got here, being homeless was a Toronto thing. It was a big-city thing—and it’s never acceptable. I’m not saying it’s ever acceptable, but it was kind of: “Oh, there’s a homeless person there.” But now, there are encampments. The highest level of homelessness in the province is in Cochrane, and we just keep going on like there’s nothing wrong. We talk about spending millions here and we’re spending millions there, but I don’t see it on the street.

I do see that the use of food banks is going up exponentially. That tells me that what the government is talking about and what’s really happening are two different things. There are two Ontarios. It’s almost like there’s corporate Ontario and the rest of us.

I’m veering off the bill, Speaker. I’m going to veer back because I’m self-correcting here. I’m one of those people who doesn’t really need enforcement; I self-correct.

I was coming to the theme of, again, you can’t simply enforce yourself out of a problem, because when you try and do that, you’re just pushing the problem onto someone else. And, without proper community support, one of the groups you’re forcing the problem onto is our justice system, our police officers, our court system—and it’s being overwhelmed now. We need to look at having trained officers on the ground. We need all those things, but we have to also look at the underlying cost. We need to look at that.

I’m going to close on this issue: We need to have people in place who understand local conditions. That’s why people in the country instinctively know that when you lose detachments, when you lose—it’s not that the OPP is not going to try and do their job. That’s not the case. But you’re going to lose your local connection to the community. In my case, Officer Fisher might not have done that. We would have made a lot more news coverage. The only reason that happened is because Officer Fisher was around. He was at local sports events. He knew us, and I think—I’ve never asked him this, and I never asked his permission to use his name either, so I might be in big trouble. I’m sure it might have been frowned upon when he did that, when he went and stepped in, but he trusted his gut because he knew us. It’s really important that we don’t forget that and don’t think that we can control everything from far away.

When the Solicitor General talked in one of the questions about the changes to police boards, that might be a good thing to have them more local. Hopefully, we’ll have some time when this comes to third reading—that we can be a lot more technical. I said it was going to be a pretty high overview on this, because this is what you get in under 24 hours. You get a few good stories. But it’s an issue, an issue that hopefully we can correct here.

In closing, I’d like to thank you very much for your indulgence, Speaker, for your occasional smile and for allowing me to speak.

Thank you very much for that question. I alluded to it in my remarks that 30% of vacancies are caused by long-term leaves for PTSD. That’s an example of the stress that officers face, but it’s also a warning flag that there needs to be more support so officers can face the issues that they are forced to deal with on a regular basis and are forced to deal with on our behalf.

Is it the sole cause? No. But enforcement is part of the safety mechanism. When there’s not enough enforcement, and people know there’s not enough enforcement, we have the issues that we have.

Also, there are some breeds that don’t do well outside and there are some breeds that don’t do well inside. You need to know that. It’s part of their job.