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.

Speaker, I rise today to join the debate on Bill 102, the Strengthening Safety and Modernizing Justice Act, 2023, and I am sharing my time with the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler.

This bill aims to modernize community safety and justice systems and build safer communities by transforming policing and other community safety and justice legislation, freeing up court resources for more serious and backlogged cases, and responding to current and emerging challenges. If passed, this bill would be one of the final steps to bringing the Community Safety and Policing Act, 2019, into force with its regulations, which will replace the current Police Services Act.

Speaker, Ontario and other jurisdictions have seen recent increases in violent crime and repeat offences. Since 2014, we have seen a 9% increase in crime, a 20% increase in violent crime, and a 129% increase in the illegal use of firearms in Ontario. Sadly, we have also seen the alarming rate of domestic abuse and violence against women and children grow. Our justice system must be able to address these societal issues so people feel safe in their homes and in our communities.

As the Solicitor General stated, to uphold our community safety is our most fundamental duty.

Today, the focus of my remarks will be on the changes being proposed in schedule 3 of the Courts of Justice Act and schedule 5 of the Justices of the Peace Act. The Chief Justice will be authorized to establish courses for newly appointed judges and for the continuing education of judges. And the Associate Chief Justice Co-ordinator of Justices of the Peace will be authorized to establish courses for newly appointed justices of the peace and for the continuing education of justices of the peace which will address sexual assault law; intimate partner violence; coercive control in intimate partner and family relationships; and social context, which includes systemic racism and systemic discrimination. In order to qualify for appointment as a new provincial judge or a justice of the peace, an individual must give an undertaking to participate in this training. To ensure accountability, the Chief Justice and Associate Chief Justice are to consult with stakeholders, which may include survivors of sexual assault and survivors of intimate partner violence, including Indigenous representatives. And to ensure transparency, no later than February 28 each year, the Chief Justice and the Associate Chief Justice shall provide a report to the Attorney General setting out the courses covered and the number of judges and justices of the peace who attended each course. The report will be tabled in the Legislative Assembly by the Attorney General. These amendments will go a long way to addressing a glaring gap in our Family Court system.

We are here today in large part due to the tireless efforts of Dr. Jennifer Kagan and her spouse, Philip Viater, who made it their life’s work to raise awareness of intimate partner violence and coercive control, and to advocate for protection of victims escaping abusive relationships.

And I do want to recognize that Dr. Kagan and Mr. Viater are with us here today. Thank you.

When I introduced my motion in the Legislature last November, I shared the tragic story of Dr. Kagan and her daughter Keira, who were victims of intimate partner violence and coercive control by her ex-husband. Though she had left him years earlier, Dr. Kagan worried about the safety of her daughter Keira during his unsupervised visits. She said that the abuse did not stop with separation; it only got worse, and Keira was used as a tool to get claws into her. Dr. Kagan went to the courts seeking protection for Keira and expressed concerns about her ex-husband’s violent behaviour and abuse. She was told by one judge that domestic violence is not relevant to parenting and as a result he was going to ignore it. On February 9, 2020, Keira and her father were found dead at the base of a cliff at Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area in Halton region.

The numbers are alarming. In Canada, a woman is murdered every 2.5 days—ranging from 144 to 178 murders each year between 2015 and 2019. And in 2021, the rate of femicide was trending even higher. Speaker, 44% of women in Canada have experienced some form of violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. And ending the relationship does not end a woman’s risk of death, as 20% to 22% of intimate partner femicides were perpetrated by estranged spouses within the first 18 months of separation. Of the women murdered, 50% were killed by an intimate partner and 26% by a family member. Women account for 80% of reported incidents of intimate partner violence, which affects all ages, races, ethnicities and socio-economic strata. Young women are, in fact, at highest risk, as are immigrants, refugees, Indigenous people, and those living with disabilities.

In my own community, Halton Women’s Place took in 2,200 crisis calls in 2021. Over the same period, Halton police responded to 3,500 intimate partner violence-related calls, laid 2,000 charges and made almost 900 arrests.

The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses published a report on femicide. From November 26, 2021, to November 25, 2022, 52 women in Ontario died as a result of femicide. According to a report of the Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative, it indicated that from 2010 to 2019, 9% of all domestic homicide victims were in fact children. They were killed in the context of domestic violence.

This month, Bill C-233, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Judges Act (violence against an intimate partner), has just passed the Senate of Canada. This bill is commonly referred to as Keira’s Law. In the third reading of this bill, Senator Pierre Dalphond recognized that federally appointed judges are only one component of the legal system, and to a certain extent, a minor part of it, and that domestic violence is an issue often dealt with by police officers, social workers, family therapists, provincial judges and crown prosecutors, all regulated by provincial laws.

This is what we are doing here today. The bill represents a critical step forward in ensuring that our justice system can better protect victims of intimate partner violence and hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. By requiring judicial education on coercive control and intimate partner violence for provincially appointed judges and justices of the peace, we can ensure that they have the knowledge needed to appropriately understand the complexities of these cases and ensure that victims and their children receive the support and justice they deserve.

The tragic death of Keira Kagan is a heartbreaking reminder of the devastating impact that intimate partner violence and coercive control can have on women and children. While we cannot undo the loss of Keira’s life, we can honour her memory by taking these historic measures to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future. This will be Keira’s legacy.

This bill is also a testament to the tireless advocacy of Dr. Kagan and all survivors, their families and community-based organizations who have worked to bring attention to the urgent need for training in intimate partner violence and coercive control. I want to thank the Attorney General and the Solicitor General for supporting my motion on the need for training of judges, justices of the peace and other legal professionals in the Ontario Family Court system on intimate partner violence and coercive control. I want to thank them for listening to the voices of survivors of sexual assault, survivors of intimate partner violence and the many organizations in our communities who support those survivors. We all acknowledge these changes are a vital first step and will help keep women and children fleeing abuse safe.

I would like to close with a couple of messages I received about our bill, and they go as follows:

“This groundbreaking law will save lives of women and children, and an abusive partner is an abusive parent, full stop.”

“Praying that this will move forward swiftly and effectively in Keira’s honour, saving other families the devastation of preventable harm and death.”

As members of this House, we can lead on how our society and province treat women and children, and so I ask all members to vote with the government and pass this bill.

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.