Mr. Speaker, the motion that we put forward today is a motion that I am quite ashamed has to exist in this country. We are calling for the House and the Liberal government to acknowledge the gravity of repeat and rampant criminality in Canada, in communities of all sizes across the country, and to replace the Liberal approach to bail with a “three strikes and you're out” law, one that will stop criminals convicted of three serious offences from getting bail, parole, probation or house arrest. It would keep violent criminals behind bars for at least 10 years.
If we were to talk to Canadians, a lot of them would be shocked that this is not already law, but Canadians know that the system is broken. Canadians know that they used to be able to walk down streets at any hour of the day or night and feel safe and secure, but they can no longer do that. Business owners, not just in large cities but also in small communities like those across my riding, are replacing windows over and over again that are getting broken into. We have a government that has, through its policy, through legislation that it has continued to defend, told victims of crime that they do not matter, that they have no rights, that the rights of offenders matter more.
A small number of offenders, relatively speaking, are being arrested and released over and over again. It is not uncommon to hear a police department say that it has a list of 100 or 150 people who are responsible for the overwhelming majority of their calls. This is not just vandalism or property crime, although I will firmly say that property crime is real crime because we know that it is a precursor to crimes that target individuals and that are often violent. It is all sorts of criminality that is causing injury, that is causing the degradation of communities, that is causing a serious and real public safety threat.
I have talked to experts on this, police chiefs in my riding, like the chiefs of the police services in London, St. Thomas, and Aylmer, Ontario. When we look at the messaging that has been put out by police associations and frontline officers, they all draw a direct line to Bill C-75, which introduced a suite of changes, among them the introduction of something called the principle of restraint.
The Minister of Justice got up in the House a few days ago and accused Conservatives of not having read the law. I have read it many times, as have the police officers I speak to on a regular basis and the provincial governments that have been calling for this to be repealed. It says very clearly that judges must release offenders under the least onerous conditions at the earliest opportunity. It is very rare that we can draw a direct line from a social problem on Canadian streets to a policy, but everyone involved in this space, everyone except the Liberal government, by the way, has done exactly that, because they have seen a night and day difference between before Bill C-75 and after Bill C-75.
I have shared, in a few interviews and online, a story that happened in my riding this summer in St. Thomas, where a historic building, 140-plus years old, was burned down by a repeat offender who was out on bail and had been previously convicted of arson. This is not the way the country is supposed to be. This is not the way things used to be, and it is certainly not the way things would be if the Liberal government would agree to provide real bail reform.
This is beyond parody now, these heart-breaking stories from across the country of repeat, rampant criminality and prolific offenders, as police will call them. However, evidently, since the Liberal government has dug in its heels on this, I need to give a few stories.
There is one from Langley, where a man was charged with violently beating a woman on June 1, a complete stranger in downtown Langley, British Columbia. It was his 37th court appearance in three years. This is what the system is doing on a regular basis.
In another case, a 12-year-old boy was charged with attempted murder in a shooting in Toronto. The fact that we are talking about 12-year-olds being involved in this level of criminality is bad enough, but it is even worse when we consider that the 12-year-old was out on bail. This is what the system is.
In Edmonton, on August 30, Priscilla McGreer was shot to death outside her home by her cousin, who had been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault and breach of probation. He had an extensive history with the courts, including a homicide charge from 2018.
There are more of these cases than I could read in the time this chamber has. My question is, what would it take for the government to acknowledge that there is a problem, first off, and then acknowledge that it caused the problem? Remember that when the Liberal government continues to tell us that it is championing bail reform, its members leave out the part that the so-called reforms that have caused this problem were also pitched to us by the Liberal government as bail reform. These are their changes that have led to the problem we are now trying to seek a real resolution for.
My colleague, the hon. member for Oxford, has put forward a significant bail reform bill that would go forward with actual action. However, instead, we have the Liberal government obstructing the efforts we have been making to advance this issue and push forward real solutions. That is why the motion we are putting forward, as I said at the beginning, is one that I wish was not necessary in Canada. However, it is necessary, and it is tremendously important.
I will provide a couple of other examples here, because I like to lean on what the experts are saying. I like to lean on victims' rights groups, attorneys general in the various provinces of the country, police chiefs and frontline police officers. I will read one line that I think is incredibly relevant to the discussion at hand: “Recidivism, or repeat offending, impacts public safety and the victims affected by those new crimes”. The quote continues with this later on: “reducing recidivism can generate additional substantial benefits to society by reducing criminal justice costs and preventing new victimization.” This comes from Public Safety Canada.
The government's own messaging recognizes the significant harms that recidivism causes, yet the government has not provided real action. Its members keep alluding to this future bail reform bill that may or may not exist and that we do not know the contents of, but they expect us to get behind it. Well, we are providing, through today's motion, a very real, very tangible solution that hits directly at the concerns that have been raised by concerned citizens across this country. We also have the bill from the hon. member for Oxford, which is forthcoming and would provide real, tangible solutions.
Whenever this issue comes up, we hear from the government “blame the provinces”. It blames everyone else, and we see everything other than the introspection to look at what everyone else in the country sees, which is that Bill C-75, among the many things it did that we do not contest as a party, through the principle of restraint, has made bail easier to get for serious offenders and has made the conditions of bail that repeat offenders are getting less onerous. This has resulted in police officers not even being able to enforce bail conditions, because the sheer volume of offenders out on bail at any given moment is so large that scarce resources have to be deployed to clean up after the failures of the Liberal government.
Since the government is claiming that it cares about bail reform, I am asking it to commit to real bail reform and to put the rights of victims and the rights of people who do not feel safe in their own communities ahead of the rights of offenders. This is not a radical or partisan proposal. It is the bare minimum for a country to keep its citizens safe, to keep its communities safe.
I sent a letter to my constituents a few weeks ago on this issue, and my office has been overwhelmed by the response, including from people who say they have always been a Liberal. They cannot abide by what the Liberal government has done in abandoning and abdicating its duty to preserve and protect public safety.
I am asking the Liberal government to commit to supporting our motion and providing real bail reform rather than obstruction.