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.

If we see cows outside in the winter, are they safe?

Questions?

Thank you to the member. I always enjoy hearing his dissertations and form.

I loved listening to your presentation honestly, to the member, and to be able to start off with some words and then move into a personal story felt like a lawyer delivering a summation in court—and then end it with the punctuation starting with the story of Officer Fisher.

I think that, definitely as a northerner, certainly some of the farming stories, I can relate, and as well in terms of some of those northern issues and some of those things that are germane to us all. We all know why we’re here, and I don’t think anybody ever questions the motives of any of us. We all want to do right by our constituents. We all want to do right by our province. We all want to do right by our country.

My question to the member would be, will you trust your gut, the way Officer Fisher did, and trust that we are here to do the right thing?

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.

Madam Speaker, it’s always a pleasure to listen to my colleague. He always has very, very interesting speeches, and I love listening to his stories about how he was a dairy farmer and all that. I just want to thank the member for his comments.

Madam Speaker, one thing that we’re doing with this piece of legislation is—it’s comprehensive legislation that’s focused on making Ontario safer in all aspects: policing, fire prevention and protection, justice and animal welfare. My question is, will the member and will the opposition support our government’s multi-faceted approach to keeping our province safe?

Speaker, through you: This bill creates an advisory council for the provincial police. I know many front-line workers who carry a heavy burden from their experience on the job, police officers especially. Police are responding to situations that are increasingly difficult, like mental health crises. Can you expand on why investing in those training pieces that consider the community and involve the community is so vital?

I always love when we have a chance to hear the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane’s debate here in the Legislature. I do like the fact that he brings a real-world perspective to some of this, being a farmer and having worked in that industry for many years prior to getting into politics.

I do want to touch on PAWS a little bit. I know that was something that you covered quite a bit in your debate. One of the pieces of this bill is to allow the crown to recoup costs for veterinary services that are incurred while an animal is under their care. I just wanted to get a little bit more of your thoughts on that and whether you think that might also have a secondary aspect to it, where it might actually deter people from doing things wrong or not taking proper care of their animals, to know that they would have to pay back those costs.

Further questions?

Thank you to our House leader for his comments. Safety looks different in different parts of the province. Being from a northern riding, I wonder if my colleague can tell us a little about what the policing needs are in northern Ontario, which can be very different. Maybe in some areas of the province, we need far more police; in other areas, it’s mental health supports. What do things look like in northern Ontario?

I would like to ask my colleague a question about when the provincial animal welfare service drives around in northern Ontario in the middle of a snowstorm, and it’s minus 30, and sees animals outside. Am I the only one who thinks that those cows should be inside in the middle of the winter when it’s cold?

If the inspector doesn’t know any better—I listened to your speech—what will happen to all of the dairy farmers who safely let their animals go outside if the inspector is like me and didn’t know that cows could go outside in the winter?

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.

Thank you.

I recognize the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler.

Thank you, Speaker. It’s an honour to speak after the member from Oakville North–Burlington. Her advocacy on this matter has been incredible. As a member of the private members’ bills committee, I was present when she presented about this issue and she presented with a great deal of passion and dedication. I want to thank her for being so dogged in her advocacy in making sure that we’re aware of this.

Applause.

For some who aren’t as familiar with the role of the judiciary or criminal justice, there may be a concern that this does not go far enough. Why is it not a mandate for specific training? Why are we not intervening in what that training would look like? Those kinds of concerns. And obviously I understand those concerns. We have very, very powerful examples of when notice of these important issues has not been taken. However, what we need to respect and what this legislation absolutely does respect is the role of judicial independence. It’s absolutely vital that, in our system in Ontario, in Canada as a whole, our judiciary be able to make decisions which are, to some extent, conscience-motivated, but ultimately based on the law, and make those decisions without fear of censure by a hysterical public or by the trends of political favour. It’s an incredibly important part of our judicial system and one of the most dramatic differences, frankly, between us and our neighbours to the south and across the border and something that I still believe is incredibly important.

Again, this is why we need to make sure that we are maintaining this. This training will be developed by the judiciary itself, so you don’t want to, for example, have an excessive reliance on social science theories as versus social science data. I believe that, in the way that this is worded and by leaving it to the judiciary, we will be able to have them strike an appropriate balance between providing that type of relevant data and lived experience as versus, as I said, that political trend or social science trend that can be damaging, and that is why we have judicial independence as such an important part of our system in the first place.

However, as I said, there are, again, those who may feel that this goes too far as versus not going far enough. Again, I’m very confident that this government understands the role of judicial independence, and I said that this is why it’s been worded as such. However, in, for example, a criminal case—or really any case before a judge, but I’m more comfortable with the criminal realm—one of the absolute key rules of evidence in a trial or a proceeding is that you can’t bring anything before the court that isn’t brought out through evidence. So the fact that there may be a great deal of data or trends about domestic violence, family violence, coercive control, that type of thing, as a crown attorney, the crown is not permitted to simply make submissions to a justice that that is the case. You are not permitted to provide academic materials or articles in order to support that position. The only way that you can do it is by having an expert in the field actually in court to testify and be cross-examined and, perhaps, introduce it that way.

This is a huge burden on the system. It’s, frankly, impossible for the most part to find somebody that’s able to do that. It’s also completely beyond the powers of the system when we’re talking about, for example, the bail stage. Having anybody able to testify at the bail stage about some of these matters would be very challenging. And, again, this isn’t about in any way forcing the judiciary to be swayed one way or the other. This is about trying to make up for some of the gaps in lived experience that they have.

I can speak very directly and personally about what that can look like. I said this before and, again, I won’t be naming any names, but I have experienced a justice of the peace that, as a result of the Antic ruling, in any domestic violence, even choking, would not award a no-weapons condition as part of the release terms because he said that hands were not weapons and was adamant about that.

In another case there used to be—well, there still is—a mandatory minimum for human trafficking. That’s been ruled unconstitutional a number of times. I was involved in a case where the judge, again, found that it was unconstitutional and went dramatically below the two-year mandatory minimum. In that case, it was a human trafficking case with an extremely violent habitual offender who had been charged and convicted of this type of offence before. He targeted a young woman who was a crystal meth addict. He took her car and her bank cards and her driver’s licence. He brought her to a hotel, and he posted photos of her on back pages. Over the course of the next 24, 30 hours or so, he had about, I think, 25 men visit her in succession. There were times when he was not at the hotel, when he had left, and he never assaulted her himself.

The judge in that situation, in ruling that a two-year mandatory minimum would be cruel and unusual punishment, pointed out in his written reasons that at the end of the day the girl in question, the victim, was able to leave. He wasn’t there. There wasn’t a guard on the door. She was able to leave. And then he went on to comment that, well, because she was able to leave, she didn’t have to be subjected to this unimaginable night of sexual torture and assault, and because this specific accused had not in fact himself raised a hand to her that he had not perpetrated violence on her directly, basically leading up to the decision that, in the scheme of human trafficking, this was more minimal in nature and that, as I said, the two-year mandatory minimum was unconstitutional.

Again, as a crown in that case—you would have to bring an expert in in order to actually testify about the experience of a victim of human trafficking. But unfortunately, as we have all heard, human trafficking, domestic violence, intimate violence continue to be a rampant problem throughout the province of Ontario, and, frankly, our system would crumble if that was a requirement for all cases.

So, what this requirement does is it essentially, I think, flags to the judiciary that we as the representatives of the public, the elected members of the public, feel that this is a significant issue that we would like them to be better informed about, and then when it comes time for them to rule on the merits of the case or make a decision in bail, that that element of conscience and lived experience that judges bring to all of their decisions also includes some of that information that, absent exposure, would not be available to some of our judiciary otherwise.

In summation, I think this is incredibly valuable legislation and it perfectly balances the competing interests here.

I’d like to thank the member from Oakville North–Burlington as well as the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler for their presentation.

I’d also like to thank Dr. Jennifer Kagan-Viater and Philip Viater for their attendance today.

I’m glad to hear this Legislature acknowledge that domestic violence is relevant to parenting. In the bill, education and training of new and existing judges and justices of the peace is welcome, especially on intimate partner violence as well as coercive control.

My question is to the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler: Could you please describe for me whether or not there will be an evaluation process for this training? Training by itself is not enough. Will these justices be evaluated, and what is the process if one were to fail this training?

I recognize the member from London North Centre for questions.

My understanding of how this is to be rolled out—as I said, judicial independence remains an absolutely essential feature of Canadian justice and not something that should be trifled with, altered, treated with any less than the seriousness that it requires. This training is to be developed by the judiciary. I can say, as somebody who has a great deal of experience with a number of members of our bench, both justices of the peace and judges, the vast majority are extremely caring individuals who already take a lot of this concern on their own initiative. The concept of an evaluation—again, I believe that would remain with the judiciary.

However, the idea here is not that we are attempting to force anybody to ascribe to a specific social theory, but simply that we expand some of that lived experience and that conscience that may otherwise be lacking, simply because of having had dramatically less exposure and experience with this.

In answer to your question, I think it will be left to the judiciary again.

The title of the bill is “strengthening safety.” I can tell you that for the people I represent, whether it is in French River, Markstay-Warren, St. Charles, Killarney, Britt-Byng Inlet, as well as the First Nations of Dokis and Henvey Inlet, they all depend on the OPP detachment in Noëlville. The OPP detachment in Noëlville is in great danger of being closed under your government any day now. It makes the people of all of those communities very nervous.

How can you reassure them that when you bring forward bills that talk about strengthening safety—they all feel that having a detachment where the OPP officers who work there know them, have patrolled the area, brings higher safety. You talk about strengthening safety. How do you link that up with closing a detachment in a rural northern area?

Further questions?