I agree with the minister, actually. The Community Safety and Policing Act the Solicitor General was referring to was passed in this Legislature over four years ago, receiving royal assent on March 26, 2019, yet it has still not come into force. Similarly, the Accommodation Sector Registration of Guests Act received royal assent almost two years ago, on June 3, 2021, and has also not yet come into force.

When the Legislature adopts legislation, it does so because the enacted changes are deemed necessary to resolve important and often pressing issues in our society. Certain clauses in the Community Safety and Policing Act, for example, would have enabled a chief of police to suspend without pay the officer I mentioned earlier, just like the solicitor mentioned. The Accommodation Sector Registration of Guests Act was meant to help better combat human trafficking, an urgent issue in this province.

Speaker, can the government please explain why it has decided not to bring into force important legislation adopted by this Legislature?

I want to thank the member for her question. Let me be clear: No one convicted of serious and disturbing crimes like these should be receiving a taxpayer-funded salary. Our government brought forward legislation, the Community Safety and Policing Act, that, once enforced, will allow a chief of police to suspend an officer without pay if the officer is charged with a serious offence. This legislation, as members know, replaces a piece of legislation that’s over 30 years old. Our expectation, Mr. Speaker, is that those who keep our province safe uphold the highest standards of professional ethics, and we will accept nothing less.

I want to repeat again that no one convicted of a serious crime, and disturbing crimes like these, should be receiving a taxpayer-funded salary. We expect all those that keep our province safe to uphold the highest standard of professional ethics. Mr. Speaker, I’ll repeat it: We will accept nothing less.

I’m really pleased to rise and address this very, very important issue and get some further context to where we are and how we got here. It’s something that we hear about in our ridings. It’s something that we hear about from family and friends. And certainly it’s something that we hear about from those who are the victims of crime. We actually even hear about it from some of the offenders—and some of their perspectives on how this works and how this works for them sometimes.

I’m going to refrain from talking about any cases in particular, of course, because that’s the right thing to do, and I expect we will all do the same thing. But I want to talk about how policy is made and how these kinds of things happen and come to change.

As we all know—but not everybody knows—there are two lists of powers in this country: There’s the provincial list and the federal list. It’s in the Constitution. It’s fairly clear who does what in many of these pieces. Where the province is charged with running the administration of justice and appointing the Ontario judges, the federal government is charged with running the Criminal Code and where we turn the dial on that, and appointing Superior Court judges and Court of Appeal judges. So we have this partnership where the federal government appoints certain judges but the province is entrusted to run the system itself, and then we have overlaid on that the Criminal Code. A large percentage of the Ontario judges who are appointed by our government—and previous governments—deal with Criminal Code matters. So, again, we have another overlap, and it becomes very complicated to have a conversation when you’re dealing with one system but many fingers in the system. So, as in other ministries, we have what are called federal-provincial-territorial meetings, which are meetings of the ministers of the relevant ministry—in this case, the Attorney General’s office or the Solicitor General’s office. And we meet with our counterparts from across the country on occasion to talk about issues that are important to all Canadians. We will often meet as the provincial and territorial members, and then we will, as a group, meet with our federal counterparts. This happens as need be and on a fairly regular basis—once or twice a year.

I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that we’ve been dealing with some of these issues since I’ve become the Attorney General. There are conversations we’ve had with our colleagues in Alberta and Manitoba and New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, of course, and the territories—all members from across the country—and the alignment that we have on some issues just shows that although we have great diversity in Canada, we share some common values. But I have never seen before—and I’ve been watching politics for a very long time—what our Premier did, what Premier Ford did. He penned a letter, and every provincial and territorial leader signed on to that letter and said to the federal government, “We need to do something different. We need to do something better.” I’ve never seen that before on any issue. Even on health care, there are different voices. Education, transfer funds, all sorts of things—it’s rare, if it has ever been done before, that everybody came together to say, “Here is our collective position. We need you to do something.”

The act of that letter, on January 13 of this year, set in motion something that we at the provincial level, at our provincial-territorial table, have been talking about since I’ve become the AG. The letter calls for very clear change. It calls for change in the Criminal Code itself, which, as I mentioned, is a federal responsibility. It’s something that affects all of us, but the federal government holds the pen on it. We’ve been talking about firearms and rural crime and community-led public safety and all sorts of things back from 2019, and before. We more recently had raised the issue of bail and how it operates or doesn’t operate and the importance to our communities of keeping them safe and having people be protected. But it wasn’t until that letter that the Premier wrote, which all other provincial Premiers and territorial leaders signed on to, every one of them—that set things in motion, but it wasn’t the letter alone; it was our front-line services, the people who see it day to day. It’s the police officers who are on the front lines, who are dealing with a whole myriad of issues, whether it be mental health or social supports or crime as we know it. This was an issue they cared about a lot.

I saw that Mark Baxter with the Police Association of Ontario was here moments ago. His leadership and the leadership of the associations has been critical in the dialogue. I can tell you, it’s not just our police; the RCMP are engaged in this, and their association.

It caused a meeting to happen with the chiefs of police of Canada. And that meeting with the federal government, with our federal counterparts—Minister Kerzner and his federal counterpart, Minister Mendicino, and my counterpart, Minister Lametti, had a meeting with the chiefs of police. I just happened to be at the graduating ceremony for the 500th graduating class of the OPP. I was there with Minister Kerzner, and the meeting was happening at that moment. When I left that afternoon, a phone call was had and they said, “Would you be willing to meet? We’ve heard from the chiefs of police, and we don’t think they’re asking for too much. We think that we might be able to get there.” Of course, Mr. Kerzner and I said, “You name the time and place, and we’ll be there.”

So that meeting came to be on March 10 of this year. All of our colleagues from across the country got together—some virtually, as need be. PEI was in a position where they were into an election—they were into a writ period. They couldn’t participate in signing on to the final communiqué, but they were in a position to be there to listen and to give some guidance.

I can tell you, during those meetings—and parliamentary assistant Bob Bailey and I went due to double-booking, because we weren’t going to move this date. If they wanted us there, we weren’t going to ask for a movement. So it was just, “Who can go? We’re going to go and make our points.”

I can tell you, the collegiality, the co-operativeness—again, I’ve been going to these meetings. I’ve been all over the country doing these federal-provincial-territorial meetings. At the previous one, before the March 10 one, we didn’t actually get a communiqué out. That’s sort of what happens with these—at the end, you put out a joint statement. Well, we just couldn’t agree as provinces, collectively, and territories on some of the issues that were on the table. But at this one, on March 10, a communiqué did go out. A communiqué went out talking about the importance of bail, bail reform, and how it works and how it doesn’t work. I’ll tell you, Madam Speaker, it was really—I don’t want to say that it was a shock, but the level of co-operativeness with the federal government on this issue was heartening. So I look forward to holding their feet to the fire to take action. I really look forward to them following through on some of the things that they said they would be willing to do.

I’ve talked to my federal counterpart, Minister Lametti. We did a tour of the new Toronto courthouse recently and had a chance to connect again. Of course, I raise it at every turn—how important an issue it is for us and our communities, to keep them safe. So I’m glad that we’re talking about it today. We have to talk about it. We have to let people know it’s important to us. We have to let the federal government know it’s important to Ontario. They’re hearing it from the other provinces, as well, and they need to take this step—not just words, not just a study, not “Let’s think about it. Let’s create some options.” We need some concrete action. We need to move the dial, because anything that deals with guns and blades—and Manitoba raises bear spray as a significant issue in their jurisdiction; bear spray is being used for crimes on buses and around. Anything like that needs to be taken more seriously, and the bail system needs to deal with that.

There is a concept in bail called the ladder principle. Effectively, it says that you have to do the least restrictive thing for somebody, and that makes some sense. It sometimes puts the justice of the peace or the judge in a position to have to make a tough decision on what the least restrictive thing is. The federal government did pass a bill, C-75, that codified what were previous Supreme Court decisions like Antic, and there was another follow-up case that codified the ladder principle. What we’re talking about when we talk about bail reform is changing who’s responsible for making the argument—the argument being, “Should the person be let back into the community, or should the person not?” The way that it works, really, is that the crown has to demonstrate why the person shouldn’t be back in the community. As you move up the ladder, the onus is on the crown prosecutor to make that case. And my friend Jess Dixon, the member from Kitchener South–Hespeler, did this for a living, so she knows the mechanics of this better than I do, to be honest with you—she was front-line, having to make these decisions, having to put forward our best foot. I’ll tell you, it’s not an easy job. But the onus, in some situations, shouldn’t be on the Jess Dixons of the world. The onus should be on the accused who is using a gun, or using a blade, or using bear spray or doing certain things. It should be a reverse onus. They should have to show why they’re back out in the community.

That’s what we’re asking the federal government to do—to make some changes, to pass the onus from the crown to the accused. This is done in some instances—this is not a unique or novel thing—but with the increased violent crime that we’re seeing, it’s critical that the alleged perpetrators and those who are then subsequently found guilty have gone through a system that respects the rights of the community and the individuals, our neighbours and friends and family. There is no excuse, when somebody has used a gun in the commission of a crime, why they should not have to explain why they should be let out into the community.

I am getting concerned about the increased amount of crime happening we’re seeing, not just in numbers, but in severity. That’s a real challenge for our communities. It’s a challenge for our front-line officers, for our mental health workers. It’s a challenge for our neighbours, our friends. It’s a challenge for us, running a system to tackle the most serious and sometimes heinous crimes that are happening. And it starts with bail. We need to be keeping some of these people off the streets—the repeat offenders, the violent offenders, the people who are using guns, knives and, again, bear spray, which isn’t something that I’m familiar with, but Manitoba is very, very vehement about this. They want to make sure that their communities are safe, with things that are otherwise fairly easy to get.

Madam Speaker, again, in the bail process, we have this ladder system, as I mentioned, with levels of severity.

I want to talk about sureties, for a moment. With bail, sometimes somebody is a surety—somebody promises that they will help protect the community from the alleged accused, and it goes in connection with bail. So yes, you may be freed into the community—not held in a correctional facility—with a surety who posts money and makes a promise to the court, to the system, that they’ll be partially responsible for what’s happening. I can tell you, we’re talking about bail today, but the surety piece of that is something that should be drawing our attention. I’m not saying that the federal government has to do everything, because we need to do our part. But I think the surety is an important piece of the puzzle. I think that’s something that we’ll give further input into, as well.

Here’s what we do: We don’t just stand by and say that it’s somebody else’s fault, somebody else’s problem. We’ve been investing a lot of resources into what I call the SWAT teams of lawyers. So if it’s a gun or gang issue in Peel or in other parts of the province and somebody’s up for bail, we send in the SWAT team of lawyers to put the best evidence forward, to gather the best evidence to make sure that the accused is faced with the facts of what they have allegedly done, and the judge or the justice of the peace has to take that into account. So we’re sending in our best and brightest on these very focused pieces. We’re doing our part. We’re making sure that happens.

The other thing that we have to do and we have an obligation to do is to make sure that the individuals hearing the matter—the justice of the peace and the Ontario court judges—are at the top of their game. That’s why there’s a very rigorous process for appointments.

Madam Speaker, there are 299 Ontario court judges in this province at the moment, and I’ve appointed approximately 70 of them; maybe a few more than that. I’ve appointed approximately 100 of the justices of the peace. I’ve seen a lot of applications—I’ve seen a lot of backgrounds; I’ve seen a lot of community involvement; I’ve seen a lot of people who care about the community they live in, and they want to make the best decisions for their communities, for their loved ones and for the people who are victims of some of these crimes. I see that they want the tools—but if the federal government doesn’t do what it needs to do in terms of bail reform, we’re not going to give them the tools they need to get the job done. Again, we’re sending in our best and brightest for these bail hearings, so we’re doing our part for the hearings. It’s really important that the federal government come to the table with bail reform so that we have not only the best rules and the best people and the best evidence for the very qualified and the best hearers, the JPs and judges—to make the decision, to protect our community, to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.

Madam Speaker, I can’t stress enough how important it is that the federal government act soon, and that we get some resolve to this so that we can start talking about other parts of the system that need to be improved. I’ve had a great working relationship with my federal counterpart. I don’t want to make it sound like we’re at odds on everything. We’ve had some very productive discussions; it has been very collaborative. But I’m standing here, really, just to say that it has to happen soon and our communities are waiting for it. People are talking about it. They’re concerned. Some are apprehensive. We’ve seen the stories in the newspapers. We just have to do more, we have to do it soon, and we have to do it better.

I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about some of these things that are very important to me—something that I talk a lot about in meetings and that I hear from our excellent partners in the policing world and our judges and JPs and all those who help manage people in crisis, and the victim services that are out there.

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.

That’s okay. I hope your fingers are intact.

The justices of the peace are not always available. For most offences, the accused is then released back into the community, which then makes victim protection even harder. As we all know, in those tight-knit communities, it’s all about communities helping each other. When you have one person who has stepped offside or one person who’s violent or created an incident and made other people unsafe, where are they going to be released to? They’ve got nowhere to go, and they become more hardened and more difficult to rehabilitate afterward.

Chief Morrison said that in recent years, there has been an influx of offenders from southern Ontario who are already “on conditions.” He actually noted that people are bringing drugs and weapons to places like Thunder Bay and Timmins and then “aligning themselves” with Indigenous people they meet who live in northern communities.

Chief Morrison asked for more resources to address the current system’s deficiencies. If you want to help those northern communities and Indigenous communities, then fund the services that they’re asking for. This police chief was really clear about the things that he needed to keep his community members safe.

I couldn’t help but notice there was a note of desperation in his voice. There was a note in his voice that said to me he didn’t really believe what we were asking him and that the question in the debate at the committee wasn’t going to result in any more resources for him. I regret that, because I know that I couldn’t have offered him much more at that time. But I sure would like every member of this House to actually take his submission and actually review it and then think about how we can do better by Indigenous and northern and remote communities. This is so critically important.

Chief Morrison called on more resources to address the current system’s deficiencies. Longer-term, however, he believes that there needs to be a recognition that “the European system” is not working for Indigenous people. This was actually a very powerful moment for me to hear him say that. This is a man who actually works in policing, no different than other police officers who put on the uniform day in and day out to do the best that they can to keep their communities safe. We know that policing is a calling. Speaker, I certainly know that. My father was a naval officer. I know what it meant to him for him to put on the uniform, to serve in the navy. Everybody who serves in those types of uniforms—it is a calling.

For Chief Morrison, it was a calling, but he also said he recognized that the system that he was working in was limited and it wasn’t going to help his community, not in the way that it needed to. He said that government ministries must “bring back their system”—and I’m going to say an Indigenous system—“a system that they followed for thousands of years.” I’m certainly no expert on what that system is, but I think that we need to lean in and listen to Chief Morrison and ask the question, “How can we help? What does that look like for you in your community?”

I want to be able to recognize that this motion is a symbolic motion. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s okay for us to have that conversation. But I also want to be able to do more than just have a symbolic motion that we will support, because I want to be able to address the problem. I really believe that parliamentarians are here because they want to fix the problem. The problem is we don’t have the solution before us.

Yes, absolutely, let’s go ask Justin Trudeau one more time, “Hey, you want to help us with bail reform?” He has already said yes, but let’s ask Minister Lametti: “We’ve asked you before. You’ve already said yes, but we’ll ask you again. Let’s fix that bail reform system.” He said yes already. They’re working on it. You’re at the table. We’ve heard from the honourable minister the Attorney General that they’re working collaboratively, yet we’re having a debate on this same motion about asking the federal government to work with us to reform bail. All right, that’s fine.

Speaker, I’d like to offer you the following, because I don’t want to just criticize. Because that’s not really nice. I want to offer a solution. My solution, Speaker, is that I’d like to amend this motion, to just give it more focus. Let’s be more purposeful in our intention of what it is that we’re asking of the federal government. It’s a symbolic motion, but let’s put ourselves into the driver’s seat and take some control, because I think it’s important. We don’t want to be always asking the federal government, “Can you do this? Can you do that?” Let’s be grown-ups about this. Let’s take some control. Let’s fix the problem that’s made in Ontario. We could do that.

I move that government notice of motion 13 be amended as follows: 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.”

Therefore, the motion will then read: “This House 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 more appropriately evaluate and mitigate risk, ensuring that court resources are focused on protecting vulnerable groups from violent repeat offenders.”

I’m going to pass the motion to page Mia, who is going to bring that to the House. I understand the table will be able to distribute that for all the members to consider.

I want to be able to just take a moment to explain—

So what does this motion mean? I thought we could be a little bit more specific in our purpose of intent. The vulnerable groups that we’re trying to protect—let’s start to name them. Oftentimes those who have been released on bail conditions, and oftentimes who are in breach of bail conditions, are oftentimes perpetuators of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, domestic violence. And the vulnerable groups that I’d like to protect, that we should all be protecting, are those specific individuals that those who are being released on bail go back out to.

We know that women—especially women—are very scared when their abuser, their perpetuator of violence, has been apprehended and then released. And we have now heard that there isn’t really any effective bail supervision and monitoring system. So if you want to keep people safe, let’s keep them safe, because the majority of those who are repeat offenders have a long history. The ones who own firearms, the ones who have been in and out of the revolving-door system are oftentimes the ones with a long history of domestic violence and intimate partner violence.

They also sometimes evolve into mass shooters. We’ve seen that. You cannot uncouple what we’ve now seen with respect to mass murderous shootings from histories of misogyny and violence against women; they are integrally connected. Whether it’s the Renfrew triple femicide, the mass shooting of Nova Scotia or December 6, all of that is interconnected, and there is such a remarkable body of research to back all of that up.

If we’re going to be protecting vulnerable communities from those who are most violent, the repeat offenders, then let’s do that. Let’s make this motion really perform for our communities. Let’s make sure that we protect them to the greatest possibility that we can, and let’s make sure that their voices are heard. Let’s try to demonstrate, just in a small way, that we heard those expert witnesses who came to our committee to offer us their professional recommendations on how to fix it.

We’re not going to get to everything in this motion—for sure we’re not. Even my amendment is not going to get to everything. But will it put it into sharper focus? Will it give it more intention and purpose? Will it make it less vague and symbolic? You bet. And that’s what this motion will do and can do.

I just wanted to finish on one point as not to take anything away. I want to be able to just highlight that the Renfrew inquest that we’ve spoken so much about in this House, that we have all spoken to, that has moved us significantly, has specifically spoken about bail protection and support for survivors of intimate partner violence. I want to dedicate this amendment to them, to every single woman who’s been affected by intimate partner violence, sexual violence, domestic violence. I want to dedicate it to the inquiry and all those who participated. Thank you.

Every day, for Ontario families, violence and crime in their communities is becoming all too common. Hard-working men and women and their families are feeling less and less safe. At the same time, we’re seeing more and more police officers being targeted and killed—and not just targeted but ambushed. Our justice system is meant to protect the public, to keep anyone who threatens their safety off our streets. Instead, critical parts of the system are failing to defend good and innocent people while continuing to let dangerous criminals go free.

For years, police officers have been sounding the alarm, including families and friends who have lost loved ones to these terrible crimes, like the women I spent time with today. My colleague mentioned, “Let their voices be heard.” There’s a voice of many people that have lost loved ones in the line of duty. I had the opportunity to sit down with Margaret and Samantha Northrup, Jenny Hong, Brenda Orr and Nancy MacDonald. Who’s been listening to their voices? I can tell you one thing: We’re listening, collectively. I truly believe we’re all listening, no matter what political stripe you come from.

As the Police Association of Ontario has said many times over the last several months, the justice system is no longer just a revolving door for repeat violent offenders; the door is now wide open. Enough is enough, Madam Speaker.

I’m not alone in my concern. In fact, every single one of Canada’s 13 Premiers, of every single political stripe, signed a letter earlier this year calling on the federal government to fix the problem, to shut the door. Since I’ve been Premier, it’s challenging to get 13 Premiers to agree on anything quickly. We all agree—but quickly. And within a few days, all 13 Premiers signed that letter. I have never, ever seen quick action like that since I became Premier, and I want to thank my colleagues for signing that letter to send it out to the federal government.

We cannot have a justice system that fails to protect innocent people. We cannot have a justice system where violent criminals who should be behind bars are instead wreaking havoc on our streets. It is not an exaggeration to say that people are now dying because of the failures of our justice system.

One of the widows said in the meeting, “Police officers are held accountable. Politicians are held accountable. Why aren’t judges held accountable when they let these repeat offenders back on the streets to go kill innocent people, kill innocent police officers?” That’s the question she was posing, and we need an answer.

Repeat offenders, people accused of committing dangerous crimes over and over again, should not be arrested one day and let back out on the street the next just to see them recommit crimes, because when they go in front of the courts, it’s a little slap on the wrist and “See you later. You go out and commit another crime.” It’s absolutely disgusting. These people are dangerous. They need to be behind bars and they need to stay behind bars.

Madam Speaker, back in February, the member from Chatham-Kent–Leamington led a study on bail reform at a standing committee. He’s in the Legislature today, and I want to thank you for all the great work. The committee heard from top experts and policing leaders who all had the same message: The vast majority of violent crime being committed here in Ontario is being committed by the same small group of violent people.

Now, if they were in jail, we wouldn’t be worrying about this. But they aren’t in jail. I’ve heard stories about JPs, justices of the peace, wanting to keep them in jail and the judge overrules them—unheard of. And they get them back on the street just to commit another crime. These same few people are being released time and time again, and every time they’re released, our communities and the men and women who keep them safe are put at risk.

Simply put, this is happening because of Canada’s broken bail system. Members from all political parties were part of this committee, and they all came together and unanimously agreed on specific actions the federal government should take to fix the system. All parties in Ontario agree we need to see action. All Premiers across Canada agree we need to see action.

Madam Speaker, it’s clear this is not about ideology or partisanship, but a matter of public safety. Safety doesn’t know—and criminals don’t look at borders. They don’t go from a riding in Etobicoke, a riding out in Scarborough or a riding downtown and say, “Oh, I’m in a different riding.” They don’t care. They don’t care about the people. They don’t care about the communities. They don’t care about keeping the subway safe. They just want to go out there and cause havoc in our communities.

Instead, the federal government has continued to resist common-sense changes to keep people safe. You have the whole country screaming, “We need to make changes,” and they’re dilly-dallying along like there’s no urgency. There’s no urgency because none of their families have ever been affected. They haven’t seen the safety—they’re protected behind the big golden gates of Parliament. That’s unacceptable.

The people of Ontario are frustrated by the failures of Canada’s justice system. And even without bail reform, these judges have an opportunity to keep them in jail a lot longer than what they have been. Yes, we need bail reform, but you don’t need bail reform if you’re a judge and you want to keep them in a little longer. But they’re buckling and they’re opening the door and letting them back out onto the streets and crossing their fingers that maybe, maybe little Johnny, after committing a heinous crime, will be a good little Johnny. No, that doesn’t cut it. They need to go to jail.

The police have told us that Canada’s broken bail system is to be blamed. They have told us that bail reform will save innocent lives. They have told us that without drastic and immediate action, the danger facing the public will only continue to grow out of control. The federal government cannot continue to delay bail reform. For the safety of the people of Ontario and all Canadians, we need action, and we need it now.

I want to thank everyone in the Legislature today for the same common cause of keeping our streets safe. And may God bless the women and men who serve our communities across the province, to keep them safe, who put their lives on the line day in and day out. I have a message: We will always have your back. We will be relentless with the federal government until they come up with proper bail reform.

I’ll be sharing my time with the members from Orléans and Don Valley West. I just want to say I’ll be supporting this motion, because I believe that our responsibility as legislators—and any government official, anybody who’s in government—is primarily public safety. There’s an issue of public safety here that we have to address.

But I do want to say a couple of things that we need to be thinking about in this Legislature beyond encouraging the federal government to take this on.

In my riding of Ottawa South—and my friend from Ottawa Centre would remember this—Anne-Marie Ready and her daughter Jasmine were murdered on June 27 last year by a young man who was their neighbour, who was let out by a justice of the peace. Their father and husband, Raf, has been trying to sort out what happened there.

One of the challenges that we have in our justice system—it’s not just now; it has been through previous governments—is communication and making sure that people who make decisions have the information they need when they make that decision.

The second thing is to apply the principles that they’re given to make decisions each time. I hope that the government will help the Ready family, very much so.

The other thing I want to mention is we’re sending this message to the federal government, but we have the Community Safety and Policing Act that received royal assent four years ago. What that act does is it provides some protections for public safety around policing. We have an individual who’s charged with very serious crimes, including sexual assault, who has been allowed to collect a publicly funded salary for seven years. So the government dropped the ball with this act. It should have been enacted. It received royal assent four years ago.

The second thing is there’s the Accommodation Sector Registration of Guests Act. This is something to protect people from human trafficking. It has been on the books for two years—still hasn’t been enacted.

I’d ask the government to pick up that ball and run with it, because these are two important issues of public safety. If we’re going to preach about public safety, then perhaps we better do our own homework.