I’d like to welcome Jonathan Crozier to the House today. Jonathan made us some fantastic martinis down in the Legislature the other night from Vodkow. Welcome to Queen’s Park.

I’m pleased to have my opportunity today to speak to Bill 102, the Strengthening Safety and Modernizing Justice Act. I’ve been able to listen to the members who have spoken before me on both sides of this debate today. It takes me back to my community. That’s where I decided where I wanted to go with this and how I wanted to address the changes that are happening within this bill, and to bring forward the concerns and the things that I have learned in my own community, where I see the cracks in the system, where I see the benefits in our system and where I see where the government could do better in our system, to not only protect our communities but to also ensure that our police force has what they need.

I’ve been an MPP for Hamilton Mountain for 12 years and had plenty of opportunity to meet with various chiefs that we’ve had in Hamilton. The number one thing that I always hear from them is, first of all, they need more police on our streets. I wish I would have gathered those numbers for that, but we definitely have a huge shortage of police on our streets.

That’s of great concern, because we have officers who do not get the supports they need when they need it. We have things that happen in the city and police are not able to attend quick enough. I can tell you that when I see police driving on our streets, it’s rare that I actually am driving down the street and see a police car, because our Hamilton area is quite large. They are responsible for the entire amalgamated area—just not enough of them to go around.

But they do the work. They keep their chin up and they keep going. They also, I have to say, under the leadership of our current chief, see the need of being there to support our community members, so showing up for—the Wayside program, for instance, is a rehab centre in the city. Our chief is always there, front and centre, with a message of need, a message of increased funding for mental health, increased funding for addictions, increased funding for housing, increased funding for ODSP, for Ontario Works.

All of those programs that are the social safety net in our communities are at risk. When they’re at risk, it causes people to do things that they typically wouldn’t do. Then what happens is, the police have to be called—we’re already short on police, but they have to attend, and they have to be able to manage the situation that they’re in.

Gratefully, in Hamilton, we have a program called COAST that supports police on mental health calls to be able to de-escalate, to be able to talk to the person in question and see if there’s actually another route than that person being arrested and to be able to support that police officer. Many communities, I’m quite positive, don’t have that COAST program. Their police officers don’t have that mental health support to be able to attend, and as great as that program is, I’m quite sure COAST isn’t able to attend every necessary call that the police may possibly walk into and not know that there’s a mental health crisis happening. So ensuring that police officers have education to be able to de-escalate, to be able to work with someone with mental health issues is critical. It’s absolutely critical to ensure that our police officers have those necessary supports and education.

There’s an amazing program in our city called the social navigator program—

Interjection.

Then we went to the police station—and I think it’s 8:30 every single morning. They gather and they talk about the clients whom they’ve been able to interact with, the people who are living rough on the streets or who need the extra supports. So the paramedics team up with the police. They have housing. They had someone from Interval House, which is a women’s shelter. They had someone from the Indigenous centre. They had a couple of social workers. There must have been 20 of them around the table that morning, which is every morning.

One programmer, Sue, went through the list of people who were on her list for that day to talk about who had a doctor’s appointment, who had court, who needed something done with ODSP, who needed their meds increased, who needed their meds picked up. They had everybody on a database, from the relationships they built, and they knew how to support each and every one of those individuals. They talked about it amongst themselves. It was so inspiring.

This table is led by acting sergeant Pete Wiesner, who the Conservatives, I’m sure, would know well. He was their candidate in the Hamilton Centre by-election. So he’s the acting sergeant of the crisis response unit. He’s been there for 11 years, but I think he became the acting sergeant not so long ago. He leads this table, and it was honestly inspiring to watch the actions and the compassion that went into this. So this is police and paramedics that come together, and it’s funded under the police.

Sol Gen—they need to listen to this. They need to ensure that programs like this are happening across our province, because as we know, we have a housing crisis across our province, we have an addictions problem across our province, and we have a poverty issue across our province, and these police and paramedics have created a program that supports folks. They support the tents. Instead of going in there and ripping down tents, they’re there if they have to move because it’s got to happen, then they’re helping them pack. They’re making sure that they have food and where they are going next. So it was quite something to spend the day with Naomi and to be able to visit the tents, to be able to visit some service providers that are helping.

Naomi knew everyone, and everyone knew Naomi. This is the case for all of the folks who are on the social navigator program. It was really inspiring to watch, and those people are better for it. They’re better for Naomi. They will survive another day because of Naomi and the rest of the group.

They’re out there. They’re providing very little paramedic services, let me tell you that. It’s not being a paramedic anymore; it’s actually getting to them before they need a paramedic. But they’re handing out all of the drug paraphernalia that they need to ensure that it’s safe. They’re handing out naloxone kits to ensure that everyone has something to save their lives or save another one’s life. They’re providing Band-Aids and they’re providing snacks and water and boots and coats and tents and clothing. Whatever they find that their folks need, somehow, they find a way to make that work.

So I wanted to give them a huge shout-out because we certainly can’t talk about police and not talk about the social navigator program that’s happening in the city of Hamilton, because it is top-notch. It should be followed and echoed everywhere across this province, because as long as we’re in crisis, these are the folks who are truly, truly, truly going to make a difference in people’s lives. So, here’s to them.

The other thing that I thought that I wanted to talk about, Speaker, was that folks get in trouble and they need the police when they don’t have the supports that they need. The Banyan program in Hamilton: I was visiting them that constit week, also, and I had the opportunity to hear about a program called SURE. It’s the Self-Understanding and Regulating Emotions program.

And so what this program does is it brings young folks at—shoot, I should have written down the number. I think it was nine years to 11 or 12 or 13 years—right in that critical—they’re not a teenager yet, they’re not little kids anymore. But they’re struggling with their parents, and their parents are having a hard time and the kids are having a hard time. So it brings the parents and the young people together in a group setting to talk about self-regulation, to teach them how to talk to each other to stop the blowouts and to stop the breakdown in the families.

This is something that changes the direction of a young person’s path. Instead of that young person skipping out on school and swearing at their parents and smoking drugs and smoking cigarettes, doing all kinds of stuff that young teenagers can get into and starts that path into possible criminal activity, then they’re learning how to work together as a family network.

They are hoping to have funding from the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services soon to be able to continue this program. They have great numbers, they have great success, and they have amazing families that are doing well because of the program that they’re providing to our community. So a huge shout-out to the SURE program and all of the work that they’re doing in Hamilton.

Speaker, I also met last week with VCAO, Victim Crisis Assistance Ontario. They came to meet with us because of the lack of funding that this government is providing and the crisis that they’re finding themselves in. Now, let’s say it again: When victims and people are in crisis, they find themselves sometimes in criminal activity. When people find themselves in criminal activity, we then have police who have to manage that situation. And it’s unnecessary if we’re providing services to people when they need it. Social safety nets are super important to be able to stop the necessary need of police.

So they were able to meet with the minister the same day as they met with us. Unfortunately, the minister only gave them 15 minutes. This is a provincially mandated program that has been enacted since 1987 and is critically underfunded. They’re in complete crisis. They’re not able to retain staff. They’re not able to pay staff what they need. And they’re responsible for any crisis that happens, whether it’s a weather crisis that happens at somebody’s house, a murder, to anything in between. If a family is in crisis, they can contact them and they are mandated to provide services. It’s pretty hard to keep up with those mandates if you do not have the funding to do so. It’s as bad as—they have to pay for someone to go in a hotel room, and because they’re very short on their money within the office, sometimes staff will take out their own credit cards to be able to pay for that, and then they have to hope and pray that the ministry is going to repay it. That’s how that system works—they have to put it out, they submit it to the ministry, and the ministry then pays them back. That’s no way to be able to manage these types of things and to be able to ensure that a mandated service is able to function in a respectable manner.

So when we’re talking about strengthening safety and modernizing justice, we have to ensure that we’re providing the funding and the safety nets right across the board. Our police need it. Our police will tell you they want housing, they want increased ODSP and OW, increased mental health supports. They want increased mental health supports in Hamilton. We continue to lose organizations—organizations that aren’t able to keep up with the funding. So the same thing that police are asking the government for, they continue to cut; they continue to underfund.

Hamilton Mental Health Outreach, the first organization to announce their closure in January—closing June 30, 2023—has been serving people recovering from addiction and supporting those with mental illness for more than 30 years. They’re closing their doors.

Catholic Family Services—I’ve talked about that before in this House—with so many services: They opened in 1949, closed April 30, 2023. Thank goodness some other providers were able to pick up some of their programs, but the continuity, the relationships that were built with so many people in the community have been lost.

Mental health statistics: In any given year, one in five Canadians experience a mental illness. About 4,000 Canadians per year die by suicide, an average of almost 11 suicides a day. It affects people of all ages and backgrounds. Individuals with a mental illness are much less likely to be employed. Unemployment rates are as high as 70% to 90% for people with the most severe illnesses.

I actually wrote a letter to Minister Tibollo not that long ago—I’m still waiting for my response; maybe I’ll hand-deliver him this after I’m done—to talk about the number of constituents who have contacted my office who have adult children—their moms have contacted me—who have schizophrenia, and they’re out on the streets and they don’t have the supports. One was at the Barrett Centre; she tried to be there for a few days. They sent her out and they gave her a tent because they have nothing that they could do for her, so the very least—which I know was a good thing to do, on their behalf—was to make sure she had a roof over her head, even if it’s just a tent. These are the things that are coming down to the organizations that are serving our community.

The last thing that I want to talk about—and I’m running out of time; it’s actually going much faster than I thought it would—is Bill 74. In this bill, you have opened up the Missing Persons Act, so I tried to find details on that; I couldn’t really find much. This would have been an ample opportunity to be able to bring Bill 74 forward, the Missing Persons Amendment Act, to ensure that we had an alert system that could be regional for when a vulnerable person goes missing. Petition numbers are continuing to climb. As of today, the petition on my site has 2,067 signatures—Draven Alert signatures are 91,784; Love’s Law is 6,222. That’s a lot of people who have signed petitions begging for this alert to happen. This doesn’t happen often, but I had a police officer reach out to my Instagram to tell me that he was an officer from Hamilton and to thank me for bringing Bill 74 to the floor and to not give up on it. It’s a tool that the police need. They know they need it. My Hamilton police chief also has been very supportive of Bill 74, knowing that it’s another tool in the tool box. It’s not the be-all and end-all. It’s not the first call. There are lots of things that can happen before the missing persons alert, but it is a tool. It could be the last tool, but it could be the most important tool, when necessary, to bring vulnerable loved ones home.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak today. Boy, that 20 minutes went quick.

I actually did a police night out, and I had the ability to see COAST in action. It’s a fantastic program. It changes an outcome when someone is trained for mental health and is able to de-escalate or to decide: “Is this someone who’s just lonely”—because that happens—“or is this someone who’s really in danger of killing themselves or harming themselves? Is this person a danger and a threat to community and society?”

We need to ensure that these programs are fundable, but we can’t just count on them either, because if a police officer shows up and doesn’t have COAST with them, then they’re on their own. We need to ensure that police officers have that same education and the ability to be able to perform their duties safely.

If they feel like they’ve got an “I gotcha”—because they’re winking at each other across the hall—that’s fine. You asked for my opinion.

I just finished telling you in my speech that we are short on police. We don’t have the numbers that we should be able to have in Hamilton as per our population. If the government wants to support police, they should also ensure that we have the ability to have enough police on our streets to keep your niece and nephews safe.

We know that we need more police on our streets. We know that the police have to be trained accordingly. We know that the police have been asking for these things, and yet this government refuses to provide—just like they’re refusing to provide the funding necessary for victim services that the government has mandated them to be able to provide.

The police tell us they want training. They need to make sure that their police force is educated. There are incentives. There are ways to encourage more police to join the field to serve and protect—but making sure that they have the right education to be able to perform their duties so they’re safe, their families have them come home to them at the end of every day, and they’re able to serve and protect our communities.

Report continues in volume B.