My question is to the Premier. The newly appointed chair of the judicial appointments committee is a registered lobbyist for an American gun manufacturer. The Premier then claimed that he wanted to quadruple down on violent offenders, but it’s actually on his watch over the last six years that we’ve seen offenders going free because the criminal justice system is literally collapsing under this government’s neglect.

Chronic underfunding has led to critical understaffing, which has led to the critical courtrooms being closed, which also means that serious cases are being thrown out because they have missed their basic administrative delays.

Will the Premier explain to victims of crime in Ontario why his focus is naming gun lobbyists to the judicial appointments committee as opposed to being laser-focused on funding and fixing the broken court system?

Under this government, court delays have exploded, forcing judges to release violent and gun-related offenders because they have not had their trials completed in a constitutionally allowable time frame. What I think Ontarians want to understand is, how can we have a Premier that has no respect for the charter rights of Ontarians?

Speaker, will the Premier own up to his track record and let Ontarians know how many sexual assault charges, how many impaired driving charges and how many gun-related charges have been thrown out because of the dysfunctional court system, because they can’t get their trials done in time, because they refuse to fund the courts properly and they refuse to fix the system?

Interjections.

An Ontario judge recently stayed a repeat offender’s charges. JP Kelly was charged with 17 counts of intimate partner violence, including assault, sexual assault, choking and threating death.

Justice Lori Thomas said, “This is a case that cries out to be tried on the merits.” Instead, Judge Thomas was forced to stay the charges after more than two years of inexplicable delays.

Let that sink in: JP Kelly is now back in the community without supervision or counselling.

One survivor told the press, “I hit the floor, I was beyond disappointed in the Ontario judicial system, and I wept for the entire day.”

Will the Premier apologize to survivors who will never receive justice because his government has failed to fix the courts?

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.