SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

John Fraser

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Ottawa South
  • Ontario Liberal Party
  • Ontario
  • Unit D 1883 Bank St. Ottawa, ON K1V 7Z9 jfraser.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
  • tel: 613-736-9573
  • fax: 613-736-7374
  • jfraser.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

  • Government Page
  • Apr/3/23 4:50:00 p.m.

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.

393 words
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