Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I thank you for inviting me to this committee hearing.
I am the mayor of the city of Brantford. I was elected in October 2018, after having practised law for 38 years.
I was a civil litigator. I did not practice criminal law, so I'm not coming to you as an expert in criminal law. I don't pretend to be.
However, I'm here to speak on behalf of my community and many of the residents in my city, who are very concerned about what they see as a deterioration in social order and what they're experiencing in their daily lives. Fortunately for most, it does not involve exposure to violent crime. We read the headlines. We see it. There is violent crime that occurs in our community, but what most residents see in their daily lives is a very visible increase in what I'd call non-violent crime.
They see their cars being broken into multiple times. Their homes and property are being vandalized and stolen. They see open drug use and open drug dealing. They see our local police service—led by Chief Davis, who I believe testified at this committee earlier this month—doing an excellent job investigating and making arrests. We're a relatively small city, so people are generally known. They're seeing the people who commit these types of crimes being released multiple times, even in the face of many prior breaches of probation and breaches of prior release orders.
I can give you a couple of examples. I know the committee has distributed some of these slides, which are actually from Chief Davis and the Brantford Police Service. They refer to 10 of what the police service calls the most prolific offenders. There are a couple there.
There's an example of one who had, at the time this survey was done, 73 substantive charges, nine failures to comply, 25 breaches of probation, multiple releases—in excess of 20—but continued to commit admittedly non-violent offences.
It was interesting. Last year we had an individual in the court system who pleaded guilty to several break and enters. He actually remarked during his sentencing that he had been arrested eight times in the previous 12 months. He felt the system bore some responsibility for his crime spree, for failing to keep him in custody. An offender mentioned that.
We had another individual in our downtown—seen on multiple surveillance videos across social media—who destroyed $70,000 in plate glass windows. He was arrested very quickly. He was then very quickly released. He then went out to destroy another $20,000 worth of plate glass windows later in the day. He was rearrested and released, but then his spree was brought to a halt because he committed a more serious criminal offence, so he was detained.
I realize I'm giving you ad hoc incidents, but this is what citizens are experiencing on a pretty much weekly and daily basis. They're becoming disillusioned with the judicial system. They're losing confidence in the judicial system. Yes, they use words like “revolving door of justice”, but that reflects a perception that the judicial system is not protecting them and not protecting their property.
I'm very much concerned, as a lawyer, about what that will do over time. It's a gradual erosion of the value of the rule of law and of the fact that the law applies to everyone equally, that there are consequences for those who break the rules, and that people should not take the law into their own hands.
In fact, Chief Davis just commented in a newspaper article this week in Brantford that he's very concerned about this growing frustration that residents have with the judicial system, and bail in particular. He's very much concerned that there's talk on social media of vigilantism. He's very much concerned that over the course of time, if the erosion continues—of the faith people have in the judicial system—it could lead to that. We would obviously hope not.
Now, I'm not advocating for people to be kept in jail more often and more frequently. I have some other suggestions, albeit provided in a non-expert fashion, that I'd be happy to provide if asked questions.
I'm running out of my five minutes, but I wanted to, in my first five minutes, convey to you a general feeling from across my community. It's the number one complaint and inquiry I have gotten in the Office of the Mayor week in, week out over the four to five years that I've been mayor. There's no other issue that causes as many comments and directs so many comments to the mayor's office, asking that we do something.