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Hon. David Lametti (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.)

Feb/2/23 10:43:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the hon. Minister of Public Safety. I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the important issue of bail and a possible reform in Canada. I know that Canadians are concerned about this issue. Making sure that our laws are effective and fair and that they protect Canadians is certainly a priority for my government. First, I would like to express my condolences to the families of Constable Greg Pierzchala and Michael Finlay and Katie Nguyen Ngo, and of all victims of the disturbing incidents of violence across this country that we have seen in recent months. Each has been a personal tragedy and a blow to our communities. Canada has a strong and effective criminal justice system, including its bail laws, but we all know that things could always be improved. Canadians deserve to be and to feel safe, and we have a role to play in protecting our communities. I want to reassure Canadians that, if someone poses a significant threat to public safety, the law tells us they should not be released on bail. I am disappointed that the official opposition is using tragedies to try to score political points. Canadians know that these are serious and complicated issues, and there are no quick or easy solutions. That is why we have been working hard for months, in collaboration with our provincial and territorial counterparts, to find solutions that would ensure the long-term safety of our communities. Canada is not broken, despite what the Leader of the Opposition would like people to think. Indeed, data from Toronto shows that between 2019 and 2021, there was a decrease, both in the percentage of individuals granted bail and the number of people rearrested while on bail. That being said, our government is always looking for ways to improve public safety and the efficiency of our justice system. At the federal-provincial-territorial meeting in October, the Minister of Public Safety and I committed to continue working with our counterparts on the issue of bail. This work is well under way. We also received a letter from the premiers about bail and we are carefully reviewing their proposals and other options. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting with my B.C. counterpart, Minister Sharma. Minister Sharma and I agreed that the best way to address the complicated issue of bail reform is by working together. I am hopeful that all of my provincial and territorial counterparts will agree. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there on the old Bill C-75. Bill C-75 is the result of a lengthy collaborative effort with the provinces and territories. It codified the bail principles set out in binding Supreme Court of Canada rulings. I want to reiterate that Bill C-75 did not make any fundamental changes to the bail system. It did not change the criteria under which an accused can be released by the court. On the contrary, Bill C-75 made it harder to get bail for certain offences, such as violence against intimate partners, by reversing the onus of proof. I trust that the hon. member for Fundy Royal will also be reassured to learn that there is already a reverse onus where an accused subject to a weapons prohibition is charged with a firearms offence, exactly as his motion calls for. That means the accused would be denied bail unless they can prove to the court that their release would not pose a significant risk to public safety or undermine the public's confidence. I also know the hon. member for Fundy Royal well enough to be sure he was not deliberately trying to mislead the House on the recent Supreme Court decision, which actually confirmed everything we did in Bill C-5. The minimum mandatory penalty we struck down, the court struck down as unconstitutional, and the minimum mandatory penalties we chose to retain in that bill have been upheld by the court. I would suggest the member read the Supreme Court decision a bit more closely. One of the calls in the letter from the premiers is to establish a reverse onus for additional offences. I can assure the House that I am giving this serious consideration, and the work is well under way. We have also heard calls for law enforcement reform. I am grateful for their recommendations based on frontline experience. Work is under way to develop legislative and non-legislative options to address the particular challenges of repeat violent offenders. We also know that it will take more than a legislative reform to completely fix this problem. The police need the necessary resources to monitor offenders who are out on bail and to arrest those who breach their release conditions. We have already provided significant funding and we are open to providing more where it is needed. There has to be support and care for mental health, as well as for addictions treatment. There needs to be a social safety net. The previous government cut social programs and now we are seeing the very real and serious consequences of those cuts. As a government, we have made unprecedented investments in mental health, including $5 billion for the provinces and territories to increase access to care. I commend our partners in B.C. for the action they took on bail in November as part of their safe communities action plan. I encourage all provinces to use the many existing tools at their disposal to ensure bail laws are applied safely, fairly and effectively. Yesterday I was happy to see the Premier of Ontario commit to action in this space, and I will reach out to my counterpart in coming days to discuss how we can collaborate. Addressing the particular challenges posed by repeat violent offenders requires a comprehensive approach that crosses jurisdictions and levels of government. We will be acting at the federal level, and I hope my provincial counterparts will do the same. The only way to solve this problem is by working together. To this end, as has been planned since our last meeting in October, in the coming days I will be reaching out to justice and public safety counterparts to convene an urgent FPT meeting to continue our important work on bail. I am hopeful that together we can review the product of months of joint work by federal and provincial officials and agree on a comprehensive path forward. We know there is no easy solution to such a complex problem. We strongly believe that we need to protect Canadians. At the same time, we must ensure that any measures taken will not exacerbate the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples and Black and racialized Canadians in our jails. We must not further marginalize vulnerable people, including those struggling with mental health issues and addiction, and we must also ensure that everything we do is compliant with the charter. I look forward to sincere debate in this House today, and I will happily take any good-faith suggestions made by members of Parliament. I discourage members from wasting this opportunity with empty rhetoric designed to inflame the fears of Canadians. Let us debate real solutions and focus our energy on offering ideas for how the system can be changed to better keep Canadians safe while respecting our fundamental rights and values.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Ms. Kristina Michaud

Feb/2/23 11:26:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and for his optimistic approach. My favourite moments in the House are when all the parties agree on a subject. We saw it then, and we saw it again yesterday with the motion on the Uighur people. I think that we are all capable of working together and putting partisanship aside in order to move toward something that will benefit the entire population. It is even more important to do so when it comes to matters of public safety. I share my colleague's optimism. However, we must put partisanship aside in order to work together quickly. We know how difficult it is to move quickly in this massive system, and it can be hard to advance certain files. When it comes to matters of public safety, we need to move forward quickly.

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Feb/2/23 11:27:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech, which was very straightforward, sensible and reasonable. In the time we have left, I would like her to talk about what should be done. This morning, we are talking about how to enhance public safety. In her speech, my colleague talked about what the Liberal government has failed to do to control illegal firearms in Quebec and Canada. What specific measures could be put in place?

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Context: House Hansard - 152 - Feb/2/23

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

Feb/2/23 12:23:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been eight years of the Prime Minister and thousands of new victims of crime across Canada in those eight years. I stand here not only as the voice of my constituents in Thornhill, but also as the voice of thousands of people in every corner of the country who want us to start taking the safety of our communities more seriously. I grew up in the place that I represent in the House of Commons today and I have spent almost my whole life living in the Toronto area. Even though the city is home to millions, we have always been blessed to have a feeling of big-city safety. That is not often found elsewhere. For years, we rode transit without fearing the random attacks. Now all we have to do is open the newspaper, go to Twitter or turn on the news to see violent attack after violent attack throughout the last number of months. We gathered in public places with our loved ones and we were free to do the things we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do them without fear. We went about our daily lives, safe from criminals and the people who wanted to harm others, for the most part. We used to feel safe in the city. That feeling is fading away. All one has to do is open the newspaper to see it. With every day that passes comes another story about the out-of-control violence in our streets and the innocent people who are being terrorized by it: stories of people being stabbed in the head and face with ice picks; stories about people being swarmed and beaten, in some cases by teenagers, or pushed in front of moving trains or shoved to the ground; stories about people being set on fire in the biggest city in our country. All the recent attacks, the ones have outlined a number of times, were random. All of these attacks were in Canada. The GTA is used to making international news, it is a big place, but not international news like this. Last week, it was on the BBC. A few weeks ago, it was in the New York Times. Even my hometown of Vaughan made it onto CNN last December after a horrific shooting. We are obviously seeing more of this. The rate is rising. The stats are clear. Rising crime is not just something that is tearing into my community and it is not isolated. It is something that is happening in every neighbourhood across the country. It is happening in Vancouver where entire sections of the city are being taken over by out-of-control drug and gang activity. It is happening in rural communities, where only 18% of all Canadians live but 25% of violent crimes take place. Those numbers are shocking. There were more homicides in our nation in 2019 than in 2018. There were more in 2020 than in 2019. There were more in 2021 than in 2020. That is a pattern and somebody has to say it. Things are not okay because each day we see more suffering in our communities and more inaction or, frankly, not the right action in our Parliament. While our neighbourhoods are affected by crime, the Liberals are busy telling us, once again, that it is somebody else’s fault or it is somebody else’s job, deflecting blame and denying guilt again. However, the stats are clear; we only need to turn on the news. While families are grieving the loss of loved ones to violence, the Liberals are busy reducing the penalties for heinous acts like robbery with a firearm, fentanyl trafficking that is ravaging the streets in places like Vancouver, or in smaller places like Peterborough and London or places like right outside the House. Kidnapping is also on the list. While victims of crime are struggling to get justice, the Liberals are standing by their policies and making it easier for the very people who are responsible for those crimes to go back out in the world and do it all over again. The Liberals are standing by Bill C-75, which is what we are talking about today. It makes it easier to get bail, easier to be let out of custody, easier for criminals to go back to their illegal activities and harm even more people. It is broken. What we are doing is not working and everybody else knows it. Last year in Toronto, there were 44 shooting-related murders. Seven of those arrested were out on bail already for charges of gun crime and 17 of those were out on bail for other crimes. If people are keeping score that is more than half. Of the 44 murders in the city in which I have spent most of my life, more than half, or 24, of those accused were out on bail; 24 additional families that lost loved ones because of the Liberal broken bail system. Every premier says that the system is broken along with every police union and police chief. If we listen to everyone else who is talking about it, they say that bail reform could save lives. There are a lot of other things that we can talk about, but not talking about this when we know it can save lives would be irresponsible. In 2021, 165 people in Toronto, who were out on bail for gun charges, were arrested, including 98 people who were arrested on gun charges. It is broken and what we are doing is not working, and everybody agrees. Since the Liberals have been in power, violent crime has increased by 32%. Gang-related homicides have increased by a staggering 92%. Car jacking has doubled in Toronto. Property theft has gone up. It has all gone up; it is broken. What we are doing simply is not working. Our laws are broken. It is shocking that the Liberal member for Scarborough Southwest is a cabinet minister and former Toronto police chief, and he said more about crime in Memphis last week than he has said about crime in his own city. That is disgraceful. Today, Liberal members continue to insist that everything is fine, that nothing is wrong and that they are working on it. There was a meeting last November where all premiers and the federal government agreed to do something, and there is still nothing. All 13 premiers have written a demand letter to the Prime Minister to fix our broken bail system. The voices are united. It is police officers, it is frontline officers, it is police unions and it is people on our front lines who are all begging the government to do something about it. We will always stand on the side of law enforcement in our country. We are also going to stand on the side of victims of crime, and not on the side of criminals. We are going to stand for ending soft-on-crime laws like Bill C-75 that put the rights of criminals above those of the victims. That is wrong. All we have to do is open a newspaper to read about it. We are here today to demand action because if the Liberals will not anything, we will. If they are not prepared to make a change, to do their job and protect Canadians, they should step aside and let somebody else do it. It is not about some archaic regulation. It is not about political posturing. Everybody agrees. All premiers from different stripes agree. The mayor of my hometown, who just ran for the provincial Liberal leadership, wrote a demand letter to the Prime Minister asking for bail reform. This is not a Conservative issue. It is an issue that speaks to public safety and to the protection of the rights of victims over the rights of criminals. Our proposal is simple: prioritize the rights of victims and law-abiding citizens, not the criminals, and fix the broken bail system that lets murderers and repeat offenders out, free to recommit crimes in the community. We need to bring back penalties and punishments that actually fit the crime, particularly for violent repeat offenders. We need to fight crime where it exists, at our borders and in gangs, not in the home of law-abiding firearm owners or hunters. It is time to go back to the time when people felt safe in their communities, where people can walk on the streets without being randomly attacked, where criminals are punished for the crimes they commit, where Canadians have the right to travel wherever they want whenever they want and be free of fear on public transit, to go out in public with their families and feel safe. I hope all members, on behalf of their communities, their constituents and their loved ones, stand up for those rights. We can do that by passing this motion today. I hope hon. colleagues in the House see that too.

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