Justice Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

We only have about 20 seconds left.

Are enough health care dollars being invested in addiction and rehabilitation, or should adjustments be made?

[Chloé Leclerc]

Adjustments should definitely be made. That is my whole point here today. If you want to work with people who pose a risk, you have to let other people who pose a lower risk go, and that includes people who do not comply with their bail conditions.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

You're talking about letting them go.

[Chloé Leclerc]

By “let them go”, I mean invest fewer resources in certain people who didn't comply with their bail conditions.

You talked a lot about how some cases of people not complying with those conditions are very concerning. However, it must be understood that most actions that breach probation or parole conditions are not inherently illegal. Such actions may include not attending a hearing, using certain substances or associating with non-offender peers.

These would not be criminal acts if they hadn't been prohibited. I think that, if we paid less attention to failure to comply with conditions, we might be able to invest more resources in people who present a real risk.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Leclerc.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Thank you, Ms. Leclerc.

Roman, you have six minutes.

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Welcome, Mr. Goldkind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

I'm sorry, Roman. It's just five, not six.

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Goldkind, gun violence in Toronto is out of control.

Passed in 2019, Liberal Bill C-75 prescribed the principle of restraint. The Department of Justice's own website says:

The “principle of restraint”...is intended to ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention

Basically, holding an accused pending trial is an exception now.

Could you please tell us whether the Liberal bail reform resulted in more gun violence or less gun violence on the streets of Toronto, and why?

[Ari Goldkind]

Thank you for your kind words.

I don't think anybody can answer cause and effect. That would be disingenuous, but is there a correlation? Have we watched the numbers go up in the last five to 10 years? There's no question about that. There is a perception of being soft on crime. There is a perception of a criminal justice system that doesn't properly punish.

I heard the word “harsh” used just a moment ago, in the previous answer. Are we sentencing too harshly or not? “Harsh” is a word that's a pejorative. It almost suggests something mean or mean-spirited or unfair. I tend to take this view: Is the sentence appropriate? Is it responsive to the needs of the community? While restraint is not new—it's from the 1970s, and I know you know that, and the 2019 legislation just codified it—there should be much harder questions asked.

My end to my answer on the principle of restraint is that it's a good thing that the system tries to treat people in the most restrained way possible, but that should be for perhaps a first-time offender, maybe a second-time offender and maybe somebody who hasn't committed a serious crime of violence against a vulnerable woman.

When you apply the principle of restraint to everybody, sort of like ketchup, you're really taking away from the meaning of the term. Am I happy as a defence lawyer and as a citizen that we try to use restraint? Yes, that's noble, but there certainly should be times where somebody has, by their own act or deed, taken away that focus.

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Goldkind.

The city of Toronto is falling victim to gang violence. One thing that stands out is that so many of the offenders involved in these gangs are under 18 years of age.

Of course, if a teenager breaks into a vending machine, we don't want them to be part of the correctional system, but I submit to you that the Youth Criminal Justice Act no longer provides enough deterrence for youth involved in gangs or even committing some of the most serious crimes on our streets. What do you think about that?

[Ari Goldkind]

The Youth Criminal Justice Act provides no deterrence. I think anybody who says differently is gilding the lily. The Youth Criminal Justice Act, when it was created many decades ago, was about two kids arguing over an iPod. Notice that I said “iPod”, not “iPhone”. It used to be that you'd open up the newspaper and maybe once a week see that some 17-year-old or 16-year-old did something stupid. They'd get anonymity. We never needed to know who they were.

Go and open up a local newspaper of any city now and you'll see 14-year-olds, 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds charged with serious and heinous violent crimes. They are going to be sentenced as a youth. In my view—again, to keep the answer short, given time—you can't have a Youth Criminal Justice Act that doesn't change with the times. Canada has changed. Youth violence has changed. A 12-year-old is not a 17-year-old, and they should be treated very differently, in different tranches, if I could use that term.

[Roman Baber, Conservative, York Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I want to talk about sentencing and, specifically, parole. Offenders are eligible for full parole after serving only one-third of a sentence.

We know some of the basic principles of sentencing—deterrence, community safety and rehabilitation—but it almost seems as if there is too much emphasis on rehabilitation that doesn't necessarily work. I've heard you talk about Kevin Koehler in Waterloo, a man described as a ticking time bomb, who, a couple of weeks ago, was out on the street again after choking a number of people to death over a period of multiple years.

It seems crazy to me that we now essentially favour rehabilitation alone.

[Ari Goldkind]

Well, he killed somebody in a car, including a police officer, and then he choked a woman to death, so talk about vulnerable people within intimate partner violence.... Parliament, where you are sitting, literally makes that a much more serious crime.

Here's what I've never been able to get my head around, even as a criminal defence lawyer, and I know this is sacrilege to say. You don't get out at a third because of good behaviour or showing that you're really committed to bettering yourself. You get out automatically. That has never made sense to me.

Now, maybe it makes sense on a non-violent crime. I'm somebody who thinks most drug crimes don't involve violence. That's a very different fish from someone who invades somebody's home in the middle of the night, at three in the morning, and holds a gun to a child's head.

Perhaps we'd be a lot better served by having a parole board or parole where, look, if you get out after a third but then you violate again, should you get out after a third on that next sentence...? Maybe you should be in for two-thirds. Maybe you should be in until warrant expiry, or maybe, if you keep reoffending, we'd have a repeat offender hearing where the public, the judiciary and lawyers like me have to go to court and ask why we are giving this person another chance when we genuinely believe they're dangerous and can't be stopped and, just to end the answer, the Crown hasn't brought a long-term or dangerous offender application. People are sitting ducks—and I used the term for Mr. Koehler—for a ticking time bomb.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Goldkind.

Ms. Lattanzio, we'll go to you for five minutes.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll continue with you, Mr. Goldkind.

Public confidence is critical to any justice system, as you may know, but what role, in your view, should transparency in data play in helping Canadians understand how bail decisions are made and monitored?

[Ari Goldkind]

I think I understand your question. I'm just turning my head to it.

I have been outspoken for about 15 to 20 years in my career in that I do not like the publication bans that are constantly put on bail decisions when a high-profile violent person is released into the community. Now, as you know, the reason given is that it will poison or taint a jury pool.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Yes.

[Ari Goldkind]

I've never bought that. I can't tell you how many days of my life I spend trying to get a mistrial with a jury, and the judge says back to me: “No, juries do what they're supposed to do. They can disabuse their mind of what they don't know.”

I think the public is better served by knowing why somebody is released. I do genuinely believe that sunlight is the best antiseptic in educating the public. That's not letting Twitter do it, not letting TikTok do it, and not letting a Facebook post do it, but actually letting the public read why a high-profile person is being released. That's very important.

The second part to your question is that I don't think Crown attorneys.... I know this won't be talked about here, but I feel passionately about it. I'm a criminal defence lawyer. If I have a client who doesn't get bail and who I think genuinely should have been released, I bring what's called the “bail review”. I make very little money doing it—I ask for funding to do it—but I do it because I don't think that person should be in.

The flip side is this. Why doesn't the Crown attorney, given the tools in the Criminal Code that exist, when there's a high-profile case and the person got bail—a gunrunner, a shooter, a person out on their third bail whom a judge or justice of the peace has released—bring a bail review to review that decision? If that happened, I think we'd have a much better system, and that tool already exists. It's in the tool box.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay. That's an interesting perspective.

In your view, how effective are the recent targeted reforms to bail, particularly for repeat violent offenders, and what additional improvements, in your opinion, might help balance safety with judicial discretion?

[Ari Goldkind]

I think there has to be something in the zeitgeist where judges and judicial officials, justices of the peace, don't feel as reluctant to detain people who are dangerous. There are sections in the Criminal Code that make it clear that justice is not blind, that the court is obliged to look at somebody's background. That often is for very good reason and very proper reason. Somebody who grew up with fetal alcohol syndrome, for example, is very different from somebody who didn't.

There are resource issues, and the system is underfunded, but in terms of the bail system, at the end of the day the tools are there, you know: the primary ground, the secondary ground and the tertiary ground. That is there to prevent somebody dangerous from being released, but in my view, because of the sections of the Criminal Code that are being applied in the court system, the tie goes to the runner, to use that baseball reference.

I think the pendulum should swing back to public safety. If there's thinking that somebody is truly dangerous and cannot comply with bail, or if perhaps they've had a very significant record over the last five years, it is concerning to the public that the person is getting their fifth or sixth chance.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Owens, public debate around bail can often become polarized, as you've probably witnessed as of late. How can we ensure that future reforms stay grounded in evidence and outcomes rather than rhetoric?

[Kat Owens]

One of the things that are really important is that we gather accurate data, and that we gather it from the various provinces and territories to get a sense of what the actual facts on the ground are.

I know Ms. Leclerc has spoken about some of the data we have, and I think the data we have reflects a system that is in crisis, but not for the reason that is often publicized. It's in crisis because too many people are detained. In 2024, 76% of bails were denied. We're not seeing this frequent catch and release that is often spoken about.

I think it's bringing that data in, acknowledging the real pain that people who experience crime go through—which is real—and also going back to what the actual facts are.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

That gives me a segue to pose a question to Madame Leclerc.

In your presentation, you talked about that data.

How can this provincial data collection and judicial reporting be improved to better assess the impact of bail decisions on public safety?

[Chloé Leclerc]

You're raising an issue—