Debates of Nov. 18th, 2025

Bail and Sentencing Reform Act

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is my neighbour in Yellowhead.

People think that if we put in strong sentences, more and more people will go to jail, but the facts show otherwise. Strong sentences deter people from going to jail, and the police have to deal less with people committing offence after offence. In fact when I was in my riding, in Drayton Valley, I talked to an RCMP officer who said he had arrested a drug trafficker who was released mere hours after they were arrested. The fact is that our police are overwhelmed by the failed Liberal bail system; we have a revolving door justice system.

I spoke earlier in a question about the Office of the Correctional Investigator. The correctional investigator talked about the government's chronic underfunding of mental health and programs in prisons. Conservatives want to put people behind bars, but we want people who come out of prison to at least have skills, training and better mental health so they do not commit more crimes. The correctional investigator is resigning two years early because the government—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I need to interrupt the member to allow for questions and comments.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has the floor.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the response the member gave to my first question is unfortunate. Let me ask him a very simple question. Bail reform legislation is before us today. Will the member and the Conservative Party agree to have the legislation pass before the end of the year? Will the Conservative Party give Canadians a Christmas present by allowing them to have bail reform before the end of the year, yes or no?

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows full well the legislative process of the House, and that legislation needs to go through debate and to committee. He knows that the public safety committee and the justice committee have a lot of serious pieces of legislation before them. He also knows we have a chamber of sober second thought, the other place; we do not call it the Senate. He knows that the legislation is not going to pass before Christmas.

However, Conservatives will support any legislation that seeks to make our bail system stronger, but we have pointed out that the legislation is extremely weak and could benefit from serious amendments.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, a number of critics have spoken out with regard to the bill, saying that it goes a certain distance but certainly not far enough to protect Canadians. A big part of that is the fact that Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 are still intact and very much need to be scrapped. I wonder if the hon. member would care to comment on that.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, people who live in rural Alberta and close to rural Alberta know that Bill C-75 and Bill C-5 have helped unleash a crime wave in our communities and in communities across Canada. I actually witnessed a brazen attempted vehicle theft of a Ford F-350 at a neighbour's house at seven o'clock in the morning, when people are going—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Markham—Unionville.

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be here speaking for Markham—Unionville.

The Liberals claim they want to “balance firmness with fairness” in Bill C-14 and that they want "a justice system that works for everyone." This is a false equivalence. There is no “everyone” when it comes to our justice system; there is a value hierarchy, and there is only one spot at the top. Whom do we choose to serve? Whom do we build our justice system around?

Day in and day out, the Liberals have shown us whom they truly value. They cater to the common criminals, with fairness for the thief, the murderer and the drug dealer, and firmness for the honest citizen and the compliant taxpayer. They do not value the everyday hard-working Canadian upon whose back this nation was built. We are treated like a tax farm to be extracted from and then fed to the bandits like in some sick joke. The world the Liberals have legislated into being through Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 is madness incarnate.

Human narratives are post hoc rationalizations. We commit to a position dictated by our incentive structures, and then we invent reasons why we took the given position. A metaphor I have encountered that captures this dynamic equates our gut instinct to an elephant, and our rational mind to an elephant rider: The elephant moves around any which way it wants, and the rider invents the reasons why the movement occurred. The Liberal elephant is committed to sitting with criminals, and the Liberal elephant rider creates narratives to justify soft-on-crime policies.

The principle of restraint is embedded in the very core of the Liberal doctrine on justice, so much so that even though the Liberals were forced to make numerous concessions to Conservative advocacy around the errors of Bill C-5 and Bill C-75, they have still left the principle unchanged in Bill C-14. Let me remind the House what Bill C-14 really is: a direct Liberal admission of failure regarding their soft-on crime policies, without altering the underlying pro-criminal commitments that undergird their doctrine of justice.

There is a good parallel to this in the world of science. Scientific paradigms are world views that are ways of looking at and interpreting bodies of facts. We can look at the facts of physics through the paradigm of Newton and the paradigm of Einstein, but we can never hold two competing paradigms at the same time, because each is a totalizing way of looking at the world.

In what we might call a justice paradigm, the Liberals are committed to catering to criminals. When they speak of restraint, they speak only of their favourite little lawbreakers. There is no room to look at the world from the world view of the everyday Canadian when the Liberals have chosen to take up a pro-criminal paradigm of justice.

This has been a prolonged build-up for what is a very simple solution. The Liberals must know in their heart of hearts that they need to go all the way and repeal Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 in full. They keep saying that they are a new Liberal government and are different from the old Liberal government. Well, I ask that my colleagues show us.

Bill C-14 succeeds, from a pro-order lens, where it would move in the direction of undoing the damages of C-5 and Bill C-75. The bill fails where it would retain the principle of restraint.

There can be no balance in our system of justice between competing world views. The Liberals need to take one path and go all the way. What Bill C-14 represents is a patchwork of compromises. The Liberals have found such a big tent that competing factions sit uncomfortably together under a single roof.

The ideological incoherence in Bill C-14 maps the incoherence of the Liberals' factional support structure and the basis of power. To use a metaphor from earlier, the Liberals have more than one elephant, but only a single elephant rider to rationalize policy commitments post hoc to the entire world. What a mess. The Liberals will be perpetually locked into half measures to keep a tenuous coalition together.

With my remaining time, I want to outline some potential positive directions for Bill C-14 if the Liberals accept my commentary on the justice paradigms. First of all, the Liberals need to put law-abiding Canadians first by choosing to commit to the maintainers of order. It is already impossible to hold the principle of restraint as a core value. When we put something together at the centre of our value hierarchy, we will necessarily build a new system around it.

Second, once the public safety of law-abiding Canadians is set as the true north of our justice paradigm, it becomes impossible to uphold the errors of Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. Restoring mandatory minimums, ending the catch-and-release system and removing the house arrest option for serious offenders are the logical consequences of accepting a new set of priorities.

Finally, Liberals will have to come to terms with their big tent and prune the factions that are clearly against the well-being of law-abiding Canadians and the productive society they enable. The principle of restraint for criminals is a principle of constraint on our productive economy.

In conclusion, I want to remind the Liberal colleagues that the situation with our justice system has deteriorated to such an extent this is no longer a question of partisan politics. If they continue with this patchwork of compromises, what will the spillover effects be? How many more Canadians need to be shot dead in their own homes by repeat offenders for this systemic madness to bleed into genuine societal chaos? We are not talking about riots in the streets, though that is always possible. We are talking about the everyday chaos of a low-trust society, a slow and steady descent into balkanization and tribalization when citizens see they cannot trust their justice system to serve their interests.

If the Liberals continue to wine and dine on the luxury belief of restraint for criminals, the least of their concerns will be the fractioning of their own coalition. They are to fear the fracturing of our society and of the tax base that funds their capacity to engage in those ludicrous luxury beliefs.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I think we found out from one of the member's colleagues a little bit earlier that the Conservative Party has no intentions of passing Bill C-14. Bill C-14 is a reflection of what Canadians want to see as a part of the Prime Minister and the Liberal caucus' campaign commitment. Overwhelmingly, never before have as many Canadians voted for a political party as they did for the current Prime Minister in the last election. This was an election platform commitment.

Will the member agree that this legislation should be able to pass before Christmas?

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if the Prime Minister is serious about delivering his promise, he should attack the fundamental root cause of this problem and repeal Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. As I said in my speech, let us not fool around with more compromises. Let us get at the root cause of this problem.

We hear this from our Canadian citizens. We hear this from our police force. Let us fix this once and for all, and stop fooling around with all these compromises.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals keep saying that Canadians want this legislation. It is true that Canadians certainly want change. They want to make sure their communities are safe. They want to make sure people can walk in the evening without fear. They want to make sure businesses can operate without being shot up. Certainly, Canadians want that. They want to know the safety and security, the well-being of their communities, is protected. However, this bill, Bill C-14, does not go far enough.

I wonder if the hon. member, my colleague, would care to comment further on that.

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are hearing from Canadians and from law enforcement that the current bill, and the existence of Bills C-5 and C-75, are not working. In fact, over the weekend, we had a seminar on crime and heard a very emotional testimony from an elderly couple who lost their 25-year-old daughter. That is the reason we need to fix the fundamentals of what is going on. Let us not give bail to all of the repeat offenders.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the member, he did not answer the question the parliamentary secretary asked about letting this bill go to committee.

The member for Lethbridge then asked him a question about what is wrong and why the bill does not go far enough.

The whole point of letting the bill pass at this stage is so it can go to committee to fix what apparently the member for Lethbridge, this member and all Conservatives do not think goes far enough. Why will Conservatives not let this bill pass so it can go to committee, where their concerns can be raised?

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what we are looking at with the Liberal government is that, even when bills are sent to committee and recommendations are approved, it still ignores them, so I am not sure we would be addressing this issue.

We are appealing for a fundamental fix. Let us repeal Bill C-5 and Bill C-75.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe the Conservative Party of Canada is listening to what Canadians are saying. They want bail reform. The Prime Minister, and every Liberal member of Parliament, wants to see bail reform. The roadblock to achieving it is the Conservative Party. On the one hand, its members say they want it, but on the other hand, they are denying every Canadian bail reform—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to interrupt the parliamentary secretary to give a chance to the member for Markham—Unionville to respond.

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the point is that this does not fundamentally address the issues laid out in Bills C-5 and C-75. Let us get to it. Let us repeal Bills C-5 and C-75, fix the problem fundamentally and address—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Newmarket—Aurora.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians have been clear, painfully clear, that we need a justice system that is respected by those who break the law and trusted by the people who live with the consequences. We need laws that actually protect families, not laws that look good on paper while leaving our communities vulnerable. Trust cannot exist without real accountability. When offenders face symbolic consequences, not real ones, the system loses credibility and communities lose confidence.

Just a week ago, Parliament had a chance to change that. Conservatives introduced the jail not bail act, a common-sense bill that the Liberals voted against. It would have put public safety first, replacing the current principle of restraint with a principle rooted in the reality that the safety of Canadians must come before the convenience of offenders. It would have created stricter bail rules for major offences, the kinds of rules that shatter lives, including firearm violence, sexual assault, kidnapping and home invasions. It would have strengthened risk assessment so that bail could be denied when reoffending is reasonably foreseeable, not only when it meets the far higher bar of a substantial likelihood. How did the Liberal government respond? It voted against it. It voted against protections, against safer streets and against the frontline officers and first responders who run towards danger while others run away.

Now, the same government that weakened the guardrails of our justice system claims that Bill C-14 will fix everything. Bill C-14 is not a solution, not a complete solution. It is a hollow echo of the Conservative proposal, a half measure drafted by a government that still refuses to acknowledge the crime crisis unfolding across the country.

The Liberals unleashed a very dangerous experiment in Canada with weak bail laws, weakened penalties and a justice system that prioritizes release over responsibility, and Canadians have paid the price. Violent crime is up 41% since 2014, and homicide, sexual assault and extortion are all higher. Neighbourhoods are traumatized and lives are shattered.

Still, Bill C-14 refuses to fix the root of the problem. First, it would keep the principle of restraint, the very rule that instructs the courts to release offenders as early and as easily as possible. Second, it refuses to restore mandatory minimum penalties for violent firearms and weapons offences, penalties the government eliminated under Bill C-5. Third, it would still permit house arrest for serious crimes, including some trafficking-related and violent offences. Finally, it fails to introduce a presumption of pretrial detention for repeat violent offenders, the people who repeatedly terrorize communities because the system lets them.

The government weakened the guardrails. Now it offers a band-aid solution: a band-aid for violent crime, a band-aid for intimate partner violence and a band-aid for human trafficking. Band-aid solutions are not enough.

Since entering public life, one of the hardest truths I have had to confront is how deeply human trafficking affects our communities, including my community in Newmarket—Aurora. We do not see it often on the front page of the newspaper. We see only hints of it, such as a help poster in a bathroom stall or a number taped beside a sink. Behind all those small signs lie devastating stories.

Slavery may have been abolished centuries ago, but today, in our own neighbourhoods, there are young girls and boys being treated as a commodity. They children who have been reduced to property. Human trafficking is the fastest-growing crime in Canada. Profits have skyrocketed. Online recruitment has exploded, and victims are younger, more vulnerable and more isolated.

What makes this crime so sinister is what traffickers call breaking the spirit. It is a deliberate, violent, psychological assault on a human being until they no longer recognize their own worth or their own voice. This is happening in Canada, on Canadian soil, in communities like ours.

Bill C-14 scratches the surface. It may make it slightly harder for traffickers to get bail, but it would do almost nothing to strengthen sentencing, victim protections or enforcement. Human trafficking of minors once carried strong mandatory minimums that deterred predators. The Liberals weakened or repealed many of them, and Bill C-14 would not restore them. Cases collapse into reduced charges through plea deals, and Bill C-14 would do nothing to stop that. Victims are often left in the dark when their traffickers are released, and Bill C-14 would not fix that either. When a crime is this vile and this morally repugnant, half measures are not enough.

Just a few weeks ago, a jewellery store in the Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket, which is in my community, was ambushed by a group of masked robbers. They smashed the display cases, terrified shoppers and shattered the sense of safety that families rely on. Last weekend, it happened again in the same mall, but to another store. This time, a police officer and security guards were pepper-sprayed. The message this sends is unmistakable: They can do this because nothing will happen to them.

This is what weak bail laws create: a culture of impunity and a revolving door where offenders are back on the streets before the paperwork is done. Who carries the burden? It is the families, the business owners, our brothers and sisters, our neighbours, our employees, the seniors who walk in the mall for exercise and the parents who are deciding whether it is still safe to bring their children.

While Bill C-14 would adjust some bail considerations, it would still allow for release on the least restrictive conditions, even for crimes that target the very sense of safety in a community. For gang-related robberies, auto theft rings, home invasions, extortion and coordinated retail attacks, public safety must be the first and central consideration.

I remember a Canada where we could walk at night without fear and where parents did not think twice about letting their children go to the mall or ride their bike. Safety was not a luxury; it was a quiet part of our daily life that was taken for granted. That freedom is being fractured. We need strong laws that confront the crime wave being unleashed by weak bail policies and weakened penalties. Canadians deserve to feel safe.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Secretary of State (Combatting Crime)]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about violent crime, as well as the retail crime that happened at a jeweller's. Bill C-14 would address these exact issues so that these types of criminals who are committing organized retail crime do not get back out on the streets. It would also address home invasions, auto theft and violent crime. It would do many things. There are 80 different changes to the Criminal Code in Bill C-14.

I would like to know what is holding up the Conservative Party. Why can we not get this bill to committee and get it passed as soon as possible?

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-14 would not repeal Bill C-75, which brought in the principle of restraint.

I am even more concerned that it took the Liberals six years to learn that there is a crime wave happening in Canada. The principle of restraint is not working, yet Bill C-14 still directs that if a release is ordered, it must be on the “least onerous conditions” necessary. This is what breeds violence and crime in our communities.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for another intelligent speech. We are studying violence against women and girls at the status of women committee, and we heard testimony yesterday that the reverse onus provision in Bill C-14 would not work. As long as people come with a plan, the judges tend to send them back out on bail.

Could the member comment on a stronger measure that she would like to see in this bill?

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in 2022, the Liberals brought in Bill C-5, which took away the mandatory minimum sentences brought in under the Harper government. Bill C-14 fails to do two main things. There is only a partial reversal for house arrest eligibility, and it would not reinstate mandatory minimums. This bill fails to make real sentencing reform and would put our communities at risk.

Recently, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the one-year mandatory minimum for cases involving child pornography, and the Liberals did nothing about it. As a mother, I am disgusted that the Liberal government does not take crimes against innocent children seriously.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely false. We are taking these crimes very seriously. In fact, that is why the second bill we presented in this House was Bill C-2, which would give law enforcement lawful access tools to be able to catch pedophiles, catch child predators online and catch extortionists. The Conservative Party of Canada had those tools removed and put into another bill.

Why is the Conservative Party of Canada failing to be the partner it ought to be in Parliament when it comes to public safety?

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat myself. Bill C-14 fails to do two main things. There is only a partial reversal of house arrest eligibility, and it would not reinstate mandatory minimums.

As the member of Parliament for Newmarket—Aurora, I send monthly surveys to my constituents, and crime is one of their top concerns. It is not only because we now watch it on the news; it is because we hear it from our neighbours, we live it and we see it in malls.

Crime has been increasing. If we take a step back, we know this is the result of the Liberals' bail reform. They are not repealing Bill C-5 or Bill C-75.