The member from Simcoe–Grey.

I want to thank the Solicitor General and the Attorney General for bringing forward this bill, which I think has a lot of great stuff in it. I’m particularly excited about the changes to intimate partner violence and judicial education. I just wanted to ask the Attorney General how this will work and how we expect it will make a difference for victims of intimate partner violence.

Questions?

Thank you very much for the presentation. I will start by saying that we absolutely agree that we need to be supporting all of our front-line heroes. I do have questions about some of the things you could have put in this bill that would have supported them.

But I really do want to focus on the fact that, four years ago, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, looking into the broken trust report looking into the actions of Thunder Bay Police Service, recommended the province establish a forensic pathology unit in Thunder Bay. It found that a number of autopsies that were conducted in Toronto were having an effect on police investigations, particularly those deaths affecting Indigenous people.

Really, this is an issue of access to justice. Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the Solicitor General: Will this government commit to funding autopsy care in Thunder Bay to restore the faith of Indigenous people in death investigations of their loved ones?

I want to thank the member. It’s something that’s very personal to me because when I went to Thunder Bay, I understand that the relationship that the office of the coroner has with the great hospital in Thunder Bay is coming to an end. So we’re looking at finding a way to extend this. Yes, you’re correct, we want to look for a permanent solution. This is something that my ministry is looking into, and I’m actively pursuing options. But thank you for the question; it’s a great question.

I have to say, I was pleased to see Keira’s Law enveloped into this bill because, as the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore would agree, when children are not safe, it is our duty to do something about it.

Would the members opposite not agree it’s the same thing with vulnerable people who go missing and that this would have been a prime opportunity to add vulnerable missing people into legislation and that the government had the ability to do so?

I’d love to hear from the Solicitor General his thoughts on Bill 74 and the Missing Persons Amendment Act.

My question to the Solicitor General: I listened carefully to your hour lead, and I agree with you that we owe so much—your words—to the people who keep us safe, the people on the front line. You referenced firefighters. I know that I brought up in the House the other day a firefighter from Welland, Captain Craig Bowman, who now has esophageal cancer, and he is palliative. He’s being denied presumptive coverage by WSIB because rather than 25 years, he has only been a front-line hero for 22.5 years.

What will this bill do for Captain Craig and his family?

This question is addressed to the member from Etobicoke–Lakeshore. I know that you are an animal lover. How do the proposed amendments related to the Animal Care Review Board balance the enforcement powers to strengthen protections for animals while affording flexibility to owner-custodians?

As for the mechanics of this, the way that we envision it working is that, as individuals apply to be a justice of the peace or a judge, they will undertake to take training if appointed so that they then have a legal obligation to follow through and take the training. The training will be designed by the judiciary, as it is now, and I do have to say that the Ontario Court of Justice does have a quite good program in this regard. But we want to make sure that all individuals who become judges and justices of the peace take the training so that they are equipped with the knowledge and the experience, the lived experience of others, so that they can better adjudicate our communities and make sure that they are reflected in the important parts of those that come before them and the lived experience of those individuals.

In this bill, there is a change which effectively ends the OPP Governance Advisory Council, which was set up to ensure that needs and priorities of various populations in Ontario are served by the OPP. When our researchers dug in, we couldn’t see any reason for the elimination of this council, given that having import on those issues would be to the advantage of the people of this province.

Can one of the speakers today tell us why this council is being taken away?

Further questions?

Further debate?

I want to thank the member for the question. One of the things we’re doing that I think is very good for the local municipalities is to have them have greater representation on the OPP police detachment boards. The contemplation is that the government will have 20% representation and the municipalities that make up the composition of the detachment boards will have the other 80%. This will give a lot of input to the local municipality to offer the council as a detachment board would.

This is the direction that I think will help the municipalities.

I just want to say in response that the chiefs of police are heroes to their communities and represent the communities—and to be a leadership figure to everyone that serves in their police service. So I just wanted to comment slightly differently to the question, but acknowledge the importance that the chiefs of police play in public safety throughout our province.

As we know, later on today we’ll be debating something similar about missing and vulnerable people, who are extremely important to this government. We believe all people deserve to be safe in their homes and in their communities. We do have vulnerable people out there, seniors and young people.

Right now, we have an Amber Alert program for missing young people. Certain criteria are sent into the police and an alarm goes off. We’ve all received the Amber Alert.

We are certainly looking at your bill, Bill 74, and that’s something that we’re going to bring to committee to discuss. But I also look forward to the MPP from Sarnia–Lambton’s debate this evening.

But the other piece is removal of animals. We heard this from numerous stakeholders out there. Lynn, if you’re watching, we’ve heard you, and Donna as well. We hear all the time that there was a loophole that didn’t allow people to take animals away in dangerous situations. We want to make sure that our animals feel safe and are safe. If you see an animal in distress, the first thing you should do is call the PAWS hotline, making sure that an inspector goes out to deal with the situation immediately.

I would like to thank the great collaboration between the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Office of the Solicitor General for coming up with these much-needed amendments.

My question is to the Solicitor General: What changes are being made related to defining an emergency for chiefs of police and the Solicitor General?

It’s starting to sound like a Bruce Springsteen song here.

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—

Don’t admit you were arrested.

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—