Thank you to my colleagues for their comments prior to mine. I want to thank, particularly, the Attorney General and the Solicitor General for their tireless work and dedication to improving our justice system and making Ontario safer.

I’m pleased to rise this afternoon, on behalf of the residents of Simcoe–Grey, to speak to second reading of the Strengthening Safety and Modernizing Justice Act, 2023. Crime is on the rise in Ontario and across Canada, and we know this based on firm data. That’s why our government is taking action to train and attract new recruits, breaking down financial barriers and getting more front-line officers onto our streets. I am pleased to speak to the impacts of Bill 102 on our justice system and how, if passed, it will make Ontario a safer place for Ontarians.

Madam Speaker, as part of this bill the Ministry of the Attorney General is proposing a change to the Provincial Offences Act, or the POA, that will help clarify the existing process in the courts when the Provincial Offences Act proceedings are being judicially reviewed. The proposed amendment would make it clear that it is court staff and not judicial officers who file the judicial review application materials with the courts. I want to be clear: This particular change that we’re introducing is an administrative one and won’t affect any existing judicial review processes before the courts currently.

Along this theme, I would like to discuss some important work this government is doing with the municipal courts. This work includes amendments to allow greater use of technology to deliver justice systems remotely, such as allowing attendance at POA proceedings by audio and video links. Other changes include the authority for provincial offences officers to serve part III summonses on individuals within the province by registered mail, courier or email. Although this is administrative, it will do much to speed up and expedite the processes. Service of a summons on a recipient’s lawyer or paralegal with their advance consent will now be permitted.

We continue to support our municipal partners in the efforts to enforce and collect outstanding Provincial Offences Act fines. We have implemented numerous initiatives to help assist our municipal partners with the collection of these outstanding fines, including improvements to the notice of fine and due date form to encourage defendants to pay their fines on time to avoid additional fees and other penalties, such as a licence suspension.

The Attorney General is also working in collaboration with Bill 177’s municipal working group to implement other reforms to further modernize Provincial Offences Act processes, including implementing other fine enforcement initiatives.

These are just some of the more recent initiatives that the Attorney General has been working on to ensure the municipal court system works swiftly and efficiently to hear so many matters that affect Ontarians daily and to help to clear up the backlog that we have seen collect during the COVID pandemic.

Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak about some of the other initiatives the ministry has in the works to move justice forward across our province and to continue to drive change across the system, initiatives that have come to fruition thanks to the ongoing collaboration between all justice sector partners and that support our overarching goals of not only improving processes in the criminal courts system but also that will keep our communities across this province safer for our residents.

The first such initiative is the Criminal Justice Digital Design initiative. Speaker, these changes will help with the ongoing transformation that we are working on in collaboration with our partners across the justice system, from the police to the courts. For several years now the Attorney General has been working with the Solicitor General to transform Ontario’s criminal justice system and enhance public safety in the process. This initiative involves digitizing criminal case records and connecting IT systems so that data flows seamlessly from the police to the prosecution to the courts and, where appropriate, to correctional services.

Already we have implemented a number of processes to help share digital information in an organized, seamless and timely way. Since June 2022, criminal eIntake has been available province-wide. This system allows police and other investigative agencies to electronically send and receive documents and data so that a justice of the peace can consider all the information and allow charges to be laid, where appropriate. This initiative has greatly reduced the time and effort it takes to put information before the courts and has made for a much more seamless and expedited process.

Speaker, there is more. We have also introduced digital evidence management, which makes it possible for police and other agencies to manage, store and share digital investigative or evidentiary files using a consistent set of tools and standards. As of this January, more than 60% of police agencies across Ontario have on-boarded to use this digital system. There is much more work to be done, Speaker, but we have made great strides, and we are committed to continuing that work. The safety and well-being of our communities requires an agile and properly functioning criminal justice system that works efficiently and seamlessly for all Ontarians.

Speaker, as the Attorney General mentioned earlier, a huge part of creating safer communities is standing up for victims of crime, which includes victims of human trafficking. The Ministry of the Attorney General works very closely with the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services on their anti-human trafficking-strategy and violence against women services. More recently, we have implemented a program that provides up to four hours of free, confidential legal advice to eligible survivors of sexual assault across the province. It is available by phone, it is available by video chat, and at any point after a sexual assault has occurred. Survivors of human trafficking can also access free legal support to obtain restraining orders against their trafficker and to get advice about using the civil lawsuit system as a tool to hold their trafficker accountable.

Another critical aspect that we’ve seen in our criminal justice system across the province and that is a critical priority for our government is combatting gun and gang violence. Speaker, this government is deeply concerned by the spike in gun crime in Ontario and the impact of gun violence in our communities, and as we heard in our recent debate about the bail reform initiative, this is something that’s become endemic across the province and is only on the rise.

Since 2018, Ontario has invested approximately $187 million under the Guns, Gangs and Violence Reduction Strategy, which takes a comprehensive approach to community safety, with initiatives that deliver strong enforcement and prosecution, proactive gang disruption and intervention, and tailored youth and adult violence prevention. Despite this, gangs in Ontario are growing in strength and expanding across the province. Drug, human and gun trafficking are fuelling gang operations, and gangs continue to recruit at-risk youth and young adults. We are continuously working with municipalities across Ontario to enhance this strategy and are taking critical action to combat gun and gang violence on all fronts.

Madam Speaker, I can speak as a member for eight years of the Collingwood Police Services Board to the impact of this program within our community. We had signed onto that as an enhancement to our OPP contract, and within the first 18 months we had three of the largest drug busts that we had experienced in our community in which large amounts of drugs were seized, large amounts of cash were seized and large amounts of guns.

Speaker, through this work we’ve learned that law enforcement and prosecution efforts are more effective at reducing violence and increasing public safety when combined with meaningful intervention initiatives.

And this gives me an opportunity to speak about justice centres. We know that the traditional criminal justice system can, in certain circumstances, be limited in how it responds to the complex needs of the communities, the victims and the offenders. Justice centres are taking a transformative approach to community safety by moving certain criminal cases out of the traditional courtroom and into a community setting. Justice centres help provide wraparound supports for accused persons through coordination with on-site social, health, mental health, addictions, employment education and housing providers. That is why, since September 2020, our ministry has launched four justice centre locations. We’ve launched them in London, Toronto downtown east, Toronto northwest and Kenora.

The Kenora centre is the most recent and was launched in February of this year, and I had the great pleasure of going up to Kenora, Mr. Rickford’s riding, with the Attorney General for the opening of that justice centre. It is a groundbreaking initiative; in fact, the first of its kind in northern Ontario. It was developed, designed and delivered in collaboration with local organizations, Indigenous leadership and the courts. It was built on lands owned by the local Indigenous bands and is a critical part of our justice program moving forward, not only to address the outcomes of crime but also to look at the underlying causes of crime so that we can prevent recidivism and help to get lives back on track, both for the victims and the offenders. This is an initiative that is truly born from a collective partnership, and it represents a meaningful path forward towards creating safer and healthier communities across this province and in the north.

Madam Speaker, one of the other changes we’re looking at making in order to streamline our judicial processes and expedite matters—where appropriate—getting to trial, just to make sure that we separate and stream matters to the appropriate forum. This is why this government is proposing some changes to how low-value civilian claims are handled in the courts, including Small Claims Court.

We made changes to the claims threshold a number of years ago. The maximum amount of a claim in Small Claims Court is $35,000, and that is helping to separate them. However, we see in a number of cases certain plaintiffs or defendants trying to pursue a matter under $35,000 in our Superior Court, which takes up valuable time both for ongoing civil matters, matrimonial matters and criminal matters that properly reside in Superior Court. What we are now doing is preventing any claims under $35,000 from going to Superior Court and mandating that they go to the appropriate forum, which is Small Claims Court. This will make it faster, easier and more affordable for people and businesses across the province to resolve their disputes in the appropriate forum.

All of the changes I have spoken about and those before me in Bill 102 speak to the importance of the changes in it, how it will streamline our system, how it will make our criminal justice system and our justice system generally more accessible and more expeditious, as well as making Ontario safer for the people of Ontario, no matter where they live, whether that is through support and safety for victims of crime, effective and appropriate responses to perpetrators of crime or reducing the complexity of our justice system.

Madam Speaker, it has been a pleasure today to rise to speak to this matter, and I urge all members of the House to support this worthy act.

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—

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?