My concern is that they provide a false sense of security. We have seen GPS monitoring exceed about 500% in Ontario. Locally, in the Waterloo region, the number of people we're monitoring with GPS has increased by 25%. When someone is found to potentially be breaching or their alarm has gone off, that's a call for service to the police. Depending on the prioritization of the call, there could be a delay in the response.
We also know that there is a lot of manipulation of GPS and ankle bracelet monitoring going on. We have cases where individuals have taken a video of themselves with their surety, saying they're in the company of their surety, and they leave the house with them and do not return home for 30 days. We are never alerted to it. We can't do any follow-up on it. It then falls on the police to prove how long that person has been violating the terms of their ankle bracelet monitoring.
I would be concerned that there are some cases where it's beneficial and someone is willing to abide by the conditions of it, but someone who wants to commit a crime against an intimate partner—stalk them or whatnot—is not going to be deterred by ankle bracelet monitoring.