Sure. I'm not a criminologist. I know you've heard from Dr. Myers and likely from some other criminologists who can provide the data that suggests that it is the case, but what we see in jails is a dehumanizing system that leaves people broken. Someone who is denied bail will lose their job, their housing and their connections with family. They are unable to maintain those connections, because it's expensive to make collect phone calls from jail. They're unable to set up treatment and counselling when they're released from jail, because they don't have those primary supports.
When you combine that with an utter lack of rehabilitative services for people on remand, it means that people who are held in custody.... We've known this for decades. From the Ouimet report, we know that we are risk averse when it comes to releasing people. What that means is that if bail is made too hard to get, if it's made too onerous, and if we use isolated tragedies to craft general legislation that applies to everyone, that's not the way we should be doing it.
We need to legislate generally and have that apply specifically, looking at the nature of the allegations, looking at the person's circumstances and looking at the supports available to them—because when you get it wrong on bail, the community suffers. If you're conservative and you're interested in dollars and cents, and we're looking at paying $80,000 a year to have someone in provincial remand, that should be troubling.
If you're someone who just cares about humanity, as I'm sure everyone does, it should be troubling that we treat people that way. If you're just worried about what your constituents and what the people in your community think, you should be concerned, because someone coming out of jail after those conditions puts your community in danger.