If they don’t want a repeat of 2006, the Liberals should tighten bail restrictions and revive old Tory reforms
Crime is up in Canada. In 2021, there were over two million police-reported Criminal Code incidents (excluding traffic), 25,500 more than in 2020. The violent crime rate increased five per cent, while the property crime rate decreased one per cent. Nationally, there were 788 homicides, 29 more than in 2020, an increase of three per cent. Forty-one per cent involved firearms, and 46 per cent were gang related.
These numbers are stark. But numbers aren’t what stick in the minds of voters. Incidents are. The killing of a homeless man in Toronto by a swarm of 14-year-old girls just before Christmas. A TTC worker shot with a BB gun by another group of youths; an elderly woman shoved to a sidewalk where she died. A year of horrific assaults in Vancouver, including a man who went on a stabbing spree in CRAB park, and a couple attacked while loading luggage at the Empress Hotel.
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What is behind this surge in violent, frequently random crime? Toronto Mayor John Tory decried lack of mental health supports; rising opioid use is fingered in British Columbia. But the law is to blame as well, specifically the Liberals’ Bill C-75, which reformed the bail process back in 2019.
Bill C-75 addressed a number of issues, including overrepresentation of indigenous people in the corrections system and the high number of persons who remained in custody awaiting trial. The new law legislated a “principle of restraint” for police and courts to ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention.”
But the “unintended consequence of the reform” according to B.C. attorney general Murray Rankin, was that more repeat offenders, some of them accused of random violence, ended up on the streets — with deadly results. One such incident was the murder of Ontario police officer Grzegorz Pierzchala in December; the man charged in the killing was out on bail, had a warrant out for his arrest and had a lifetime firearms prohibition. After that, provincial and territorial leaders wrote to the federal government asking that they make it the accused’s responsibility to prove why they should get bail in cases where a firearm is used.
The federal Conservatives have called for action as well. This week they advanced a motion asking for elements in Bill C-75 to be repealed, particularly that individuals with firearm bans then “accused of serious firearms offences do not easily get bail.” It was defeated by the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois. Justice Minister David Lametti said that bail reform is on the government’s “radar screen” and that the government is “looking at how we can better support the provinces in the administration of the bail regime that currently exists.”
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That’s cold comfort — and dumb politics. Perhaps the Liberals have forgotten how the Conservatives won their first minority government, back in 2006, during a similar wave of violence. Toronto had already seen a record 52 homicides the previous year when Jane Creba, a 15-year-old girl, was killed in a shootout between rival gangs during a downtown Christmas shopping excursion. The country was in the middle of a federal election campaign, and in the words of pollster Darryl Bricker, “that’s when the numbers shifted.”
Over the next nine years, the Tories enacted a tough on crime agenda coupled with protection of victims’ rights. They established mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, sex crimes and crimes against children, ended the policy of “least-restrictive measures” for inmates and increased penalties under the Young Offenders’ Act. While some reforms were struck down by the courts, others were walked back by the Liberals — leaving them vulnerable now that crime is surging under their watch.
If they don’t want a repeat of 2006, the Liberals should tighten bail restrictions and bring in charter-proofed versions of some Tory reforms that didn’t survive court challenges, including mandatory minimums for crimes involving guns. But this isn’t just about votes. Canadians deserve to feel safe boarding the streetcar, or the Skytrain, or wherever they happen to be.
Postmedia News
Tasha Kheiriddin is national politics columnist for Postmedia, a principal at Navigator Ltd. and author of The Right Path.
