I’m honoured to be able to speak to this today. Many in this House who have been around here for a little bit would know that in my prior career, I practised law and spent a lot of time practising specifically criminal law. In fact, back in 2005, after being called to the bar, my first-ever position as a lawyer was as a staff duty counsel at Sault Ste. Marie courthouse, and I held that job for just shy of two years. I represented, from Monday to Friday, every single morning, every individual in bail court as the staff duty counsel. Every offender who got arrested and ended up in custody would be brought before the justice of the peace that following morning. I would speak to that individual and try to assist in the bail process.

My next position was as a crown attorney, and I spent a lot of time in the bail courts as well, but for that year I spent my time trying to have individuals held where it was in the interest of justice to do so. So I feel that I can come into this conversation with a bit of a different lens, having experienced bail with a very significant volume of cases, and certainly an appreciation of the process. I think one of the great challenges that I’ve seen specifically in the debate of this motion is that these are sometimes difficult legal concepts. Without having a great background in terminology like reverse onus; crown onus; primary, secondary, tertiary grounds for detention; and judicial interim release proceedings, sometimes things can get a little bit confusing.

I feel like, as members who have been elected by our communities representing specific political parties, sometimes we come into this arena—in fact, most times—and we’re wearing our jerseys, if you will. We take approaches for lots of different reasons. And when we have opportunities—and I have seen it; it’s a beautiful thing in this House when it does happen, when everybody can join hands together, and agree that we park politics. We park our politics because there is a common goal that we’re all after. I certainly have been an individual who has worn the stripes, and we all have. But I genuinely do believe, Madam Speaker, that this motion, this particular subject matter, is not a political one. This is really a tremendous—I hear the comments being made in the room, and I genuinely, for whatever it’s worth, with the greatest respect, don’t agree. I believe that this is not a political matter. When you look at what has happened in our judicial interim release provisions, specifically over the course of the last few years since Bill C-75 was enacted by the federal government back in 2018, what were already very difficult grounds to hold an offender in custody from a crown’s perspective—what was already hard became tremendously harder.

Interjection.

The bail provisions we have under section 515 of the Criminal Code outline the whole process of how an individual who appears before the courts can be released. And when you hear the term “crown onus,” virtually every offence—not all—is a crown onus situation, which means it is up to the crown in that particular instance to justify why the accused should be detained in custody. It is not up to the accused to demonstrate why they should be released. That’s what the reverse onus provisions are. If an accused comes before the court on a crown onus situation, which again is the vast majority of the cases, the justice of the peace, based on the written form of the law, must release the accused unless the crown has demonstrated that there are serious concerns on three grounds: primary, secondary and tertiary grounds.

Primary grounds are: Is there a concern that this person is not going to come back to court? One of the main things evaluated in that case is, do they have a fixed address in the community? Do they actually live there? Do they have roots?

The secondary grounds are the most common grounds where an offender is detained, and that is whether or not it is more likely the offender would commit another offence. Under those provisions of the Criminal Code, that is where usually you would see a detention and a justice of the peace, or a judge, in certain cases of capital offences or murder, must give a written decision that outlines why that person would be detained if there was to be a detention, because it is subject to a bail review process. That is at the Superior Court of Justice level.

I can tell you, Madam Speaker, from probably thousands of bail hearings I conducted from both sides of the dais that every—“every” is a bad way to put that; that’s an unfair statement. The vast majority of those cases where there was a detention order made, the detention was premised on secondary grounds, meaning risk of re-offense.

Tertiary grounds are a public interest ground, and there was an amendment that one of the members opposite yesterday brought forward and a lot of what was being referenced in that amendment was something that spoke to these tertiary grounds, public interest grounds.

One of the things that, as a little bit of a legal nerd I can be—my community of Sault Ste. Marie has the landmark case for determining tertiary grounds. It was R. v. David Hall. I actually spent a lot of time watching that murder trial when I was just a young student and I wanted to become a lawyer. I would go into the courthouse and watch proceedings, and that case was being dealt with at the time. Justice Gladys Pardu of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, one of Sault Ste. Marie’s own, wrote the Superior Court of Justice decision. She is presently a member of the Ontario Court of Appeal, something that in our legal community in Sault Ste. Marie we take great pride in—the only member of our bench who ever went on to the Court of Appeal. She was the one who wrote that decision in David Hall’s case. That essentially established that in certain cases, the public interest requires that a person be detained.

Now, why do I say all this? What’s the point? It’s because, as I said earlier, I think it’s important that we have some context of what it all means, what we’re here really talking about.

These provisions of the Criminal Code—and it is the Criminal Code of Canada. It’s right there in the name: “Canada.” It’s federal jurisdiction. It’s entirely up to the federal government to make changes to the Criminal Code so that we are, as provinces and the courts within these provinces, able to interpret that legislation, that law in order to deal with whatever the issue may be. Of course, right now, we’re talking about bail, judicial interim release.

When Bill C-75 was put in place by the federal government back in 2018, they made changes to the provisions of bail whereby they created a much more watered-down version of the code, specifically on that secondary grounds, where most people were captured because of a high propensity of reoffence.

Now, those provisions have been watered down so much so whereby the principle of restraint—a lot of people have referenced the principle of restraint here—says that an accused should almost always be released unless there’s clear evidence that they had committed a serious violent offence or that they would be at risk of committing a serious violent offence.

The “catch and release” verbiage that is now being used is really an accurate depiction, because for a police officer who would at one time arrest an individual—even if it was just a series of repeated property offences, they would often arrest that individual, bring them into custody and bring them to a bail court justice of the peace to make the decision as to what to do with this particular accused. In that setting, that accused would have a lot of work to do in a bail hearing context to establish that they had a plan. A plan could be, “You could release me on the deposit of a large sum of money on my own recognizance, and I forfeit my money if I don’t come back,” or a pledge of a lot of money. The most common thing you’ll see is where a surety is brought before the court. Most of the time, people would bring their mom or their dad, some close loved one, because that loved one has to now establish—because we don’t have that US system here. We don’t have Dog the Bounty Hunter or anything like that. We have sureties. Sureties pledge money before the courts. They make promises. They put plans before the courts, and then a court can determine whether or not, in weighing that plan, to release that accused.

What does it all mean? Under the current provisions of the Criminal Code, that police officer at that first instance, if it’s just a property-related offence and there is no serious violent offender allegations within that particular charge, must release that accused on an undertaking, meaning a promise to come back to court, and maybe an undertaking with conditions—where you’re alleged to have stolen from the mall, therefore you’re not going to be allowed to go back to that mall, or you had a domestic disturbance and you’re not allowed to speak to that individual or go to their residence anymore.

Those were the nature of conditions that now are the most a police officer can do, hence where the terminology “catch and release” comes from. It’s very immediate. It’s not bringing them before a court. Oftentimes, an individual isn’t even making it to a court because the police have no tools left to detain an individual and even bring them before a judge so that that judge or justice of the peace can make the decision. It doesn’t exist anymore.

If you look at what has happened here, this motion—and it’s a motion. Those of us who have served in this House for more than just this past—and quite frankly, even if you’ve been here just since the 2022 election, I still think you’ve had enough exposure at this point. All of us have. Those of us certainly who have been here longer than that can all appreciate that a motion is an action taken by us as elected officials to say something that we believe, to say something that we want to see done. If you look at the specific words used in this motion—and I would like to read it: “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 prevent violent and repeat offenders from being released back into our communities.” It’s a sentence that is asking the federal government to help, to take control of that book that they are responsible for, the Criminal Code of Canada, that governs how judicial interim release happens, and to edit it accordingly so that incidents like the tragic death of Gabriel Magalhaes—it’s not going to be impossible that it would ever happen again, no, but we have to take measures to try. We have to take measures to try to protect people. That is our job. That’s all of our jobs.

If one Premier can call upon all Premiers and get them all to sign a letter in the expedited fashion that was done in this case—again, politics aside, the fact is what we are trying to do with the spirit of these words on this page I just read—the spirit is that we are all joining hands here in this House, we’re putting aside political stripes and we’re calling on the body that is responsible in this case to deal with the particular issue and asking them for help. We’re asking them to do the job that they were elected to do. It’s not politics, in my humble and respectful opinion.

If we don’t take some actions, these types of offences, these extremely egregious, deplorable acts, will continue to escalate, will continue to rise; and they have only done so since 2018. You haven’t seen an increase and a decrease, an increase and a decrease. You’ve seen a consistent increase in the nature of offences that are appearing before our courts. Because it takes a little bit of time—I was having a chat with our chief of police in Sault Ste. Marie, Chief Hugh Stevenson, and you could see that. It’s like a graph just gradually moving up because offenders are starting to understand that they can’t be detained. A lot of offenders are completely appreciating that if I commit an offence of property, and I do it as many times as I want, that police officer can’t do anything about it. He must release me.

They talk, Madam Speaker. Individuals in that world talk a lot. It’s quite incredible. I remember speaking with—especially when I was a duty counsel and I’d speak to every accused, sometimes they could tell me more about provisions of the bail court than I would already know, especially when I was new. They would often be able to give me an education in those early days because they get it. The more and more they come in and out of those courts and they hear what’s happening in the room and they’re talking to the other people in the cells, they come to learn a lot and they come to know what they can get away with. What is imperative is that they know when they’re talking, they’re going to come to realize that things have changed and that their chances of release are going to be minimized, that they’re going to be restricted. And then they’re going to think a little bit differently about certain offences they might commit.

The seriousness of a lot of the offences that are occurring today, police officers being ambushed, being murdered, people being killed—the amount of serious violent offences and the increase in them is terrifying, quite frankly. The fact that people are afraid to take public transit, the way things have been happening, it’s certainly something that needs rectification, but there are also offences that a lot of people would still be really happy to know are not going to be okay either, like property offences. For anybody who’s ever had their car broken into so someone could take change out of the vehicle, that’s also something that’s very, very difficult as well.

But at the end of the day—I have mere seconds to go—I really hope that my words have imparted some kind of demonstration that this isn’t about politics. This is about doing the right thing.