Good morning. Let us pray.

Prayers.

Pursuant to standing order 7(e), I wish to inform the House that tonight’s evening meeting is cancelled.

Resuming the debate adjourned on June 5, 2023, on the motion for third reading of the following bill:

Bill 102, An Act to amend various Acts relating to the justice system, fire protection and prevention and animal welfare / Projet de loi 102, Loi modifiant diverses lois relatives au système judiciaire, à la prévention et à la protection contre l’incendie ainsi qu’au bien-être des animaux.

I am pleased to rise today to participate in third reading debate on Bill 102, the Strengthening Safety and Modernizing Justice Act. I want to begin by reflecting back on an experience that I’m sure many of us in this House shared in the fall, during the municipal election. I know that many MPPs were knocking on doors to support municipal candidates. One of the things that I heard in my riding of London West was a shared concern about community safety. People were raising anxiety about the level of homelessness in our city, about the increasing poverty in our city and the impact that this has on community safety for residents. Certainly, the official opposition believes strongly that it is important for the government to act, to invest in community safety measures, to support strong and caring communities, to make sure that the programs and services are there to improve quality of life in our communities and to keep our communities safe.

What we also heard, as I mentioned, in relation to these concerns about community safety is that a critical way to keep communities safe is to invest in community mental health supports. We need to make sure that there is supportive housing in place for people with complex needs who require wraparound supports in order to become well and to be able to function in our communities. We need programs that invest in youth, that build capacity in young people, that develop resilience, that enable people to thrive and to participate.

We also heard that there is a need to invest in alternative first responders with the expertise to respond to issues related to mental health, addictions, homelessness and school discipline; that we need to free up our police to be able to focus on what they are trained to do, which is law enforcement.

I have to say, Speaker, that in speaking to police officers in our community and speaking to residents of London West about some of the issues that we are seeing related to mental health and homelessness, we have heard overwhelmingly that what would be most beneficial is an investment in training.

I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to participate in a round table on mental health, and some of the officers who participated in that round table were members of London’s COAST program. COAST is an acronym that stands for Community Outreach and Support Team. COAST teams are in place in many communities across the province. London’s COAST team was established a couple of years ago, and it has really helped to address some of these pressing social issues in our community related to mental health and addictions. The COAST program pairs a police officer with a mental health worker to provide mental health and addiction supports when a front-line police response is not necessarily needed. The officer I spoke to—the two officers who were there from the COAST program talked about moving into the COAST program from the roles that they were doing previously, and how incredibly valuable to them the COAST training was, how incredibly valuable it was to work alongside a mental health worker and gain benefit from the expertise that mental health worker brings to an effective response to a homelessness and mental health crisis.

Unfortunately, in our community in London, the COAST program has continued to operate for the last several years on a pilot basis. There is no long-term, stable funding. There is no permanent funding to assure the organizations that are collaborating with COAST that it will be sustainable. St. Joseph’s Health Care London, the London Police Service, Middlesex-London Paramedic Service and CMHA Thames Valley Addiction and Mental Health Services have all pooled their resources to deliver this COAST program, and they are continuing to wait for a signal from this government that sustainable funding will be there to enable the long-term delivery of the program. They conducted a very, very promising evaluation about a year ago that showed significant improvement in our community’s ability to respond to mental health and addiction crises. The goals of the program are to support individuals living with mental illness through proactive intervention and follow-ups including navigation and access to local mental health services, while minimizing interactions with front-line London Police Service officers. The program pairs care workers, including nurses, social workers and paramedics, with front-line London Police Service officers, to prioritize intervention and de-escalation.

As I said, the members of the London Police Service who are part of the COAST program, who I spoke to a couple of weeks ago, talked about how incredibly valuable that training was and how they wish all front-line officers would have access to that COAST training. We know that police have become the default mental health workers in our communities. The vast majority of the calls that police are responding to are related to the mental health crisis. In fact, in May 2021, the London Police Service reported that police officers responded to 3,600 mental health calls annually. So this is something that police officers want to see. They want to see that investment in training. They want to see innovative programs like COAST that pair police officers with people with expertise in mental health and addictions so that they can respond effectively to the crises that we are seeing in our communities.

Unfortunately, that is not what Bill 102 delivers to the people of this province. There is no commitment in this bill to provide that additional training that police officers are requesting so that they can do their jobs more effectively, so that they can focus on crime prevention and responding to issues that require police intervention rather than responding as a de facto mental health worker.

In the most comprehensive review of policing that has ever been undertaken in this country, the report of the Mass Casualty Commission, which was released last year, we saw that need for training echoed again. In the case of the Mass Casualty Commission, the focus was training around sexual violence and intimate partner violence, gender-based violence. That extremely comprehensive review, in the wake of the killings in Nova Scotia, showed that training for police officers in gender-based violence, in sexual violence, intimate partner violence, is necessary to be able to support police officers to do their jobs. We also saw it in the report of the Renfrew coroner’s inquest, which was an inquest that was held into the murders of Carol Culleton, Nathalie Warmerdam and Anastasia Kuzyk in 2015—all murdered in an act of femicide by a former intimate partner. That inquest also reinforced the importance of training for police officers, for our justice system to be able to respond effectively to intimate partner violence.

Unfortunately, Bill 102 does not incorporate the learnings that we gained from the Mass Casualty Commission report. It does not incorporate the jury recommendations that were made in the wake of the Renfrew coroner’s inquest. It does not incorporate what we’ve been hearing from police officers about the value and the importance of training in mental health and addictions, effectively responding to mental health and addictions. It’s basically silent on the need for police training. What the bill does—and I want to commend the government for including schedules 3 and 5. The bill amends the Courts of Justice Act and it amends the Justices of the Peace Act to require training for judges and justices of the peace, and this training is around sexual assault law, intimate partner violence, coercive control in relationships, systemic racism and systemic discrimination. So, to its credit, the government recognized the importance of training for judges and justices of the peace, but it failed to recognize the importance of training for our front-line police officers.

Having given the government that credit, however, I also want to point out one of the things that was said about this legislation by advocates in gender-based violence. Schedules 3 and 5 in this bill are modeled after federal legislation called Keira’s Law, which required training for federal judges. Keira’s Law was a stand-alone piece of legislation. It was a stand-alone bill because it was that important to honour the memory of Keira, the little girl who lost her life in an act of intimate partner violence by her estranged father. Instead of following in the model of Keira’s Law and instead of bringing forward a stand-alone bill that could have included all of those other recommendations from the Renfrew coroner’s inquest and from the Mass Casualty Commission for a broad-based training program for everyone involved in policing and community safety and the justice system, the government decided to include schedules 3 and 5 in Bill 102, which calls into question the government’s commitment to actually addressing intimate partner violence and gender-based violence in this province.

The other issue about this bill is that it would have provided an opportunity for the government to address some of the issues that we hear about quite regularly from our constituents. Certainly, whenever there is a media story about an officer who has committed an egregious offence and is suspended with pay—this bill could have addressed that. It could have permitted the suspension without pay of officers who are convicted of serious offences. That was a motion that was tabled by the NDP during clause-by-clause on this bill, because that is something our communities want to see. There is justifiable outrage when these media stories come up about an officer who is convicted of a serious offence and yet is suspended for years while collecting a paycheque. That offends our sense of due process and fairness. This is something that could have been corrected by this government while they were opening up this bill, but they chose not to go there, which is unfortunate.

The final thing that I want to say about this bill: The other missed opportunity that this government had was to address head-on the PTSD that so many of our front-line service officers experience, and many times that is related to that lack of training, that lack of preparation that police officers need when they are responding to the kinds of crises that we see across this province.

We saw in a report from the Auditor General back in December 2021 that in the OPP there are more than 1,000 vacancies for front-line constables, which is more than a quarter of all funded front-line constable positions, and a third of those vacancies are because those officers who filled those positions are off on long-term disability because of the PTSD that they have experienced on the job. And we know that the mental health stress, the PTSD, that front-line officers have been facing over the past decade or so is continuing to escalate. In the auditor’s report, she summarized police officer deaths by suicide in Ontario and showed that the lack of support for police officers to deal with their PTSD has very much contributed to a serious deterioration in their mental health and an increase in officer deaths by suicide.

Speaker, we see this legislation as very much a missed opportunity. It was a missed opportunity to address the urgent community safety priorities of our communities by providing the kind of training that police officers want, that would benefit our communities, that have been shown to benefit our communities—as I said, with the COAST program. It was a missed opportunity for the government to declare decisively that it’s serious about addressing gender-based violence and intimate partner violence. They could have included the first recommendation of the Renfrew coroner’s inquest, which is to formally declare intimate partner violence an epidemic—because that is what it is in this province—but they chose not to. They could have looked at the extensive work of the Mass Casualty Commission and implemented some of the training that is recommended by that commission for officers, to prepare officers to respond to gender-based violence and sexual violence, but they chose not to.

So this bill, as I said, is a missed opportunity to really tackle the issues of community safety in Ontario in a meaningful way, to invest in officer training and to respond to gender-based violence and put an end to gender-based violence in the province of Ontario.

I’d like to thank the member from London West for her excellent comments. I want to thank her for bringing forward the concerns and requests from front-line officers, especially with regard to permanent, stable funding for the COAST program.

This government ignored recommendations from budget consultations earlier this year, and they really missed the opportunity to commit to support front-line officers by funding COAST within this bill.

My question to the member: Why does COAST make sense from a mental health perspective as well as a fiscal one?

I appreciate the comments from the Solicitor General.

An effective response for my community in London would have been stable, permanent funding for the COAST program. That is a program that pairs police officers with mental health workers, social workers and nurses so that they can respond effectively to the crisis of mental health and addictions that we are seeing in our city. We have a crisis that has triggered a whole-of-community response to address the escalating levels of mental health and addictions and homelessness. That permanent funding for the COAST program, which is what my community has been asking for for several years, would have gone a long way to improving community safety in London.

In London, we have 2,000 people on the by-name list, who are unhoused. We have 6,000 households, representing 11,000 individuals, who have been waiting, sometimes for a decade, to get into rent-geared-to-income housing, and in the meantime, they’re living in substandard housing; they’re couch-surfing. They are not able to get into that kind of housing stability that’s going to help them move forward and build their lives. Housing is where it has to start.

I appreciate the comments from the member from London West.

Last week, we held a press conference in front of Queen’s Park here with a number of agencies and organizations that work to bring an end to gun violence. Their message was very clear: that the police alone cannot bring an end to gun violence; that we need to address the social determinants of safety, the social determinants of gun violence, which start with poverty and this growing gap between rich and poor. And yet, this government and the actions they are taking—particularly recently, the privatization of health care, where people are now being charged for their health services—is going to grow that gap between rich and poor.

What would you say to the government, to those agencies that fight against gun violence? If they really want to make our communities safe, what would be the approach they should be taking?

Through you, Madam Speaker: I, like the member opposite, really appreciate—I appreciate the level of strength she has within her community.

We had an announcement of $36 million for the Homelessness Prevention Program. I did a little research. Her riding, actually—London-Middlesex—received $22 million with respect to homelessness prevention. These are important things that actually help us build communities and create a good environment for our residents.

I was going to ask her another question. Thornhill is a very large mass and we’ve got a lot of area in our riding. The Fire Protection and Prevention Act allows multiple deputy fire marshals to be appointed to ensure a timely response to crucial matters. This will save lives—more area, more fire marshals.

Will the opposition support these changes by voting yes to our bill that will amend this issue?

We’re going to move to questions.

This particular bill is talking about the Strengthening Safety and Modernizing Justice Act. As much as I can appreciate that the social determinants of health and the social determinants of safety include housing as well—the opposition knows very well that we’ve put forward several bills on housing, historic bills.

We’ve also put forward a homelessness prevention strategy which is working very well. In my region of Peel, we recently announced a $42-million investment in the homelessness prevention strategy. I want to ask the member, is she is aware of the funding that was announced in her region? Every single region across Ontario has received dollars for the homelessness prevention strategy. So what was the number in her region?

I want to thank the member for her comments and for speaking on our government bill. I think the member knows that this bill is a point in time of taking a piece of legislation that has to go forward to where it needs to go to do a lot of catch-up for a long period of time.

Our government has acted decisively, especially in recent months, with transformational announcements and investments, even with regard to the curriculum at the Ontario Police College—on the emphasis of the teachings, of curriculum, that will help officers prepare for their role.

I just cannot understand why members of the opposition cannot support the bill, because it makes our community safer.

I want to assure the member across the way that I am very much informed about what is happening in my community.

There was an initial investment from the province that, following the budget, was supplemented by an additional $8 million for London-Middlesex; $1 million of that went to Middlesex, leaving London with an additional $7 million. That is funding that came after the city had developed the health and homelessness whole-of-community response. It is funding that needs to be supplemented to a much higher degree if the city is to be able to move forward with this model, innovative program to actually deal with the health and homelessness crisis that we are facing in the city of London.

C’est un plaisir d’offrir quelques mots au sujet du projet de loi numéro 102, la Loi de 2023 sur le renforcement de la sécurité et la modernisation de la justice. Pendant ce commentaire, je parlerai spécifiquement au sujet de l’annexe numéro 1, qui vise la Loi de 2019 sur la sécurité communautaire et les services policiers.

Telle qu’elle existe actuellement, la Loi sur la sécurité communautaire et les services policiers exige certaines conditions avant qu’une personne puisse se poser comme candidat au collège de police. Telle qu’elle existe actuellement, la loi exige qu’un candidat doit remplir les conditions suivantes : le candidat doit être titulaire soit d’un grade universitaire ou soit d’un grade d’un collège d’arts appliqués et de technologie autorisé à décerner le grade; un candidat peut être un titulaire aussi d’un grade équivalant à un grade universitaire ou à un grade d’un collège. Ça veut dire, madame la Présidente, que, pratiquement, les candidats qui peuvent se poser au collège des policiers sont tous des personnes qui viennent des collèges ou des universités.

J’aimerais parler de la possibilité d’inviter des personnes qui n’ont pas de diplôme d’études collégiales ou de diplôme d’études universitaires. J’aimerais expliquer ma position en parlant d’une personne qui n’a pas de diplôme d’études collégiales ni de diplôme d’études universitaires. Je parlerais d’une personne qui a simplement un diplôme d’études secondaires.

Imaginons une personne qui est allée à l’école secondaire et qui a commencé sa carrière immédiatement après avoir fini sa formation à l’école secondaire. Cette personne s’est lancée dans la vie de travail et travaille depuis peut-être 10 ans ou 20 ans ou même 30 ans. C’est une personne avec beaucoup d’expérience. Peut-être que cette personne a travaillé dans un bureau ou peut-être dans une petite entreprise où elle a dû être organisée et a dû garder bien les affaires de l’entreprise.

Est-ce que cette personne peut se poser comme candidat au collège de police? La réponse, c’est non, parce que cette personne n’a pas de diplôme d’études collégiales ni de diplôme d’études universitaires. Je sais qu’il y a des exceptions, mais ça, c’est la règle générale. Cependant, je peux imaginer que cette personne peut avoir des qualifications très importantes pour le travail policier.

Il y a des situations où les policiers remplissent des fonctions très importantes pendant une enquête, même si le policier n’est pas engagé avec les responsabilités auxquelles nous pensons traditionnellement. Par exemple, imaginons que nous avons une force de police qui est en train d’exécuter un mandat de perquisition. Ils défoncent la porte d’un appartement et ils entrent dans l’appartement. Là-dedans, ils trouvent des preuves : ils trouvent, par exemple, un sac de cocaïne, de l’argent et aussi des armes à feu. C’est évident que les occupants de l’appartement sont engagés dans le trafic de drogue. Les policiers qui sont entrés dans l’appartement ont saisi les preuves. Mais maintenant, il faut une personne qui va s’occuper de la preuve. Nous avons un nom pour cette personne : c’est l’agent de preuve.

Notre agent de preuve va s’occuper de la preuve. L’agent va marquer toutes les preuves avec un numéro et il va les mettre soigneusement dans des sacs. Après ça, notre agent va soigneusement préserver toutes les preuves et les garder dans un casier des preuves. Le jour du processus, notre agent ramènera les preuves devant le juge. Notre agent va jurer que les preuves saisies pendant l’enquête ont été soigneusement gardées sans être changées.

Notre agent de preuve doit être prudent. Notre agent doit être précis. Notre agent doit être méthodique. Mais notre agent de preuve n’a vraiment pas besoin d’un diplôme d’études collégiales ni d’un diplôme d’études universitaires.

Je vous ai donné cet exemple pour démontrer qu’il y a plein de gens qui ont de l’expérience dans la vie pour remplir les responsabilités d’un agent de police. Et en plus, il faut tenir compte du fait que tous les candidats qui se posent comme candidats au collège de police doivent subir une formation et aussi passer des examens. Le collège de police, c’est un collège. C’est exactement ça, la formation collégiale d’un policier.

C’est pour ça, madame la Présidente, que nous avons visé la Loi de 2019 sur la sécurité communautaire et les services policiers. Le gouvernement propose de modifier la loi et d’éliminer la condition que les candidats au collège de police doivent avoir un grade d’études collégiales ou un grade d’études universitaires.

À mon avis, c’est un bon changement. Il y a plein de gens dans notre société qui ont de l’expérience de vie et qui peuvent se poser comme bons candidats, mais qui n’ont pas un grade d’études collégiales ni un grade d’études universitaires.

C’est important que les candidats subissent une formation au collège policier. Ce programme de formation existe actuellement. Cela existe pour que les agents de police deviennent des professionnels. C’est une formation professionnelle.

Et c’est pour ça que nous proposons de modifier la loi pour prévoir qu’un diplôme d’études secondaires ou l’équivalent constitue une éducation suffisante pour être nommé agent de police. Si nous faisons cela, nous allons ouvrir les portes de la profession à toutes sortes de personnes qui seront de bons policiers.

Maintenant, madame la Présidente, je vais parler d’un sujet qui est lié au projet de loi, mais qui n’est pas exactement écrit dans le projet de loi. Notre gouvernement va aussi offrir la formation gratuite aux candidats. En faisant cela, nous espérons que nous allons attirer de très bons candidats au collège de police.

Le gouvernement prend la sécurité du public au sérieux. C’est pour ça que nous proposons de modifier la loi en ce qui concerne les policiers. C’est pour ça que nous offrons la formation gratuite aux bons candidats.

Je donne mon appui au projet de loi 102 et j’espère que tous les députés de l’Assemblée vont voter pour ce bon projet de loi.

We don’t have time for another question and answer. We’re going to move to further debate.

My question for the member—I thank him very much for his excellent comments and participation in this debate—is specifically on the Courts of Justice Act amendment proposals in the bill.

We know that we have the Small Claims Court for civil claims up to $35,000 and then simplified procedure in the Superior Court of Justice up to $200,000. But what we’ve seen in the past is the Superior Court and judges in the Superior Court overburdened by claims that really should have been commenced or should be traversed to the Small Claims Court. This bill does address that. To the extent that it does, can the member explain how that will free up judicial resources and help clear backlogs in the Superior Court?

I’d like to thank the member from Essex for his presentation.

It’s very curious that today we are debating Bill 102, when just last week Bill 91 was passed, allowing for new dog training and trialing areas—something that has been called a sport but also has been very deeply questioned by many animal rights advocates.

In Bill 102, section 6 grants new discretionary powers to inspectors. This allows the inspector to check in on animals who are in distress.

Does the member not think that rabbits, coyotes and foxes that are being tracked and likely torn apart in these fenced enclosures—does the welfare of these animals not matter to the member? Does the member not think that these animals should be checked on for signs of distress?

We’re going to go to questions.

That’s a good question.

This government has continued to support various programs that assist police officers when they are called to a situation where some kind of mental health issue might be identified.

This particular law opens up the doors of the police colleges to people who might not necessarily have a college diploma or a university diploma—or they might have a college diploma or a university diploma, and that’s a good thing too.

But it’s really the programs offered by this government which assist those types of calls which the member was referring to. Those calls are identified through the police call centres, where they usually identify a person who might be in mental health distress, and a police officer is sent. From time to time, that call centre might also identify another person who might be sent to that situation to help out.

The specific provisions which he referred to are related to the Small Claims Court and the Superior Court. A Small Claims Court action is an action which involves $35,000 or less. However, there are some litigants who, notwithstanding that rule, will bring their litigation to the Superior Court for whatever motive—sometimes they are good motives, but sometimes they are not proper.

What this law provides is that when you have a claim of $35,000 or less and you seek to bring it to the Superior Court, you must first seek permission or leave from the Superior Court to do that. That should keep those claims that don’t belong there out of the Superior Court.

Now we’re debating this bill this week, and it seems to me that the NDP are once again turning on a dime.

I share the concerns of the member that we need to make sure that police are properly funded, notwithstanding the very negative and sometimes disheartening criticism that is levelled at our police. We need to stand up for them, make sure that they’re properly funded, and praise them for the job they’re doing.

Thank you to the member from Essex for his comments.

I wanted to ask generally, what kind of impact does the member feel this bill will have on the training of front-line police officers, especially as it relates to dealing with the increasing number of calls around mental health issues?

To the member from Essex: Recently, I was speaking with the chief of police in Hamilton, and he was commenting on how difficult it was to attract new recruits to policing. I spoke with young recruits about why they entered the force, and they said it’s very challenging when they hear comments, as we’ve heard and read, by people—for example, the member from Hamilton Centre, who tweeted some very disparaging remarks about police officers. We know that previous members of the NDP also made some very disparaging comments about police.

We also know, from a recent article in the Hamilton Spectator, that a heightened police presence actually impacts the level of crime. We saw the drop in break-and-enters in Hamilton, right across the city, because of a heightened police presence.

Can the member speak to why it’s important to reach out and provide opportunities to people who may be considering policing? They’re not always getting the support in communities—and we’ve seen that by members of the NDP.

Speaker, the member for Essex made his presentation on this bill. In response to a question from my colleague from Niagara, he talked about potential alternate responses to calls coming into the police for people experiencing mental health distress. I would appreciate if he could tell us what responses provided for in this bill will be made available to those in mental health distress.