Madam Speaker, finally, after years of us pleading with the Liberal government, the Liberals are trying to do something about bail and sentencing in Canada. If the Liberals admit there is a problem, we know there is a problem. The problem is crime and chaos on our streets. Violent criminals, gang violence, guns and auto thefts are terrorizing Canadians. Like many Torontonians, I get up in the morning and wonder if I am going to see my car, which is why I had to buy one of those big clubs to lock my wheel. We used to see those only in the movies but not anymore. This is after my insurance company told me that, unless I install a tracking device at their expense, my insurance rate will go up. How is it possible that the Liberals cannot stop this? The criminals know they can get away with stealing a Jeep and take it to the port of Montreal, where, the very same night, it will be on its way to the Middle East. My provincial counterpart, the Solicitor General of Ontario, had his car stolen.
I love our country very much. I remember what life was like before the 2015 Liberal government. We need two timelines like BC and AD. We need before Liberals, BL, and after Liberals, AL. I remember times before the Liberals, when Canada was one of the safest countries in the world.
I often talk about my first love. My first love is the city of Toronto. In the time before Liberals, I felt safe walking anywhere in the city of Toronto, on any street, at any time of day or night. Safety and the feeling of safety add so much to our quality of life. After a decade of the Liberals, I do not feel safe anymore in multiple neighbourhoods in the city of Toronto after dark, even in some of the safest neighbourhoods. North York in north Toronto is being terrorized by gang violence, gun crime and drug-related shootings almost daily. It is all done by criminals, and it is all done with illegal guns. The justice committee heard from the OPP commissioner this week that almost all gun violence is perpetrated by criminals with illegal guns, not the legal guns the government seeks to confiscate from law-abiding citizens.
How did we go from being one of the safest countries in the world to this? How did Toronto, one of the safest metropolises in the world, lose that sense of safety? Toronto is becoming Gotham City. It is a combination of many things. It is for sure the economic decline thanks to the Liberals. That is part of it, for sure. People are hopeless. CTV reported, the other day, that young people cannot land a minimum-wage job anymore. I was told by a Toronto police officer that the going rate for stealing a car is $500. Imagine a young offender stealing one car per night and that is how they are making their living.
It is not just because our economy is in the gutter. Young offenders know that there are no consequences for what they do. I remember first-year criminal law like it was yesterday. What is the purpose behind sentencing? What is the policy? First and foremost, it is deterrence. It is the threat of legal consequences and possibly jail. However, now there are no consequences.
That is where I will start in taking this bill apart. In its current form, it falls very short. The prevalence of young offenders in crime and gang violence is very troubling. Participation in auto theft rings is just shocking. We would think the Liberals would want to do something about it, but no. There is no sentencing reform to the Youth Criminal Justice Act. They closed a loophole and clarified what violence is for the purpose of custody but did not increase any sentences.
I want to be clear. I do not want a kid who breaks a vending machine to be part of the correctional justice system. However, for murder, for instance, custodial sentences for youth are limited to four years. They do pre-trial custody and get two-for-one. By the time they are sentenced, they are barely in custody for a year. Then they come out as much better criminals and terrorize the community.
There is another issue I would like to flag, and this one is very special to me because we are a democracy and respect the rule of law. One of the big failures of Bill C-75, the previous Liberal crime bill, was that it created a diversionary regime for offences involving failures to comply with court orders. For instance, offences such as failure to appear in court or breach of an undertaking, or even breach of bail, may go unpunished. That is what Bill C-75 by the Liberals provided for. It basically allows Crown attorneys to divert or remove such offences from the docket. Crown attorneys, unfortunately, often do this. Bill C-14 is completely silent on this. We had the OPP commissioner at the justice committee this week. He said that this is an affront to the rule of law, and the Liberals will not correct their own mistake.
Another major failure is not fixing a bail condition that every police association across the country is telling them to do: cash bail. I am going to explain this. Right now, in almost all cases, a surety is not required to post a cash bail. They just make a promise to pay in the event there is a breach of bail conditions. Often, they do not have the money and no one comes after them. It is meaningless. We now have this class of professional sureties that help criminals get out on bail. If they were made to post cash bail, this practice would end. A surety should have some skin in the game.
Finally, on bail reform, here we go again. We already reversed the onus for a number of offences under Bill C-48, but people are still caught and released even with those offences. Reversing the onus is not enough. What is missing is the burden of proof, a definition to direct the courts as to what the burden is that the accused must meet in order to be released. What is very important, also, is that, without such a burden, we do not have consistent application among courts. We have courts in different jurisdictions and different provinces. While they are directed to reverse the onus and place it on the accused, they are not sure what the burden they actually have to meet is. That is something every police force and every police association has brought up, and it is something that I sincerely hope we can address at committee.
Another major problem with the bill with respect to bail reform is the ladder principle. The ladder principle basically directs the court that the accused must be released at the earliest opportunity. The problem, specifically noted by the Police Association of Ontario this week, is that the ladder principle is not eliminated in reverse-onus offences. Just two days ago, my colleagues in the room with us heard testimony from the Police Association of Ontario asking for this very clearly. It said that we need to codify the fact that the ladder principle does not apply in a reverse-onus offence.
Finally, Bill C-14 is completely quiet on parole. In Canada, one is, essentially, automatically eligible for parole after serving a third of their sentence. We heard from a criminal defence attorney last week in the justice committee. Even he, a criminal defence attorney, thought it was lunacy that we see criminals sentenced to a custodial sentence do a third of their sentence, leave, reoffend, get sentenced again, do another third of their sentence and then leave again. That is a practice that we need to put an end to.
This week, the justice committee heard from Meechelle Best and Ron Best from Manitoba, parents whose daughter was killed by an intoxicated driver in a car accident. He was out on bail and had breached his bail condition. There was a warrant for his arrest. That was not the first time. He had breached bail before and got out on bail again. It was one of the most moving and saddest testimonies I have ever heard.
We cannot bring Kellie back, but we can prevent the next atrocity. We need to fix the bill. I am asking the government, in good faith, to work with us to fix Bill C-14, which is currently a flawed bill.