It’s a pleasure to be here today in support of my colleague and my boss, the Solicitor General, and, of course, my colleague from Etobicoke–Lakeshore, who I was on that committee with, and who does such a great job in speaking up on intimate partner violence. I told her, “Make sure you touch on that”—because in my remarks I don’t, and I think it should come from her. She did an able job there.

We’re here today to stand in support of safe communities, as the Solicitor General said. We’re also here today to stand up for Ontarians. We’re here today to demand justice for those whose lives have been lost to violent crime, including our police officers. Because when we have safe communities, we have everything.

Unfortunately, the federal government continues to be soft on repeat offenders of violent crime. Let me remind you, Speaker, that when a motion to strengthen bail reform was presented before the House of Commons in February of this year, it was shot down immediately by a federal government set on their view that there’s nothing wrong with the current Canadian bail system. I think the general public would differ with that.

That’s why we’re here today. That’s why I’m standing here today in support of the Solicitor General’s motion. The motion, once again, calls on the federal government to repeal measures which force judges to be lenient towards repeat offenders and dangerous career criminals. There’s no room for leniency and wishful thinking when we’re talking about repeat criminals who have demonstrated a pattern of endangering our communities through reoffending time and time again. The federal government must respond to the call to action from the provinces and the territories—I actually represented the minister in Ottawa at that conference, and there was unanimity amongst the whole room, from all across the country and territories. They need to ensure that repeat violent offenders, especially those accused of serious firearms charges, do not find themselves back in our communities because of a negligent bail system. The safety of law-abiding citizens of Ontario and Canada must take precedence. The very concerns that this motion aims to address have been echoed not only across this province but nationwide.

Speaker, I was honoured to join our government in March at the federal-provincial-territorial meeting in Ottawa on bail reform. There, we said, in no uncertain terms, to federal minister David Lametti that the time is now for meaningful national bail reform. Safety can’t wait. Our Premier and our Solicitor General led the way in establishing consensus among the Premiers of all 10 provinces and three territories and in calling for bail reform, along with the Solicitors General and Attorneys General of those other provinces. It’s clear to me that we’re all on the same page in wanting safer communities for Canadians. Why, then, is the federal government continuing to reduce the penalties for violent criminals, placing reoffenders back in our communities to wander the streets without any accountability? This is unacceptable.

Violent crime under this federal government has gone up over 30%, and gang-related crime is up over 100%. Given this grim reality, our provincial government will continue to fight for real federal bail reform.

That’s exactly what the Standing Committee on Justice Policy has worked on and presented in its report, as my colleague mentioned earlier, on March 20. As a member of that committee, it was important to me that we had a chance to listen to the OPP commissioner, in addition to the police chiefs and association leadership from across the province.

The people of Ontario and the people who keep us safe have a clear message: Bail reform will save lives. If you’re a repeat weapons offender, you should not get out on bail if you fail to demonstrate that you can be a safe member of this community. As of right now, the catch-and-release bail system is not the right solution.

I want to reassure every member here that I, along with the Premier and the Solicitor General, believe in the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” But it is not right to shift the burden on police services by leaving them to deal with repeat offenders being allowed back in the community.

With the introduction of federal Bill C-75 three years ago, the system that was built to ensure public safety has become preoccupied with clearing backlogs. This has undoubtedly led to more dangerous criminals being released on bail when taking these individuals into custody was the appropriate action—not only this; we have seen that our current system has been failing to ensure that repeat offenders released on bail show up and attend court. This is also unacceptable.

As I’ve already mentioned, these very same concerns have been echoed across the province.

I’d like to share the words of someone from my own community, Sarnia police chief Derek Davis, who explained the issue very clearly: If there is a warrant for someone’s arrest for missing their court date, “we arrest you and immediately release you, and if you don’t attend that court date, rinse (and) repeat.”

This harmful catch-and-release has left the local police force in my riding—and I’m sure across this province—among others, to urge the government to take another look at the rules as written.

I encourage all members of this House to speak with your own local police chiefs and police association members. Learn about the challenges on the ground. It will become evident to you how necessary today’s motion is and how much we need meaningful bail reform. The purpose of this motion today is to answer those calls for change.

As of December 30, 2022—to go back to my community—in the community of Sarnia, the local police had been in contact with 230 individuals 20 or more times in the previous calendar year. That’s 4,600 times that police had to respond to these same individuals.

Considering such frightening statistics, how can anyone argue that the current status of the bail reform system is adequate enough to keep the people of Ontario and our nation safe?

Let me elaborate further on one specific case in my community. A serial offender facing probation, assault, mischief, and break and enter charges had contact with the police 116 times in a one-year period—that certainly is “rinse and repeat.” Included in that number were well-being checks, warrants, arrests, conversations, and being the subject of complaints. I can’t think of a worse case of resources being wasted on one individual—where there are many other calls that get put on the back burner because of one individual. Imagine how many times this is happening across this province every day. Placing the burden on police officers to deal with such repeat offenders time and time again consumes a vast number of resources and prevents them from being able to respond to emergency situations, where they’re needed most. This is just one example. Unfortunately, this is not unique to my community.

The current bail system certainly needs serious changes.

How many chances must a repeat offender of violent crime be given before it is time to prioritize the rights of law-abiding people who deserve to feel safe on the streets of their communities?

It’s my hope that through this motion, we no longer will have to ask these questions, and that the federal government will finally listen to the calls from our province.

The immense and proven threat to public safety will continue to grow out of control without drastic and immediate reform to the Criminal Code of Canada. For the safety of the people of Ontario and right across this great country, this matter cannot wait. The time for action is now.

It’s always an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre. In today’s debate, we’re going to be speaking on a very symbolic motion regarding bail reform in Canada. I’d like to begin my remarks by explaining the context of why we’re having this debate.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause. Bail has evolved along with our justice system, and the people working in the justice system have been calling for sensible reforms to many dimensions of the justice system for decades. It predates this government.

Unfortunately, it took the tragic shooting death of OPP Constable Greg Pierzchala on December 27 to bring bail reform back on the political table. I’m glad we’re having this conversation. It’s absolutely important. This young, dynamic officer, who was at the beginning of his bright policing career, was taken far too soon. He is missed by his family and his friends, both in the general community and within the policing community. I have no doubts about that.

We have seen people fall at the hands of violent crimes, and we must do more to protect our communities, including our front-line officers. The police have a very difficult job. Sometimes we task them with jobs that are far too big. We ask them to be social workers and mental health support workers. We ask them to do everything—and we resource them not with all of those services and supports.

The neighbourhood community officers in my community are exceptional. I have the privilege and honour of working with 51 division of the Toronto police. They are the busiest division in all of Canada. They tell me oftentimes that they can’t do it all.

We know that first responders oftentimes run into a building when others are running out. They are the ones who deserve our gratitude and support.

I want to take a moment to thank the hard-working police officers, the paramedics and the firefighters who keep Toronto and Ontario safe every single day.

The accused who was charged with the murder of Constable Pierzchala was on bail at that time, and he failed to appear for his court date in August, just months before the shooting. This spurred the provinces to write a letter—including the Premier, and thank you for his leadership on this—to demand more of the Prime Minister, asking the Prime Minister to improve and make stricter bail provisions.

The federal government has yet to table their bail reforms. We know that is coming. Minister Lametti has mentioned that on several occasions. I have read about his remarks in the media. They have specifically said that they will work with the provinces to target those bail reforms. All of that is under way. And we have this motion before us.

On January 31 as well as on February 1 of this year, the Standing Committee on Justice Policy met to investigate how we could improve the bail reform system. As the opposition critic for the Ministry of the Attorney General, I participated in both of those full days of hearings. I was a committee member. We heard from many dedicated and brilliant Ontarians who work in law enforcement and the legal system. We had police chiefs, lawyers, executive directors, and corrections officers all take the time to actually come and speak to our committee and offer free advice. We did not hear from everyone, unfortunately, because the hearing process was so truncated and expedited. There were only two days to register for the hearings. We did not get a chance to hear from, for example, judges, justices of the peace, or crown attorneys—the very people who are absolutely critical in the administration of justice in Ontario. Their voices were entirely silent in that process. What we did hear were some really strong suggestions that were real and evidence-based. The speakers who did appear before the committee asked us to consider many other things as a part of the continuum of community safety and bail reform. I’m going to speak to some of that today, because I think it’s important for us to make full this conversation of what is before us.

I came to Queen’s Park largely to effect change; I know each and every single parliamentarian wants to do the same thing. You want to serve your community as best you can. You want to drive home real solutions to real-life problems and not just tinker at the edges, not just make symbolic gestures or—perhaps, sometimes in the political theatre—be performative. You want solutions, and so do I; most importantly, so do our communities. They expect that from us.

What I am grappling with is that we have a symbolic motion before us which is supportable—but it could be improved, and I’ll speak to that in a bit. We have a motion before us that is asking the federal government to do something that they’ve already said they’re willing to do. We have a motion that points the finger at the federal government—in particular, Justin Trudeau—about how those real changes can be brought into effect but doesn’t speak to what it is.

What we heard from the speakers at those two full-day committee hearings was that there is real change in real time that can actually happen in Ontario, if the government of the day decides to take real action.

What we know is that not all risk can be avoided simply in the administration of bail. Nothing is that simple. We need smart solutions to make sure we get to the smart outcomes that we anticipate.

New Democrats, on this side of the House, really believe that it is possible to reduce crime by ensuring that the most dangerous offenders are not falling through the cracks of that revolving-door system that was spoken about. That revolving-door system is largely in existence because the justice system is under-resourced. We have to ensure that people do not fall through the cracks. We have to ensure that mental health supports and health care as well as housing are in place for people who need them so that they don’t have to be in our system anymore.

Jails are not housing, detention centres are not housing—just like we know that hospitals are not a form of housing.

Speaker, there was an undertone at the committee—and I want to share this, because I think it was really important, and I’m going to name it explicitly today. The undertone was that the responsibility is all at the federal government and that the federal Liberals in particular can do much more to keep Toronto, Ontario and every other jurisdiction safe. I don’t think I’ve heard from the Prime Minister that he’s not going to be there at the table, but we keep having the government point the finger back to the Prime Minister, saying, “Do more, do more,” when he has already said, “Yes, we are going to do more.”

I seems as though there are some in this House who would like people to believe that the responsibility for reforming bail lies exclusively with the federal government, in order to distract from the fact that more can be done provincially to address this issue. This government has been in power since 2018. Five years later, what has been accomplished? How can communities be made safer, and what are the significant reforms that can come forward?

The Ontario NDP will continue to push for real, full bail reform. That’s something we are truly committed to, because getting tough on crime is not enough when you aren’t getting smart on crime.

The Ontario NDP has been and will be wanting to take immediate action by securing additional resources for criminal prosecutors—something that the government can do right now to ensure that everyone receives a bail hearing in a timely fashion.

We also are asking for more increased funding to legal aid—something that will actually ensure the fair and efficient administration of the justice system.

We need to ensure that police resources are allocated to specifically address the most dangerous offenders, and that it does not result in the criminalization of those who are experiencing poverty, mental health issues, homelessness, or who are struggling with addiction.

We need to ensure that everyone has access to housing and mental health supports.

We will continue to push for a full study on bail reform.

It’s absolutely critical that we recognize this motion is part of a campaign by this government to frame the bail system as overly lenient. Frankly, that barely scratches the surface of what experts have been telling us. They’re the same experts who appeared at the committee. This is where we need to be able to lean into it.

So let’s answer this question: Is the criminal justice system too lenient? Based on real data, the pretrial remand imprisonment rate in Canada and Ontario is higher than that of almost every other comparable Western European nation as well as our most obvious comparators: England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Scotland. Countries such as Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands have a bail system that will focus on rehabilitation over incarceration, and they all have intentional homicide rates that are less than what we have in Canada’s intentional homicide rate.

So why is Ontario failing? When it comes to bail and remand, Canada only—

Interjections.

Thank you, Speaker. I’m sure that all members of this House would extend our well wishes to our friend who just took a little tumble. Hopefully, she’s going to be okay. It looked like a spill.

When it comes to bail and remand, Canada only appears moderate when we’re compared to New Zealand, Australia, and the prison capital of the world, the United States. I cannot stress enough, when making that point, that countries that imprison more citizens per capita than any other OECD country—the United States is a far more dangerous country to live in than Canada.

To be frank, I think it’s important for us to recognize that sometimes when language about being tough on crime is said, it oftentimes is a dog whistle for “tough on crime on specific people.” When the rates of incarceration are much higher for Black, Indigenous and people of colour; the most vulnerable, including the homeless, those living in poverty, those living with mental health and addictions, we know that “tough on crime” means “tough on them.”

Statistics will show that the number of people held on remand in Ontario jails is evidence of how bail systems have become more, and not less, strict. In the 1980s to the 1990s, pretrial detainees represented 23% to 30% of the prison population. Today, remand prisoners account for more than 70% of all inmates held in Ontario’s correctional system. Ontario simply has one of the highest proportions of such inmates.

So it’s incredibly important for us to task the solution to the right problem, and in this case, I think that we will probably benefit by listening to the experts who specifically work in the systems we are talking about. I want to be really clear in my remarks and to say that those who work in our correctional services are exceptionally hard-working, dedicated individuals. They have very difficult jobs, but they’re also not being resourced for success, and they have been really clear that we’re not going to create safer societies simply by under-resourcing those systems. You can use a lot of words, but unless you actually look to innovate and put forward resource solutions, it’s not going to produce any results.

As noted by the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, the Office of the Chief Coroner recently released a report on the conditions in Ontario jails which identified overcrowding, mistreatment, the lack of supports and programming. According to the Elizabeth Fry Societies, these findings make it difficult to argue that holding more people in pretrial custody—they have not been sentenced—would enhance public safety. Rather, it would cause significantly more harm to the individuals and public.

In her written submission to the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, Dr. Jennifer Foster stated that being held in detention forces inmates to harden in order to cope, and that is happening without them even being convicted. Hardening continues after they are released, requiring further support and treatment to recover from detention. You put them in detention, and they don’t have pathways to rehabilitation or services. The longer you keep them in detention before they’re convicted—if they’re sentenced—they come out more dangerous.

Witnesses to the committee stressed to members of this House that our criminal justice system cannot be expected to eliminate all risks.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association pointed out that a pattern of breaching court orders does not necessarily mean dangerousness, yet we continue to release people on bail conditions such as curfews, prohibitions from returning to home, and perhaps bans on possessing drugs and alcohol. According to the CCLA, people who fail to comply with those court orders oftentimes do so not because they disrespect the court, but simply because they’re struggling to survive; they physically, mentally can’t do it. They need supports and programs to ensure that they can comply.

Finally, the committee was urged to consider that for young people in particular, rehabilitation and reintegration are the key to long-term protection in communities. We need to invest in young people so that they can have a speedier resolution to those youth-oriented cases, so that they can access community services and they can come back and be with their families. That pathway to wellness requires investments and interventions.

Speaker, these objectives demand that we need to better resource the court and corrections system—changes that this motion does not address.

What kind of changes did the committee ask us to consider? Let’s start with the biggest gap in our bail system—the one that I would love to spend more time investigating, should this government hold a full study on bail reform.

One particular speaker at the committee really left me with a lot to consider. I was quite struck by how much knowledge and deep understanding he had about the corrections system. Mr. Scott McIntyre, a 30-plus-year probation and parole officer with the Ministry of the Solicitor General, outlined for the committee a proposal to create a new unit responsible for all aspects of community supervision in the criminal justice system, including bail, parole and probation. As explained by Mr. McIntyre, probation and parole supervision and bail supervision have a number of things in common. In addition to the fact that both involve community supervision, they both also have a “common defect.” Under this government, which has now been in power for five years, the system currently lacks certain things. The system needs to ensure compliance monitoring of those conditions, such as house arrest and curfews. The system needs to seek the whereabouts actively of individuals who have breached their bail and probation, conditional sentence or parole conditions. The system needs to have arms and legs to go out and get individuals who have breached. We have a system that issues warrants—but no one going to investigate afterwards.

Mr. McIntyre proposed the creation of a community corrections compliance unit consisting of a separate classification of peace officers under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Solicitor General—and that those responsibilities could be split evenly between the Attorney General as well as the Solicitor General. These new peace officers would then have a mandate to do some of the following: conduct community compliance checks of persons subject to community supervision orders for bail, probation, parole sentencing; and we would attach certain conditions to them, such as house arrest, curfews, geography, employment, and non-association. It could also seek the whereabouts of individuals wanted for breach of release conditions and execute outstanding warrants for their apprehension. It could also transport individuals back to the court of jurisdiction, and this could help address situations where the police come in contact with jurisdictions out of the area. Oftentimes, that’s hundreds of kilometres away, because people are not bound to one neighbourhood; definitely, they’re not bound to one city and certainly not one province. The police officers and the associations and the forces and services do not have the time nor are they resourced to actually transport people back and forth between the jurisdictions, and that’s where, oftentimes, people fall through the cracks.

Mr. McIntyre also suggested that bail and show-cause hearings for accused people with a supervision history with probation and parole services—those officers could use supervision records to provide the courts with information regarding a person’s risk, including the record of compliance with prior terms of community supervision, and make recommendations to the courts on the suitability for release. This was actually quite interesting. Why is this not being done?

The fact that Mr. McIntyre came forward with these very tangible solutions—and he informs me that he has actually brought this before several governments, so the responsibility doesn’t lie squarely at the feet of this current government; in the previous Liberal governments, the same recommendations were brought forward, and actions were not taken.

I think we need to be able to clearly recognize that the subject matter experts who came to our committee brought forward a number of excellent recommendations, but they’re not in this motion, and they certainly weren’t acted upon during the budget release, which is, of course, one of the most powerful tools—the most powerful tool, the apex of all policy tools—that could have actually effected real community safety and change.

Mr. McIntyre also noted that the bail supervision transfer payment agencies such as the John Howard Society, Elizabeth Fry Society and Salvation Army are not able to perform the feet-on-the-ground supervision around compliance and monitoring that’s needed. So you have organizations that the government has asked to work with those who are out on release, but you haven’t provided them with any of the resources to do that on-the-ground work.

There are over 4,500 warrants for offenders who breached their release conditions, whose whereabouts are unknown. This is a very serious matter, where there’s a gaping hole in the bail monitoring and supervision system that the government has the powers to take action on today—this government—but has not.

It’s evidently clear that if such a unit was created, as suggested by Mr. McIntyre—obviously, we need to have further study and consultation, but it could also yield extraordinary results and close a massive gap that’s before us right now, which is why Mr. McIntyre’s recommendations to me were so illuminating, because they were practical, they were very specific; they weren’t just symbolic. They were bang on, based on what we have now heard about the so-called catch-and-release system.

I believe that Ontario needs to place bail supervision under the Solicitor General’s correctional services’ control, like the vast majority of Canadian provinces. Therefore, Ontario is not a leader; we’re the laggard. Ontario, right now, is one of the few provinces where bail is not under a community corrections compliance unit—where there’s a separate classification of peace officers employed under the Solicitor General’s correctional services.

These are just a few examples of the recommendations that were brought forward. There are so many more, and although I have some time to speak about the recommendations, I don’t have enough time to bring forward the recommendations of two full days of hearings that I really think members of this House would actually benefit from listening to.

I want to be able to also speak a little bit about the officers of the community corrections compliance unit, and specifically about how it’s so critically important to have them in place because they’re going to be on the ground and providing supports. Probation services have great records on offenders’ needs, risks and responsivities, but unfortunately, that information is not shared with the bail court. So you’ve got people who are appearing before judges and the judges are deliberating without a full context and history in front of them. The judiciary would actually be making a more informed decision as to the risk of releasing an accused on bail if they had that prior information.

We know there are 4,500 warrants that are out and this government doesn’t know the whereabouts. Mind you, Speaker, this information came from a 2017 freedom-of-information request, but I’m pretty sure that those exact numbers can be, perhaps, even higher today, based on what we now know were the trends.

We know that officers are doing a fantastic job of writing up breach warrants and then putting them into the system, but then we also know that there’s nobody chasing after them. This is a significant barrier and a gap in the system, Speaker.

The province of Ontario currently has a repeat offender parole enforcement unit. It’s called ROPE; that’s their acronym. Their website indicates that the ROPE unit “is a multi-agency, provincial team that locates and apprehends parolees unlawfully at large in the province of Ontario, as well as anyone who:

“—escapes from secure custody;

“—escapes from or walks away from non-secure custody;” and

—who has become “unlawfully at large by violating bail, parole, or intermittent sentence terms.”

“The ROPE squad also assists other police services with locating and apprehending high-risk dangerous” individuals.

Officer Pierzchala was killed by someone who was out on bail and who failed to appear in court. Why was he at large? Was there no one looking for him if he was so dangerous? We heard about the rap sheet as long as an arm.

Carolyn Jarvis, a reporter, found out this information about the ROPE squad: They pull in 800 offenders per year and an estimated 90% of them are federal parolees. The problem there is that there is nothing like this for provincial offenders. This is a provincially run unit looking after federal parolees. It’s not chasing after provincial parolees. The provincially run ROPE unit does not perform compliance monitoring. It appears only to write warrants. It executes warrants, but it doesn’t follow up.

Mr. McIntyre asked this government, as well as the previous government, to do the following: Bring bail supervision under the corrections umbrella, like the majority of Canadian provinces, cancelling expensive transfer payments to agency bail supervision contracts and creating that Ontario community corrections compliance unit with the aforesaid mandate. It is only then you will have a viable solution within corrections that will be able to respond to the challenges of the day. It will do a lot, I think, in restoring public confidence. It will do a lot in ensuring that the threat to public safety is reduced, and it is entirely within the power of this government.

Speaker, it wasn’t just Mr. McIntyre who had a lot to share with us. There were other individuals, as I noted. It was important that the honourable member from across the way who represents Etobicoke had repeatedly asked in her questions to every speaker who appeared at the committee, “Does bail reform save lives?” The answer, largely—with two exceptions, as I recall—was, “Yes, but,” and then they would go into a list of other things that would be extended from bail reform that could also improve life quality and save lives.

But that hasn’t been the focus of the government. The government hasn’t spoken to the “but here are the other solutions” in the body of this symbolic motion.

The committee members were asked on a number of occasions, “Would it be helpful to have a province-wide, centralized body to oversee bail monitoring, compliance and supervision?” The answer was, “Yes, of course. Do it. Why is it already not being done?”

Toronto Police Chief Demkiw responded that he absolutely supports the idea of having that province-wide, centralized body to oversee bail monitoring and compliance. He then shared with us that the Toronto police already have taken steps on their own to actually move toward a development of a bail-compliance dashboard, something that he was really—and I would say rightfully—proud of. He shared that he was already working with Durham Regional Police to make sure that the information on that dashboard could be shared with the two jurisdictions that are sitting side by side.

Chief Demkiw noted that the Ontario Provincial Police and the government have already expressed some, albeit limited, interest to expand that dashboard concept. This government has the power to bring it province-wide. Yet we know it has hasn’t been done.

Speaker, I honestly believe that this government’s time would be better spent not debating a symbolic motion, but in pursuing the idea that Chief Demkiw brought forward to help us that day, to create that province-wide compliance unit.

But Chief Demkiw was not the only witness who brought forward tangible solutions that could be operationalized. The Ontario Association of Police Services Boards also said that Ontarians would benefit if there was a province-wide bail monitoring system. They also further added this—and I want to share the spokesperson from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police’s remarks today. I want to read this into the record. He said, “Our message to you today as police leaders is this: We want to look at ways to improve how the bail system addresses repeat violent offenders, firearms offences and intimate partner violence. This is an issue that cannot be addressed in isolation and requires a coordinated, multi-faceted approach ... including federal legislative reform to the bail provisions in the Criminal Code.” Here’s the other piece: “provincial amendments to the Ministry of the Attorney General’s policies, guidelines and directives on bail; and sufficient resources and funding from all levels of government to ensure adequate staffing and expertise in bail courts, improved training, and sufficient police resources to enforce bail compliance”—not in the motion.

The spokesperson from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police continues with this: “In relation to the Ministry of the Attorney General, the OACP also urges the government of Ontario to invest in additional crown and judicial resources. Resource shortages in Ontario have resulted in overburdened bail courts and systemic delays. Funding for additional crowns, with a focus on specialized bail/firearm crowns, is required to ensure the bail system works efficiently and in a way that promotes public safety and respect for the charter.”

Speaker, I now wish to focus on the kinds of reform that we need in social services so that it can interact with the administration of justice and bail. I don’t want us to cover this motion that’s before us today and not consider some of those substantial limitations, because the other experts that came to the committee shared this with us. This includes a submission from the Canadian Mental Health Association: “CMHA Ontario makes the following recommendations:

“Further investment in bail support programming to ensure that vulnerable individuals, including those living with mental health and substance use issues are connected to community mental health, addictions, and other social supports.

“Mental health and substance use supports must be more readily available and accessible within the community:

“—Community mental health and addictions agencies are experts in supporting vulnerable populations.

“—CMHA branches provide mental health and addictions treatment and counselling, mobile crisis services, court diversion and supportive housing.

“Mental health and substance use/addictions screening of all individuals on admission to a correctional facility is necessary to ensure individuals with mental health and substance use issues receive the medical support they require.”

This is part of the solution, Speaker—another very important set of recommendations that were brought forward by the Canadian Mental Health Association. It’s not just words; they’re already on the ground, embedded in our community to deliver those supports. What they need is more money. And interestingly enough, the government voted against it just a few weeks ago.

So all of those solutions—and we only heard from two days of speakers. I already shared with you the limitations of not hearing from the justices of the peace, the crown attorneys and the judges. They haven’t even added their voices to this debate yet. And guess what? They administer the system. All of those opportunities and all of those recommendations should be informing this debate, but instead, we’re debating how it is that the federal government should do more to improve the bail system, when almost—actually, I do think every single expert that came before us said everybody has a piece of ownership on this problem.

Mental health, substance use and addictions screening for all individuals being admitted to correctional facilities is a very simple baseline. Who is going into those facilities? What is required to keep them safe, but also to keep others safe? Because they’re not going to be locked up forever, Speaker. They will come back out, and if they haven’t received the supports that they need in order for them to be rehabilitated and to reintegrate back into a general population, then you’re going to be, at some point, releasing them hardened and making the general population less safe.

And we cannot ignore the fact that the Ontario courts and correctional systems are overrepresented with people living with mental health and addictions, which is actually a health problem. There has been no consistency in the mental health and substance use screening upon the admission of going into a correctional facility. You don’t know who is going in. You don’t know what their needs are. You don’t know how they’re going to come out. Many individuals who do need support will never get the support while they’re being held in remand. In detention centres, they don’t get those supports, but they’re also staying in the detention centres far too long, which is why their sentences, when they do get sentenced, are so short, and they have not received the proper supports that they need so that they can be rehabilitated.

The Canadian Mental Health Association of Ontario recommends that all individuals be screened for mental health and substance use within 24 to 48 hours of entering a correctional facility. I’m sure that’s a standard that’s never met, but it’s a standard that they would like to see in order for us to really be smart about addressing the issues of public safety.

Mental health supports within correctional facilities should be implemented with the co-operation of mental health and community-oriented facilities and services. Something that I learned during the COVID pandemic was that people were being released from the detention centres in great numbers—just congregate settings, two-metre separation distance; got to let them go. Well, you never did an assessment when they were in there, but you also released them without a housing plan. That’s something that I know that the Toronto police flagged repeatedly, over and over again, and I suspect that other police associations did the same thing. If you’re releasing people in the communities, then you better be sure that they are safe to go back into the general population. That was never done. I understand that it was the pandemic, but you never had the information beforehand. You had no data to work with. And what did we see? An explosion of some of the violence that we are seeing right now in public spaces and on the TTC because of the effects of those actions.

This is getting worse largely because nothing is being done to address the systemic problems. It just so happens that the social determinants of health are also the same social determinants of safety. They’re exactly the same. So if you want a safer Ontario, you invest in the social determinants of health, and that includes proper housing and employment opportunities. It ensures that the people have access to health care and mental health care when they need them, that they live a life free of discrimination and violence, and so forth. It’s well documented.

Speaker, the point about housing is absolutely critical, which is why I want to drill down on this: because the Standing Committee on Justice Policy heard from many witnesses and there were many written submissions about how inaccessible and unaffordable housing makes compliance. Therefore, the bail terms people are given are most likely impossible for them to honour, so we’re setting them up for failure.

The worst part is that it’s very expensive. Every time you have somebody cycle through the system without a proper resolution to safe, adequate housing, so that they can start on a path of recovery and rehabilitation, guess who’s paying? The Ontario taxpayer. So not only are we less safe, but we’re paying for a system that doesn’t work, and we’re debating this symbolic motion.

Neighbourhood Legal Services provided another submission, and I want to share this: The major issue that they encounter is bail conditions in which people don’t have a home to return to. You pick them up, you put them in a detention centre, they’re charged with one thing or another, they aren’t receiving services, and at some point in time they’ve been in there for too long and you’ve got to let them go. They come back out hardened, as we have now learned, and it’s not their fault anymore, because now they’ve touched the system. Once again, now it’s our fault, our collective responsibility, where we failed.

So many of the social challenges that we have today are complex, and certainly we do need to recognize that we cannot police our way out of homelessness. The police officers will be the first ones to tell you, “I don’t want to go there.” They used to tell me all the time, “Oh, please don’t send us there.” I mean, I’m not sending them anywhere, but they have to respond to a public disorder, responding to another matter. They know that if that person had access to housing, mental health supports, addiction recovery, there would be a lot less police calls. That would make police officers safer. That would make our communities safer.

The results of decisions where clients don’t have housing have been catastrophic for Neighbourhood Legal Services. It includes a long list of conditions that are just not being met. It’s very important, Speaker, for us to recognize that people who don’t have housing are not going to be safe to themselves, and are not going to be safe, unfortunately, to others. I want to be very mindful that we should not be directing attention specifically on this population, because certainly not everyone is violent—I know that—but we do need to recognize that these systemic failures need systemic solutions.

And so it’s important for us to be smart on crime. It’s important for us to really focus on how we’re going to address bail reform in a way that makes everyone safer. That includes making the system work better, because those expert subject-matter witnesses who came before our committee brought smart solutions; they really did. But will the government be smart enough to implement them? That has yet to be seen.

Neighbourhood Legal Services made a number of recommendations, and I want to be able to share them with you and read them into the record. What they said is, “(1) There must be adequate legal resources provided to ensure that accused persons are able to meaningfully bring forward arguments about their housing in bail hearings, and that they can get legal assistance to seek variations of conditions which prohibit them from attending their homes.

“(2) There should be a presumption that accused persons will not be put under conditions not to attend their home or building.

“(3) Bail courts should be required to consider housing impacts on an accused. They should be given explicit guidance on factors to take into account, including the availability and viability of alternate accommodation, the costs of alternate accommodation, and the ability of the accused to afford alternate accommodation. Bail conditions should be subject to review if an alternate housing option becomes unviable.”

If they can’t go back to their home because it’s not safe, or if they don’t have a home to go back to, then where are you sending them? Into the TTC? Into the subway tunnels? Where are we sending them? Into vacant homes? Into the stairwells and in front of door stoops of businesses? Where are you sending them, if they’re not being sent home or if their home is unsafe? If they are trying to get away from the criminality that they are embedded in, they really probably shouldn’t go back there.

Bail courts should be given guidance on constructing the narrowest possible conditions so the conditions can actually be met. If they are so general, they may not work, such as:

—not to attend the same floor as a complainant, witness or co-accused;

—not to communicate with a complainant, witness or co-accused;

—to maintain a certain distance from a complainant, witness or co-accused;

—not to attend locations in the building when it becomes known that the complainant, witness or co-accused is present in those locations.

All that being said, if people are under-housed and the conflict that brought them into direct contact with the criminal justice system or the correctional system—you can’t send them back there. They’re going to be back out on the street in no time. How are we going to be safer? We are not. It makes absolutely no sense.

I think it’s important for us also to be able to smartly talk about the history of colonialism and systemic racism. I want to note that, even though the Black and Indigenous populations are overrepresented in the courts and the criminal justice system, they certainly were not overrepresented in the hearings. We didn’t hear from them. It just was a shame that there was no opportunity to hear from them.

I know that I was scrambling as I was trying to understand that we’re going to have a conversation about bail reform and not we’re talking about the people who are actually directly impacted, which is why I want to share with you the written submission that we received from the Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services. This organization was created in the 1990s to address the shortcomings in the administration of justice within Nishnawbe Aski Nation and to improve access to justice for members of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

According to this organization, Indigenous people are vastly overrepresented in Canada’s jails and prisons. Moreover, the numbers continue to rise, despite the release of a Supreme Court of Canada decision, R. v. Gladue, more than 20 years ago. That decision required the courts to consider all available sanctions, other than imprisonment, that are reasonable in the circumstances, with particular attention to the circumstances of Indigenous offenders. Subsequent court rulings have held that the Gladue principles were not limited to sentencing. They also apply to all circumstances where an Indigenous person’s freedom is at risk, including bail hearings.

This organization has argued that the most important and critical moment in a criminal matter is bail. What happens is so predictable. If the accused is not granted bail, the chance of them entering a guilty plea goes up significantly. This reflects the reality that no one wants to wait in jail for a trial when they are being offered the option of being released for time served. The Supreme Court has noted that Indigenous people are more likely to be refused bail and that this reality contributes to the over-incarceration of Indigenous people.

You want to talk about truth and reconciliation, Speaker? Here is an opportunity for us to deal with what has happened within the Indian residential school system. These are real-life situations that aren’t just necessarily about talking points about being tough on crime. “Tough on crime” without getting to actual solutions doesn’t get us to safer communities. I am confident that every parliamentarian here is committed to building safer communities for all of us.

I know I am. My son is almost four years old. He is about to be in school. We live in downtown Toronto. I’ve got to get him across Yonge Street so that at some point in time he is going to be able to walk to school by himself. I am so committed to building safe communities, but we cannot go about it just by talking points. This is so real for me. It’s so real. And it’s real for other community members, including those from the rural and northern communities and Indigenous stakeholders who were not present in the committee hearings.

I think it’s important for us to recognize that for some of the First Nations people in northern Ontario, 23 of the 34 communities are fly-in communities. Where are the courts? Where are the judges? I’ve now heard that you can’t even get a hearing. You can’t even get access to justice because those facilities aren’t there.

There’s just so much more that we can talk about. I want to share with you, Speaker, something that was shared by Roland Morrison, who is the chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service. He described a number of aspects that are unique to the bail system in his jurisdiction. In fly-in communities, bail hearings are conducted either by audio or video, technology and weather permitting—

Interruption.

I ask the member to please take a seat.

MPP Wong-Tam has moved the following amendment: Delete everything after the word “implement” and replace it with the following: “meaningful bail reform to more appropriately evaluate and mitigate risk, ensuring that court resources are focused on protecting vulnerable groups from violent repeat offenders.”

I now return to the member for Toronto Centre to debate the amendment.

It’s always an honour to rise in this House—and today to talk about the motion put forward by the government and amended by the official opposition. It’s regarding bail reform.

I’m going to say at the outset that it’s an honour to follow the Premier. We don’t agree on a lot of things, but on bail reform, I think we have some things where we do agree—not all, but some.

I was also a member of that committee that studied bail reform. I don’t pretend to be an expert on bail reform or an expert in policing.

I am one of the millions of Ontarians who has ultimate respect for the job that the police do. They’re not perfect. No one is perfect. They’re human. But we expect them and ask them to put themselves in harm’s way, to make themselves one of the vulnerable groups that we put forward in that motion.

On behalf of the official opposition, we’d like to pay our respects to the families of the officers who have fallen. We would also like to pay our respects to all the other people who are in the vulnerable groups, who have also lost family members, who have also paid the ultimate price for the failures of our system.

There are failures in our system. Our system isn’t perfect, and the bail system certainly isn’t. Sitting in that committee, the one thing that I sensed was frustration—frustration on behalf of the police who presented; frustration on behalf of some of the other presenters, who would not always agree with the police. The frustration was there from all sides. I would have to say that that committee showed us that this issue is much deeper than can be discussed in two days.

Do we agree with the spirit of this motion? I say yes. I think we, deep down, agree that this isn’t a one-shot one and done. We all know this.

We talk about what happened at that committee. I would like to quote some of the presentations from that committee which, quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised at but that I learned so much from.

Some of these quotes are from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. “Our message to you today as police leaders is this: We want to look at ways to improve how the bail system addresses repeat violent offenders, firearms offences and intimate partner violence. This is an issue that cannot be addressed in isolation and requires a coordinated, multi-faceted approach involving all levels of government and criminal justice system actors, including federal legislative reform to the bail provisions in the Criminal Code; provincial amendments to the Ministry of the Attorney General’s policies, guidelines and directives on bail; and sufficient resources and funding from all levels of government to ensure adequate staffing and expertise in bail courts, improved training, and sufficient police resources to enforce bail compliance.”

That seems a lot more complicated than just one-shot “strengthen the bill”—it’s a lot more nuanced. We’re not saying that we shouldn’t ask the federal government to modernize the bail system, but we can’t look at it in isolation. There is a lot in there that the province needs to do, as well.

I will continue: “In relation to the Ministry of the Attorney General, the OACP also urges the government of Ontario to invest in additional crown and judicial resources. Resource shortages in Ontario have resulted in overburdened bail courts and systemic delays. Funding for additional crowns, with a focus on specialized bail/firearm crowns, is required to ensure the bail system works efficiently and in a way that promotes public safety and respect for the charter.”

So I hope that, as the province is pushing the federal government, they are also looking seriously at the issues that the Ontario chiefs of police have put forward—things that the province can do right now to also protect the vulnerable, because one step won’t protect; it’s a multi-faceted approach.

The Attorney General spoke about reverse onus, and he did a good job of explaining—so I’m not going to repeat it.

The Ontario chiefs of police said, “While a reverse onus is not appropriate for all cases, it is appropriate for cases where there are significant public safety concerns. We’re seeking expansion of reverse-onus provisions to include firearm-possession offences, repeat violent offenders and intimate-partner-violence offences where there are prior convictions against an intimate partner, including criminal harassment and distribution of intimate images, regardless of whether overt violence was used or threatened.”

This is one of the reasons why we put forward the amendment—because it needs to look at violence as a whole.

Further, from the Toronto Police Association—again, someone we respect, front-line people: "The reality is, there’s no time or resources for proactive initiatives. There’s no time or resources to seek out individuals on bail. There’s no time or resources to seek out those who fail to appear.... I bring this up because while we may revisit our bail system, and while we may make amendments to shift priorities, the reality is that reasonable bail is a constitutional right, and many people will return to their communities until such time as they have their day in court.... When accused parties are on bail, they sometimes fail to appear in court. While I’ve already suggested that courts and prosecutors treat those failures to appear strongly, we as the police also need resources to track these individuals down proactively. Again, these initiatives require resources, and they require investments in people.”

My colleague was speaking—I believe the last time we could find stats, there were 4,500 people in the wind. I believe it would be partly a provincial responsibility to find those people—not enough resources. At that committee, there were suggestions made on how to do that. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about how, but there’s obviously an issue when you’ve got 4,500 people out in the wind that haven’t shown up for their warrant. That’s a big problem.

From the Toronto Police Association: “Police have a responsibility—in fact, it is their most important responsibility—to maintain public safety. However, it is not their responsibility to shoulder this alone. As an example, years ago, here in Toronto, across every division, we had bail compliance units: a team of officers whose sole purpose was to monitor and conduct compliance checks at local divisional levels within their communities. While we still have some capacity to do that, we have removed that from the local divisional level. We’ve removed the community notion of it. The initiatives require resources.”

Again, I’m not saying this; this is the Toronto Police Association saying there are not enough resources to monitor people. That’s a problem that the government is aware of. The government members also heard this, and I’m sure that the ministers responsible knew this well beforehand, because I’m sure the police have told them before. This is a long-standing issue—it predates this government; it predates others—but if the government is serious that this is coming to a head, and I have no doubt that they are, this also has to be addressed, because if you just address one issue, it won’t work.

I take the government at its word, but this motion seems to point the finger at another level of government, trying to divert from their own responsibility. We all have responsibility—we all need to take it, because we’re all talking about vulnerable people.

I continue, from the Toronto Police Association: “In discussing this, I would be remiss in failing to mention our other justice partners and stakeholders and the resourcing that they require. It is not lost on me, nor our members, that our assistant crown attorneys are also overworked, overburdened and require more resources. Also, our colleagues in probation and parole are overworked and require more resources. These are all important investments in public safety.”

There’s a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a community and it takes wraparound services to keep that child safe—and what we heard at that committee is that there’s more than just the problem with the federal bail system. I think everyone acknowledges that. Let’s all move forward and talk about that. Let’s ask the federal government, as this motion is doing, to do their part. We’re in favour of that, but let’s also do our part.

I have a quote from some of the other witnesses at that committee, from the Law Society of Ontario, and it’s about clearing the judicial backlog: “Clearing the backlog should be a priority. The ministries that would be responsible would be the Ministry of the Attorney General and Ministry of the Solicitor General. These ministries need the resources in order to deal with the causes of the backlog. They need the resources to deal with getting disclosure out in criminal prosecutions and the resources to be able to identify the most serious cases that pose a risk to community safety and be able to prioritize them.”

Again, those are issues completely in, I would say, the province’s domain—could be addressed in this House; should be addressed in this House; hopefully will be, but don’t seem to have been, because they came up at this committee. This committee was to discuss changes to bail, but these were the issues brought forward by expert witnesses.

Another one came in a written submission—but it stuck to me—from the Canadian Mental Health Association. I think this one, as someone in northern Ontario—I don’t think it’s a secret, and it’s not on purpose, but our resources are farther apart, wider spread. We don’t have the same access. There’s more access to resources in the city, simply because there’s more people; they’re closer together. From the Canadian Mental Health Association: “The justice system is often the first point of access for individuals to receive any type of mental health and addictions services. This leads to the overrepresentation of people with serious mental health issues in Ontario courts and correctional and remand facilities.” That is one of the saddest statements, if you think about this—and specifically, where I come from, I know this. For police, as well—because police play an incredibly vital role. I couldn’t be a policeman; I know it. They also need to have the support of other experts, so that when they encounter someone—the only way for that person is the justice system. That’s just not right in a society like ours. We disagree about lots of things, philosophically, but I don’t think any of us disagree about that—that the first point of access for mental health is the justice system. That’s just not right—that that person, whose main issue is mental health, might become a repeat offender, simply because there is no other service available. We have to be very careful with that.

As MPPs—this is an incredible job, and one of the things that I find most incredible is that we all come from different walks of life. In what other walk of life would a farmer get to talk to a mining executive and former crown attorney, all on a one-to-one basis? I think it’s incredible—and we get to tour places that we wouldn’t be able to do.

One of the most chilling things I’ve ever done is tour the Haileybury Jail, the North Bay Jail and the Monteith correctional centre. That’s when I realized that most of the people in the Monteith correctional centre have never been convicted of a crime; they’re waiting to see a judge, and a lot of them aren’t violent, repeat offenders.

There are a lot of things to fix in our system. We should concentrate on that, so that the people—and there are violent, repeat, dangerous people who need to be incarcerated, but there are lots of people in those facilities who don’t fit that description. So we have to be really careful that we’re not throwing away the key on people who have never really done anything to warrant that, and there is a danger of that now. It’s actually happening now.

With that, we are in favour of the spirit of this motion. We hope that the government accepts our amendment.

I thank you very much for giving me the time to speak.

I would like to commend my colleague from Ottawa–Vanier on her heartfelt words and lived experience.

I would like to first start out commending the Solicitor General for bringing this bill forward. It is a step in the right direction towards addressing the challenges posed by repeat violent offenders. That starts with a commitment from government to move forward quickly on targeted reforms to the Criminal Code of Canada on bail.

Violent crimes are on the rise in Ontario and across Canada. The trend is only increasing as time goes on, with no end in sight. It is beyond tragic to see innocent people becoming victims of horrendous offences. Public safety must be paramount, and we as leaders need to work collaboratively to ensure that happens and that we do so immediately.

There are a growing number of calls for changes to prevent accused people who are out on bail from committing further criminal acts. Good-faith initiatives from every level of government and every police force are a necessary step. We must confront these issues together. We need to review the judicial and public safety frameworks, commit to further work to fully understand the best remedies, identify what isn’t working and call for change to ensure that this does not continue. Everything should be on the table, and we need to ensure that these challenges are a shared responsibility.

Equally important, any changes should require judges to consider the circumstances of people who are Indigenous or from vulnerable populations. We want to ensure that any changes do not disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous and minority communities.

Recently, Toronto has seen its increased share of horrible events right across the city and especially on the TTC. To that point, we all know people who are now fearful to ride transit. As we attempt to increase ridership during the pandemic recovery and in consideration of the climate crisis that is upon us, our transit system should be attracting ridership, not the opposite.

We cannot allow citizens to feel unsafe anywhere. We need to do our best to protect everyone and make every effort to ensure there is a higher level of scrutiny for offenders of serious crimes. Bill 13 is attempting to accomplish just that, if passed. Ontarians are looking to us to help keep them safe and secure.

Now I’ll send it to my colleague.

Thank you, Madam Speaker—

As elected officials, we have an obligation to protect Ontario’s communities, and that is what this motion seeks to do. That is why I support it.

The federal government needs to hear from us, this Legislature, that the people of Ontario want to feel safe in public. They want to feel safe on their streets, on public transit and in their communities. But there are trade-offs, and there are always trade-offs, so let’s talk about them.

We all remember just a few months ago when Constable Greg Pierzchala was shot and killed by a repeat offender out on bail. In that situation, there was a trade-off: Someone known to be a repeat violent offender was let go. We can’t allow this to happen again. We must take seriously the thought that the Criminal Code should be amended for those most likely to reoffend.

When it comes to this issue, the public has skin in the game. Their safety is on the other side and on the line. That is why we have to make it harder for these kinds of offenders to get out on bail. Reversing the onus, requiring the most serious and violent criminals—those who are most likely to reoffend—to prove why their detention isn’t justified is a fail-safe. It creates a legal framework in which the justice system can keep the most dangerous people in custody until their trial.

But this alone is not enough. This is just one piece of the puzzle. For example, why doesn’t the provincial government require bail hearings for the most serious offences to be heard by the provincial court rather than a justice of the peace? Why doesn’t this government spend some of that contingency fund on the justice system, which desperately needs additional resources to complete its bail hearings on time? And why haven’t we responded to the recent wave of TTC violence with increased mental health and addictions funding?

These are all questions we need to consider in concert with this motion. Bail reform cannot make our communities safe on its own. It can make them safer, but not nearly safe enough.

I’ll indicate at the outset that I’ll be sharing my time with the member for Beaches–East York and the member for Don Valley East—if he gets here on time.

I think everyone here can agree that those who have committed violent crimes, and especially those with a history of repeated violent offences, should be kept behind bars where they do not pose a threat to public safety. To that effect, I do support this motion calling on the federal government to amend the Criminal Code of Canada to keep violent and repeat offenders off our streets. However, we also cannot ignore the many testimonies made at committee regarding the negative impact that stricter bail conditions could have.

Madam Speaker, we do not need more jails in this province. We do not need to incarcerate more people. What we need to do is to shift our focus to rehabilitation and reintegration. We have to recognize that the reasons people commit crimes are often complex and take root in difficult life experience. Whether it is poverty, poor mental health, addictions, a lack of community or of a support network, abuse or previous violent trauma, the reasons that people commit crimes are not simple. They’re never simple. It is these underlying issues that we need to work to address so that we can prevent people from ending up in the situations and circumstances that make criminal acts seem like a viable option.

It is worth asking ourselves whether the crimes of these violent and repeat offenders that we’re talking about today were always inevitable, or if there was a point in each of these people’s story where someone could have intervened, where the system could have treated them differently and helped them turn their lives around before they committed a criminal act. Maybe, maybe not. But there is no doubt in my mind that there are many offenders out there for whom this is the case and for whom the experience of being detained can contribute to bring them down even lower.

Dr. Jennifer Foster stated in her submission to the committee that detaining people has an effect of hardening them, regardless of if they are convicted or not. The experience of being detained is a tough experience and has a significant negative impact on the detainee. Unfortunately, I speak from experience. My brother spent most of his adult life in and out of prison, and I can attest that, whenever he was released, he was nowhere near being better upon that release. Actually, he ended up dying of an overdose at age 38, alone in a shelter. That was back in 2006, and we haven’t made significant strides enough to help those people.

These negative impacts are only augmented when we consider the extremely poor conditions that inmates are subjected to in Ontario jails. Recently, Ontario’s Chief Coroner had nine experts review the deaths in Ontario’s correctional facilities from 2014 to 2021. In January of this year, those experts released a scathing report highlighting the lack of space, of programming and of services for inmates, all factors that help maintain the well-being of those being detained.

The report also underlined the lack of adequately trained staff, of decent management, of effective anti-drug measures, of transparency and of accountability within correctional facilities in Ontario. These failings have led to extremely poor conditions for inmates and to preventable deaths.

Of the deaths in correctional facilities during the time period studied, approximately 40% were a result of drug use and 24% were from suicide. That’s two-thirds of the deaths that could have been avoided through better addictions and mental health supports for inmates, not to mention the many other factors that could have been addressed. Given such conditions, it is not hard to understand the negative impact being detained would have on someone and the psychological trauma that they would have to deal with as they try to move forward.

Currently, Ontario’s jails do more harm than good in most cases, and this needs to change. If we want to better protect the public from violent crime, yes, we need bail reform. But more importantly, we desperately need to improve the conditions in our jails so that inmates are treated with respect and dignity and put on a path towards rehabilitation and re-integration instead of a downward spiral that only leads to more crime.

We also need to focus on addressing the complex underlying factors that lead to criminal activity. It is only by taking a whole-of-government approach, as the government side likes to say, and addressing the issue in a holistic manner that we will truly be able to reduce the number of incarcerations, effectively reintegrate offenders into society and protect the public.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ll I turn it over to the member from Beaches–East York.

It’s a pleasure to rise to participate in the debate on the motion before us today—actually, now on the subamendment to the amendment to the motion that is before us today on bail reform. This might surprise the government House leader, but certainly the subamendment that he has put forward is something that is supportable. We made very clear from the outset our intention to support the motion. Our amendment was intended to focus the direction that we are giving to the federal government to deal with the real issues that were brought before the committee and to honour and respect the input that MPPs who participated in those standing committee hearings on bail reform heard. So we are here today.

The standing committee hearings were undertaken in the wake of the tragic murder of OPP Police Constable Pierzchala back in December.

I want to begin by offering my deepest condolences to Constable Pierzchala’s family and his co-workers—to police officers across this province who put their lives on the line in the service of our communities and die to protect us. We know that we have to do whatever is necessary to keep police officers safe, but we also need to ensure that we are keeping our communities safe from violent repeat offenders, which is what this motion, as amended by the government House leader, calls for.

I want to quote from some of the input that was provided at the committee, and in particular the input from the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. They said very clearly: “Our message to you today as police leaders is this: We want to look at ways to improve how the bail system addresses repeat violent offenders, firearms offences and intimate partner violence. This is an issue that cannot be addressed in isolation and requires a coordinated, multi-faceted approach involving all levels of government and criminal justice system actors, including federal legislative reform to the bail provisions in the Criminal Code; provincial amendments to the Ministry of the Attorney General’s policies, guidelines and directives on bail; and sufficient resources and funding from all levels of government to ensure adequate staffing and expertise in bail courts, improved training, and sufficient police resources to enforce bail compliance.”

In light of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police highlighting the gaps in our bail system in terms of repeat violent offenders, those who are convicted of firearms offences and intimate partner violence, I want to highlight some of the recommendations of the Renfrew coroner’s inquest. My colleague the member for Toronto Centre spoke to this when she brought her amendment to the floor. There were a number of recommendations that came through that coroner’s inquest process that deal specifically with bail reform. We’ve been waiting since June, since that coroner’s report came out, to see a meaningful response from this government to all of the 86 recommendations of this report—well, 78 of the recommendations were specific to the government of Ontario, and then there were some additional recommendations for the federal government. Many of the 78 recommendations that deal with the Ontario government address some of the concerns about our bail system in this province.

The number one recommendation that should be very easy for this government to move forward with, that people at the gender-based-violence agencies have been calling for in the wake of those horrific murders in Renfrew, those horrific femicides—the first recommendation was to declare intimate partner violence an epidemic. Making that declaration would allow the kind of cross-ministerial consultation that would be necessary to look at all aspects of what’s contributing to intimate partner violence as an epidemic, including some of the flaws in our bail reform system.

The coroner recommended that there be a review and amendments where appropriate of the language that is used for bail and probation conditions in intimate partner violence cases. That was one of the recommendations that was made by the coroner, and that would go a long way to protecting people who are at risk of intimate partner violence.

The coroner also called for a universal records management system that would be accessible by all police services—federal, provincial, municipal, military, First Nations—with appropriate access to all intimate partner violence stakeholders, including probation, the chief firearms officer, crown’s offices, Ontario Court of Justice, Superior Court of Justice, correctional institutions, and parole boards.

Another one of the coroner’s recommendations is to ensure that survivor-informed risk assessments are incorporated into the decisions and positions taken by crowns relating to bail, pleas, sentencing, and eligibility for early presentation programs.

Another one is to establish policies making it clear that, absent exceptional circumstances, those assessed at high risk or where the allegations involve strangulation should not qualify for early intervention. Crowns should also consider a history of intimate partner violence whether or not convictions resulted when determining whether early intervention is appropriate.

And then finally—I talked about the recommendation regarding standard language templates for bail and probation conditions, but the coroner’s report detailed all of the factors that should be considered in those standard language templates and those decisions on bail and probation.

Looking at enforceability; a plan for removal or surrender of firearms and the possession and acquisition licence; residence distance from victims; keeping probation aware; safety of current and previous victims; possibility of a “firearm-free home” condition; past disregard for conditions as a risk factor—these are all actions that this government could have taken months ago, in the wake of the coroner’s report, and could be taking today.

Instead, we have this motion before us—which, as I said, we will support—calling on the federal government to take action on meaningful bail reform. We are, as we have said, in agreement with this motion, but we are going to use this opportunity to highlight some of the actions that the government could be taking to keep all Canadians and Ontarians safe from violent repeat offenders.

Going back to the Renfrew inquest, I want to share some of the comments that were made by Nathalie Warmerdam’s son Malcolm Warmerdam. Nathalie was one of the victims in the Renfrew femicide. He has been very clear in calling for a system that isn’t just for catching monsters. He spoke to the Renfrew inquest and he told them that he wanted jurors to know “how complicated this situation was—that Basil,” the perpetrator, “had the capacity to show us both the good and bad in him. I knew if the jury made recommendations based on somebody they couldn’t see any good in, we would build a system that wouldn’t stop the people perpetuating these harms. We have to build a system that isn’t just for catching monsters, because most folks won’t see them as monsters until after tragedy strikes. That doesn’t do anybody any good. What we want out of this inquest, I told the jury, are recommendations that make everyone safer—even perpetrators.”

We heard some of that same incredible compassion and insight that was shared by Andrea Magalhaes, the mother of 16-year-old Gabriel, who was tragically killed in a TTC station. I don’t know if others saw the column in the Toronto Star on Friday by Edward Keenan. The headline is, “Andrea Magalhaes, Devastated with Grief for Her Murdered Son Gabriel, Had the Clarity to Demand Supports for People in Crisis. We Should Heed Her Words.” He wrote: “Summoning a clarity of thought and expression I cannot fathom at what is certainly the most painful moment of her life, she has demanded more mental health support for people in crisis, more investment in physical and mental health, more housing. ‘More needs to be done to help people in crisis, more needs to be done so people don’t get to the point where they are in crisis,’ she told CBC radio this week.”

We have a system—not just a bail system, but a correctional system, a mental health and addictions system—that does not provide those supports that are needed in our province.

One of the things that was shared with the committee as they were doing the hearings on bail reform was the reality of our correctional institutions in Ontario, the reality of the number of people who are in remand at our correctional institutions: 70% of inmates at Ontario provincial correctional institutions have not been charged with a crime. They are awaiting bail or they’ve been denied bail, but they are waiting for trial. They are waiting for justice. Those inmates are experiencing deplorable conditions that harden them to being rehabilitated when they leave those institutions.

Today I talked to Kevin Egan, a class action lawyer at McKenzie Lake, a law firm in London. He is leading a class action proceeding against the government of Ontario on behalf of inmates at Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre. He repeated some of the input that was shared with the committee about the reality of our corrections systems. He said that some inmates incarcerated in EMDC who have not been found guilty—who are not guilty—will plead guilty even if they are innocent just to get out with time served, because the conditions there are so deplorable, because of the huge length of time that people are waiting to get a bail hearing or to get a trial. He had some great suggestions that would be fully within the purview of this government. He said, “Why aren’t we talking about using technology, using ankle bracelets for non-violent offenders to get them out of our correctional facilities and try to relieve some of that incredible overcrowding in our correctional institutions?” The Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre is two and a half times over the capacity that it was designed for, and as a result, inmates at EMDC are living in inhumane conditions, with overcrowding and no access to rehabilitation. He said this just fosters disrespect for the law when these inmates eventually leave the detention centre.

So there are many things that this province could do immediately that would help relieve that backlog of all of these people who are waiting to receive a bail hearing or waiting for trial.

I want to share a couple more of the deputations, the written submissions that were provided to the Queen’s Park committee that was looking at bail reform.

The Toronto Police Association said, “While we may revisit our bail system, and while we may make amendments to shift priorities, the reality is that reasonable bail is a constitutional right, and many people will return to their communities until such time as they have their day in court....

“We as the police also need resources to track these individuals down proactively” when they are out on bail and fail to appear in court.

The Congress of Aboriginal Peoples noted, “There are problems with our bail system. They are excessive, punitive conditions, and people continue to wait for a long time before their day in court.”

So we do have to look at how to ensure that people have access to bail hearings, and also to ensure that violent repeat offenders are—that there are measures in place to protect the public, and women in particular. I mentioned at the outset the three women who were killed in Renfrew—but to protect vulnerable populations from the highest-risk, most dangerous offenders.

We heard from criminal defence lawyers who highlighted some of the problems with legal aid. They said that one of the main sources of delays in accessing bail hearings is the number of defendants appearing in court without legal representation or duty counsel to help them navigate the bail system. When unrepresented people arrive at bail court and their case is not heard, they are returned to detention, a time-consuming exercise that can occur multiple times. “The system cannot work more efficiently without adequate staffing and resources for legal aid.”

The Law Society of Ontario said, “Clearing the backlog should be a priority. The ministries that would be responsible would be the Ministry of the Attorney General and Ministry of the Solicitor General. These ministries need the resources in order to deal with the causes of the backlog. They need the resources to deal with getting disclosure out in criminal prosecutions and the resources to be able to identify the most serious cases that pose a risk to community safety and be able to prioritize them.”

Speaker, these are all issues that can be dealt with immediately by this government, that could have been dealt with in the budget that was released a week and a half ago, that was debated all last week. These are the actions that Ontarians are calling on this government to take.

I want to close just with giving a shout-out to London Police Service in my community and the advocacy that London Police Service has been doing in partnership with CMHA, St. Joseph’s Health Care, the paramedic services. They have all been collaborating on the COAST program, which diverts police response to people who are in mental health crisis. London is waiting for stable, permanent funding for that program. A lot of comparable-sized cities already have that program in place.

These are the kinds of programs that would really make a difference, that would respond to the plea that was made by Gabriel’s mother and by others in Ontario for a compassionate response to violence in our communities.

There’s no doubt that the increase in violent crime the past number of years is disturbing: families torn apart by vicious acts of violence, women killed at the hands of their partners, innocent bystanders catching a stray bullet, police officers ambushed, children randomly killed trying to get home on the subway.

There’s no doubt that the residents of Orléans and across Ontario are growing more and more concerned with the types and the volumes of crimes and violence we once thought were limited to our neighbours down south.

I had the privilege of participating in the committee hearings on bail reform earlier this year, Madam Speaker. At committee, police testified that the number of shell casings at shootings is up dramatically and that this indicates a level of violence and a ferocity of violence that they’ve never seen before. We heard loud and clear from both police authorities and from criminal defence advocates that changes to the system were needed.

As part of their testimony, the Toronto Police Service presented staggering numbers on just how many violent offenders are released on bail and then commit further crimes, many committing violent crimes again while awaiting trial for their first offence. In 2021, 772 people were released on bail for firearms-related charges. This is in Toronto. Of those, 165 people were rearrested while on bail for firearms offences; 60% of those people were re-arrested for further firearms-related charges. Of those, half received bail a second time. That’s shocking and tells an important story as to why bail reform is so important.

So I fully support asking the federal government to make the necessary legislative changes to make it harder for violent offenders to receive automatic bail, but it’s important to point out that there are important recommendations from the committee that are fully within the purview of this provincial government—a recommendation proposed and endorsed by both the Toronto police and other police agencies, and a recommendation that was generally endorsed by the criminal defence community as well: specifically that bail hearings for those accused of firearm offences—and, I would suggest, all violent offences—should be heard by a Superior Court or provincial court judge, not by Justices of the Peace. Many, if not most, JPs do not have the same legal training and years of experience within the criminal justice system that judges will have.

As stated by Chief Demkiw, “Judges are uniquely positioned to understand all the issues at play and the collective impact of gun violence and bring these perspectives to decisions about bail for firearms offences.”

I’d also like to quote the 2019 Auditor General’s report: “In late 2016, courthouses in two locations started using judges to sit in bail courts instead of justices of the peace, who are not required to be trained in the law. The pilot project ended in August 2019; starting in September 2019, justices of the peace resumed sitting in the bail courts. The Ontario court’s evaluation of the pilot’s effectiveness to identify options for judicial case management of matters beginning in bail court is scheduled to be completed by February 2020.”

Throughout the committee process, none of the experts who testified had yet seen this report from the ministry. Legislative research could not find this report. We heard anecdotally during committee from both sides, as I said, that this pilot project was successful, or they thought that it was successful. To date, nearly four years after the pilot project ended, the government has yet to publish the report on its effectiveness.

As this government continues to hammer about asking the federal government to take action—action that I hope the federal government does take; I support asking the federal government to take this action—I join the public recommendations of the committee of justice policy and urge the government to release the results of this pilot project. Moreover, if the project was successful, as those who testified believe that it was, I’m urging the government to implement that recommendation right away. It’s within their purview to have these bail hearings heard by Superior Court judges or Ontario judges. There’s no need to wait for the federal government to take action; the government has the power to act today.

It’s an honour to rise today to speak to this matter. I want to thank my colleagues for taking the time to speak to this critical matter, and the members of the Standing Committee on Justice Policy for their thoughtful dialogue, debate and contributions that produced a strong, clear and comprehensive document entitled A Report on the Modernization of the Bail System: Strengthening Public Safety. This cumulative effort will save lives, and it’s far more than symbolic. It’s important to note that the findings and recommendations contained in this report were only made possible by the contributions of highly credible, caring leaders who invested their time to share their experience, insights and research, with the goal of improving safety in our communities and the safety of those sworn to protect us. Of those credible, caring leaders, Premier Ford took early, decisive action to lead his fellow Premiers and territorial leaders with integrity in standing united and without partisanship to urge the Prime Minister to take immediate action in this regard. My hope is that this document and our motion today can send a clear message and influence our federal lawmakers to update a crucial component of the Criminal Code of Canada, while making the necessary investments to our justice system to achieve tangible outcomes and prevent the needless loss of life and injury from the few who have no regard for anyone but themselves.

And let’s be clear, Speaker: None of these proposed amendments to this motion were heard by the participant members of this committee at committee. I didn’t hear it. I was there every day.

The need for bail reform in Canada to protect everyone from this very small percentage of violent, chronic, repeat offenders is long overdue, and the call is not a new one. The murder of Provincial Constable Greg Pierzchala, sadly, highlights an issue that our practitioners have known about for many years and are forced to live with daily.

Police officers in Ontario and across Canada face significant challenges and risks that are unique to this profession. The oath police officers swear to serve and protect our communities and the risks they assume to place their lives in harm’s way so that we can live and prosper in safe communities places these professionals at a very unique vantage point that few others have.

I’m privileged and fortunate for having that lived experience as a long-serving police professional, and now, I serve alongside you to share that perspective. I placed my life at risk, and I understand and appreciate this perspective uniquely, like they do. This experience allows me to better understand people—people at their worst and people at their best.

I also carry some of the burdens that our front-line first responders carry every day. I have felt first-hand the frustration and anguish of seeing persons accused of violent crimes against people they know, against strangers and even intimate partners, brought to justice by our law enforcement members only to be released on bail conditions to “keep the peace and be of good behaviour.” This has impacted and continues to impact the morale of our hard-working front-line members because it diminishes the dangerous and difficult work they do every day.

The risk to the safety of police officers while bringing a violent offender to justice takes a tremendous toll on their lives and on their families’ lives. This burden includes, of course, the inherent danger of dealing with a violent person or an armed violent person; the high level of scrutiny, checks and balances that are rightfully built into the system to ensure accountability and integrity; and most certainly the time-sensitive nature and the keen sense of urgency, which few understand, that accompanies all criminal investigations to ensure that an accused is brought before justice in a timely fashion.

The safety of law enforcement officers is of paramount importance because it fundamentally is linked to the very foundation of a safe society. Section 7 of the charter, eloquently read by my colleague, says, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” Our society functions based on this premise. If someone chooses to live outside the law and harm others, they’ll be brought to justice and there will be consequences. In Canada, persons accused and then duly convicted of serious indictable offences could suffer the consequence of incarceration.

The component in between the accusation of committing a crime and the conviction or acquittal is an opportunity to see what Canadians and Ontarians should celebrate as some of our most precious legal rights also enshrined in the charter, particularly section 9 that says, “Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.”

Moreover, section 11(e) states that any person charged with an offence has the right “not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause.” This feature should be championed, notwithstanding circumstances where the evidence of crime is so egregious and the risk to our safety is so great that that accused must remain in custody pending trial. Used properly, the application of this section saves lives, and it would have saved the life of Constable Greg Pierzchala.

Unfortunately, the bail system in Canada has long been proven to be ineffective, leading to the release of violent offenders who go off to reoffend and continue to pose a significant threat to all our safety. This is unacceptable. There is a myriad of reasons why the current bail system is failing to protect us from violent repeat offenders. The conditions for release on bail are often inadequate and do not consider the actual risk posed by that individual.

In my own experience, I’ve witnessed first-hand many cases where individuals with lengthy violent histories are released on bail with few conditions or with conditions that are impossible to enforce. This puts the safety of police officers and the public at risk—our families.

The bail system for individuals accused of violent crimes, all crimes involving weapons and firearms, and crimes against intimate partners should be examined with greater scrutiny and by the appropriate member of the judiciary with specific training and expertise, and they should be held accountable for their decisions.

By carefully applying and better aligning our bail system provisions with goals to better protect communities and our law enforcement officers, we can avoid the unintended consequences that are contributing to increased recidivism and prevent those accused of non-violent offences from spending lengthy times in provincial jails awaiting trial. As noted during the committee hearings, a great number of persons are incarcerated in provincial jails awaiting trial. This is costly and ineffective.

Enhancements to the bail system and investments to support the capacity and resources of our law enforcement officers to conduct bail monitoring, and embedding clinicians with specialized training in mental health and addictions to work more closely with our police officers will also protect persons from marginalized communities by reducing systemic biases and increasing equality in our justice system.

As a former and proud law enforcement professional, I agree with Ontario’s police leaders, who unanimously agreed that bail reform will save lives.

To address these issues, the federal government need not look further than this motion today and the articulate, eloquent report that was completed unanimously by the committee members. These reforms are necessary to ensure the bail system is fair, equitable and just in protecting the public and deterring reoffenders. This will help to improve the safety of police officers and improve the safety of the communities we live in. By working together and supporting this motion today, we have a real opportunity to create a system that is truly just and effective.

Bail reforms will reduce violence and ensure our communities across Ontario and Canada are safer, while strengthening the confidence in our justice system by all participants and all citizens—and respect for the great work our police officers do every day on our behalf.

It’s an honour to rise to speak to the government motion calling on the federal government to implement bail reform. This motion speaks to the public safety concerns related to acts of criminal violence, especially the tragic increase in the deaths of police officers, and I believe every member of this House is deeply concerned about the alarming number of police officers lost in the line of duty during the past year.

Speaker, every worker in this province, including the women and men who serve and protect our communities as police officers, deserves to come home safely at the end of the day. Calls for bail reform have grown since the tragic death of Constable Greg Pierzchala, an Ontario Provincial Police officer killed in the line of duty on December 27 by an accused person out on bail. I want to offer my sincere condolences to Constable Pierzchala’s colleagues and family, as well as to everyone who has lost a loved one to criminal acts of violence and violent crime.

So yes, Speaker, I think the federal government should implement meaningful bail reform, taking the time to listen to front-line officers, legal scholars, criminal justice advocates and others on the best ways to increase public safety. And I say to the federal government, follow the evidence; study the statistics; listen to the experts and the victims—to talk about the best way we can implement bail reform in a way that increases public safety and community well-being.

And at the same time that the province is calling on the federal government for bail reform, I believe we have to look in the mirror, Speaker. I believe the provincial government also needs to take action to reform the bail system and the administration of justice while we invest in programs that prevent crime and promote community well-being. As the chiefs of police have said, we cannot look at bail reform in isolation. My hope is that we can have one of these rare occasions where we work across party lines to protect people and front-line officers by making changes to improve the province’s justice system and to invest in programs that improve people’s lives and community well-being.

I think it’s important to put on the record some of the reforms that experts have called for in Ontario:

(1) Timely bail decisions: People are waiting a year or longer for trial, and I believe it’s unacceptable that 77% of the people imprisoned in Ontario are in pretrial custody. We have a principle that you’re presumed innocent until guilty, and so we need a justice system that has more resources, more judges, faster processing and more funding for legal aid.

(2) We need to improve access to community services for the most vulnerable. Homelessness, mental health challenges, substance use, addiction and/or trauma are realities that make access to bail and adhering to bail conditions extraordinarily challenging. We will not arrest our way out of addressing these challenges.

(3) More funding for enhanced bail supervision programs: Bail supervision programs are a cost-effective way to monitor accused people with higher risks or needs in the community. We need the resources in place to do compliance checks and to have a more rigorous bail monitoring system in order to enhance public safety.

(4) Better inter-agency communication that increases communication among social service agencies, courts and police to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of our bail system in Ontario.

(5) Systematic collection of statistics: Collecting data and disaggregating it in meaningful categories is essential for informing evidence-based responses to ensure that we have a bail system that best protects the public in an evidence-based way.

Speaker, I want to close with a plea to all members of this House and to people across this province that we begin to actually invest in the root causes of crime and violence. I have spoken to so many front-line officers and chiefs of police who tell me that we cannot arrest our way out of the mental health, addiction, poverty and homelessness crisis that we face in this province. We’re asking front-line officers to respond to challenges in our community that they were never trained to respond to. It’s not right, it’s not fair for them and it’s not fair for the most vulnerable members of our community.

And so I say that we need to care for and support our front-line police officers and our most vulnerable because we cannot have bail reform without social justice reform. That’s how we build the Ontario we want.

I’ll be splitting my time with the member from Mississauga Centre. I want to tell you why I’m supporting this motion. The member from Toronto Centre said that we had to listen to the experts that work within the system. I was part of the committee that came up with this report on bail reform. I performed bail hearings in Ottawa, Pembroke, Brampton, Oshawa, Brantford, Kitchener, Goderich, Guelph, Stratford, Walkerton and St. Thomas, just to name a few. At a conservative estimate, I’ve probably performed about 4,000 bail hearings and bail decisions in my time as a crown attorney. So frankly, I would consider myself to be an expert within the system. The reason that I ran for office was because of my experience as a crown attorney. I want to explain why this motion is so important and why it is the farthest possible thing from being a symbolic motion.

I would also like to specifically thank the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane and the member from Orléans, who is no longer here. Those members attended the days of testimonial on our committee, but also attended the days on which we debated the amendments and recommendations and therefore informed it very helpfully in that manner, not leading to last-minute amendments as we are seeing today.

When I began as a crown, began in criminal law, it was about—I was called to the bar in 2014. So this was before the original bail reform considerably and, at that time, it was a completely different landscape. What a lot of people don’t understand when they talk about calling for bail reform is that an aspect of bail reform already happened. What we are calling for is a reform to the reform.

So coming up on 2015-16, I was a crown at that point in time, and what we were seeing in Alberta, in Ontario and all across Canada was, I will full on say, an overreliance on utilizing sureties in Alberta specifically, and in Ontario, an overreliance on conditions that could not be complied with. For example, it was common to require an accused person to give their address, and then on their bail, include a term to reside at that address. Many individuals were homeless, could not possibly provide an address, and yet if they were found not residing at that address, they would then be charged for breaching their recognizance, arrested, brought back to court and very likely held for breaching. Those were issues that were widespread. Crowns were aware of it, defence counsel were aware of it, and police were aware of it.

As a crown, I myself started abandoning those conditions fairly early on, because as an officer of the court and a person with, I think, a strong moral code, I was uninterested in putting conditions on people that they could not possibly comply with that had nothing to do with the real purpose of bail, which was to reduce risk in our society. However, like many things that we see in politics, in society, when a pendulum swings too far one way, the swing back doesn’t stop in the centre. It continues on to the other side. Where we are now is the other side, the other swing of that pendulum.

You’ve heard about Antic. You’ve heard about the ladder principle. You’ve heard about C-75. What Antic did was—in many ways, when it first came out, it didn’t seem like a particularly revolutionary decision. It essentially copied and pasted the provisions of bail from the Criminal Code and said, “FYI, guys, that’s the law. Don’t forget you’re not supposed to be using conditions that are unnecessary or can’t be complied with. A surety is the highest form of relief. Remember that.” However, the federal government stepped in, codified that, and then we got the ladder principle. We got a term that persons identifying as coming from any theoretically vulnerable population should have custody considered as a last resort.

And not particularly gradually—actually, relatively quickly—after Antic and after C-75, I went from being able to—I’ll put it this way: When somebody would come into bail court and you’re making a bail decision, again, I’m an officer of the court and my role is to determine the risk that you pose. Quite frequently, certainly the norm, people are held for bail, and they are not held in custody. They go to the crown. The crown would make a decision, where I would be looking at, say, a domestic offender and decide, “You know what? He’s releasable, but I’m going to need these conditions: that he stay away from the victim, that he not possess any weapons. But he’s good to go otherwise.” And he would go in, he would present that to the justice of the peace, and he would have discussed it with Legal Aid counsel beforehand. It would be agreed on. The person would be released on reasonable conditions.

But what started happening is the justices of the peace, all of a sudden, were so frankly frightened of having some sort of judicial review, of being told that they’d overreached their powers, that the crown’s recommendations, as somebody who—the goal is never to step on the rights of an accused person. That is not the role of the crown. A crown goes in there to try to address risk.

All of a sudden, we wouldn’t be listened to. It got to the point where, particularly during COVID, I could no longer, as far as I was concerned, ever succeed in having the accused held in custody. And these are people with domestic offences, with significant related prior records, who were charged with choking a victim, choking to the point of unconsciousness. These are people with loaded handguns down the back of their pants walking through downtown Guelph at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

We would do the bail hearing and I would present the evidence to the best of my ability, and then we would hear the justice of the peace decision and I would think, were we even in the same courtroom for this? Because from what I can tell, we weren’t. And I would go home every night feeling incredibly anxious, because I knew that I had done my best, but ultimately, I would be worried about that person who was now back out on the street.

The reason that we’re talking, as I said, about the feds here is because, really, the codification of Antic in C-75, that is federal legislation. They do have a very, very significant part to play here when it comes to, as I said, reforming that reform, when it comes to making sure that that pendulum comes back into the centre.

But, yes, the province, of course, also has a role. The idea that this motion somehow—because we are asking the federal government to take necessary steps, that we are somehow absolving the province of responsibility is entirely incorrect. Anybody who reads the report that we created can see that there are a number of clear recommendations set forward for the province—and again, recommendations that I’m happy to have played a part in: for example, the suggestion of training or having certain offences heard by a provincial court judge versus a justice of the peace.

In C-75, interestingly, one of the new offences that was added was the offence of, basically, choking or strangulation. The reason that it was added was because it was considered that strangulation, the act of manually choking somebody, is such a serious offence that it was deserving of its own specific category, its own section number. And yet—I will not name them—I would regularly present cases to a justice of the peace who would refuse to give me a no-weapons condition on any bail hearing where the offender had allegedly choked the victim because, and I quote, “Hands are not weapons.” And this is the type of training that we are dealing with.

So when we talk about femicide, when we talk about protecting women, I would go home regularly, every night, genuinely worried if, the next week, I would find out that the worst had happened. That is what we are trying to address here. That is why we are calling on the federal government to make these changes.

I am proud of the work that was done on the bail committee. As I said, I would absolutely not call this a symbolic motion. This is real, this is substantive and this is addressing something that I saw, day in and day out, in my career as a crown attorney, as I said, performing at least 4,000 bail hearings over the course of my career.

Good afternoon. I’m pleased to rise today in support of government notice of motion 13, which calls on the federal government to immediately reform the Criminal Code of Canada to address the dangers facing our communities and implement meaningful bail reform to prevent violent and repeat offenders from being released back into our communities.

I want to thank the member for Kitchener South–Hespeler for sharing her very, very unique and valuable experience as a crown attorney, which really helps to illuminate our discussion today.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Justice Policy, I had the opportunity to listen in on many testimonials from stakeholders on both sides of the equation—