Further questions?

The member from Oshawa.

Further debate?

There are a lot of ways to reduce barriers when it comes to education.

Interestingly, I’m holding a report about OSAP, and yours is the government that switched from provincial grants to loans. We went from 95% when you took office—the number of grants—and now it’s only 80%; 20% are loans. We’re seeing more people have bad debt; they can’t pay it back. People can’t afford to get the education.

I understand that we’re dealing with staffing shortages. But also, let’s open up access to education, broadly, because some of what I read in terms of the recommendations is that that diversity of experience in education—folks who come from compassionate fields, whether they be in nursing or whatever, are valued in policing. It’s a direction that you should be focusing on. But when no one can afford to get into post-secondary education, we’re going to find ourselves in a mess across the board.

Survivors’ debt is a piece—that’s a recommendation, to forgive that.

Survivors should be given an option to give testimonies not necessarily in a court.

There are other opportunities here, other places—victim service offices across the province.

Mandatory prevention curriculum in middle schools and high schools—we’re seeing that those early interventions in education are critical.

Police and children’s aid units with specialization in human trafficking, with mandatory training in understanding bias, anti-oppressive practice, anti-racism and trauma-informed care—that’s just the basics.

We have to think about human trafficking in the context of human rights. We also have to consider that people who are targeted are predominantly racialized and Indigenous.

And I think, in the context of this bill, looking at the judiciary, there’s a lot of education that has to happen. Is this confinement? Is this kidnapping? Is this prostitution? Judges have no idea, in many cases, if they haven’t encountered it before. Education is key.

You had started your question about PTSD and officers. There’s a lot of stress and challenges with the return to work. This government has invested in OPP mental health services. But I want to challenge the government, because smaller municipalities who can’t afford to provide certain supports—where is the help for them? There has to be a strategy. If we’re going to support mental health needs, then we have to support mental health needs for everyone.

But when any one of us talks to an officer, I would say that they’re going to hear that they are frustrated—

I appreciated my colleague from Oshawa’s comments, especially her comments about her experiences riding along in a police cruiser and her passion for the issue of human trafficking. I wonder if she wants to expand a little bit on what we’d like to see in legislation to address human trafficking.

Thank you to the member from Oshawa. During her debate and during responses, Speaker, she talked about how little time we’ve had to look at this bill. It has been a trend for the government where they table bills in the afternoon and then we begin debating the very next day on them. Tonight we’ll be sitting late, possibly to midnight, talking about this bill.

It’s ironic, because yesterday, I was sitting here and we were debating Bill 69 and talking about consultation. Time and time again, the Conservative Party kept telling me how great consultation was, how effective consultation was, but we can’t do it even in this House, let alone outside of the House. So could the member just expand on how more effective we could be, as all parties, if we were able to reach out to speak to our constituents and our stakeholders about bills like this instead of having them carpet-bombed on us with no warning.

Questions?

Thank you to the member opposite. I enjoyed her speech and the many examples she had of speaking with the police officers of her riding.

A question I asked earlier today is about how quickly this bill was tabled and brought to debate, and about the opportunity they robbed the NDP of to have those conversations with police officers in our ridings.

All 124 of us represent ridings that are very, very unique. We could really be having a “yes, and” conversation about what happened. I went on a ride-along during the last constituency week with the officers from the Greater Sudbury Police Service. They were talking about the low enrolment and the low interest for police officers—and tuition wasn’t one of the topics that came up. I’m not saying that tuition isn’t a good idea, but what I’m saying is—there was that opportunity where I could share the information that I had received from them or I could ask them, “What do you think about these ideas? Would this help as well?” We are removing that opportunity for members of this House when we push through bills this quickly.

I just wonder if the member opposite has considered what happens when you table bills and debate them this quickly without the opportunity for other members to have time to consult with their ridings as well.

Further question?

Thank you to the member from Barrie–Innisfil for her comments.

I appreciate any measure to help recruit police officers, but I’m just wondering—the Premier made a comment that this would open up a pipeline for recruits, and I just don’t see anything in this bill that will do that. I hope that the tuition measure does something. But there are all kinds of policing programs in community colleges across Ontario, and those are the kids who are coming out of high school and wanting to get into policing, and that’s where I think you could really help, at the ground level, with recruitment. The change with post-secondary education—I think the police already can hire people without post-secondary education, and I’m not sure if that’s going to really do much either. So I’m having trouble understanding this pipeline of recruits that it’s going to open up. Maybe she can enlighten me.

Speaker, through you to the member from Barrie–Innisfil: Empowering and supporting education in our courts is very important, but so is understanding the weight and the cost and rewards of those decisions. One of the recommendations from the Renfrew county inquiry was just that, studying judges’ decisions in inter-partner-violence-related crises. Both the community and the judicial wing can learn, and that is training.

My question: Why was the recommendation not actioned when amending the Justices of the Peace Act, considering the measures taken to encourage education within the courts?

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.

I think the tuition piece is very interesting. Like you, I’m very connected with our policing community in Waterloo region. Waterloo Regional Police Service does a fantastic job, like you said, not only enforcing laws but really becoming part of the community and truly helping people, hopefully before they need to enforce those laws. I think that’s one of the key components of what we’re talking about here today, making sure we do get the right people in position to do the job. That $15,000 barrier—this is what’s very interesting. A lot of people maybe don’t realize that you have to go to post-secondary education, pay for that, and then there’s the $15,000 on top of that after, when you go to the Ontario Police College.

Maybe if you wanted to highlight a little bit more about speaking with some of your local officers and some of the other things you’ve heard in relation to opening up those pathways.

Thank you to the member from Barrie–Innisfil. Ontario and many other jurisdictions have seen recent increases in violent crime and repeat offences, including crimes against women who have been victims of intimate partner violence. I’m wondering if the member can tell us more about how Bill 102 would expand the ability of judges and justices of the peace to consider risk factors before they make their judgments and their decisions.