Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-242, the jail not bail act, at second reading. It was put forward by my friend and colleague, the hon. member for Oxford, and I am proud to have seconded the legislation.
I just listened to the Liberal government's narrative of our perspective on crime, and it is an alternative universe. This bill, the jail not bail act, was announced in Woodbridge last September, in my riding, where the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member from Oxford and I, along with other colleagues, were joined by the families of victims. The members of these families were crying in our arms. They had felt the pain of a failed Liberal bail system and the constant consequences of inaction.
The location of this announcement was not a coincidence. Woodbridge was chosen because the people who live there know this problem first-hand. They do not live in the abstract where politicians debate theories of justice. They live in the real world, the here and now, and they live with the consequences of the broken bail system and constant Liberal inaction.
I want to start in Vaughan because I feel similar to what the member for Kelowna is feeling. Vaughan feels like ground zero to many in our community for the issue of crime in this country. Now, according to York Regional Police, in the latest full-year report on crime statistics for 2024, my community recorded 16,407 criminal offences, the highest of any municipality in York region. We recorded 749 break and enters, 1,996 assaults, 274 reported sexual violations and 167 robberies. All of this was in a single year.
The stats highlight the numbers; however, there is a reality that members of the House need to realize. The reality is that, just last week, in the early hours of March 17, armed suspects forced their way into a home on Carrville Woods Circle in Vaughan. The homeowner, to protect his family, discharged a legally owned firearm. Two suspects are still at large. The family at home did nothing wrong. They had no choice, and they had no warning.
Some weeks before that, a man was shot dead outside a business at Weston Road and Rowntree Dairy Road in the middle of the afternoon. In February, a Thornhill residence was struck by gunfire. On another evening, shots were fired at a home on Allison Ann Way. In the early hours of a cold January morning, a man was shot near Martin Grove Road. A gun was seized after a commercial break-in at a Vaughan business. Another investigation linked one suspect to nine separate break and enters across Vaughan and Markham. This is what daily life has become in my riding.
When I look at the reality and at what our bill system has been doing, that connection is not hard to find. Since the Liberals took office in 2015, violent crime in Canada is up by 55%, firearm offences are up 130%, extortion is up 330%, sexual assaults are up 76% and homicides are up 29%. These are Statistics Canada figures. They reflect a decade of policy choices that constantly prioritize the rights of the accused over the safety of the community.
In 2019, Bill C-75, the Liberals inserted what is called the “Principle of restraint” to the Criminal Code. That principle directs judges and justices of the peace to release the accused at the earliest opportunity under the least restrictive conditions. My colleague from Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, a former Crown attorney, explained precisely what that means in practice, which is that it does not matter how serious the charge, how long the criminal record or how many times the accused has already breached a bail order, the law tells the court that it has to let them go.
Then in 2022, Bill C-5 repealed mandatory minimum sentences for serious firearms and violent crimes, as well as extended the availability of conditional sentences, house arrest, for offences that most Canadians would expect to end in imprisonment. The deterrent effect of the justice system was weakened at both ends, at the point of bail and again at the point of sentencing.
The Liberals have since introduced Bill C-14 and have framed it as bail reform. I want to be fair. It is better than what exists today. Conservatives worked on that committee to strengthen the bill wherever we could. We secured tighter surety rules, provisions for repeat violent offenders who re-offend on release and annual reporting requirements.
However, when we pushed for public safety to become the primary governing principle, moved to eliminate house arrest for major crimes and sought mandatory consecutive sentences for repeat human traffickers, the Liberals voted against every one of those amendments. Of course, the fundamental problem with Liberal bail is that the principle of restraint would still remain. It would be modified at the edges, but it would still there, telling the courts to default towards release. The culture of prioritizing release is perpetual in our justice system, and the Liberal bail bill, Bill C-14, would do nothing to address this.
Bill C-242, the jail not bail act, starts from a different premise entirely. It would remove the principle of restraint and replace it with a clear direction that public and community safety is the primary consideration for the justice system. It would change what judges would be asked to weigh first when someone stands before them: public safety over early release.
The bill would create a major offence category covering some of the most serious crimes we see in communities like Vaughan: firearm offences, sexual offences, kidnapping, human trafficking, home invasions, robbery, extortion and arson. For anyone charged with one of these offences, the bill would establish a presumption of detention. For repeat violent offenders, the bill would heighten the risk standards. Today, courts ask whether there is a substantial likelihood that an offender would reoffend. This bill would change that to “reasonable foreseeability”, meaning whether a reasonable person looking at an accused's full criminal history, record of breaching orders and pattern of how they have moved through the system would conclude that their risk of reoffending is real.
Bill C-242 would also close gaps in our system. For example, it would bar anyone convicted of an indictable offence from serving as a guarantor. It is difficult to believe that this needs to be legislated at all, but right now in this country, someone who is an organized crime member can legally vouch for another person in bail proceedings. That would end under our bill. The bill would also require non-resident accused persons to surrender their passports.
The difference between the Liberal bill and the one before us today is that what the Liberals propose and what we are proposing is a matter of effective execution and practicality. Liberal bail reform would keep the principle of restraint. Our Conservative bill would repeal it. The Liberals want to encourage courts to consider an accused person's history. The jail not bail act would make that consideration mandatory. The Liberals do not touch surety eligibility or passport surrender. Our Conservative approach would address both. The differences are clear. The Liberals still default to release, and the Conservatives start from a principle that public safety must be the key consideration of the justice system.
The Liberals have suggested that Bill C-242 would raise constitutional concerns. It would not. In the Crown v. Lloyd decision, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that mandatory minimum penalties need to be narrow and targeted. The measures introduced in the jail not bail act are targeted and proportionate measures directed at a defined category of repeat violent offenders who are before the courts under serious charges. I am very confident it would be charter-compliant. I would also observe that charter compliance cuts both ways. The charter protects the rights of law-abiding Canadians and victims too, not just those who are charged with harming them. I challenge my Liberal colleagues to remember this position.
The Bloc members have also raised concerns that more detention would strain prison capacity. We agree that we must modernize our justice system, but it is important to understand that the data do not support the worry over prison capacity. As my colleague from Oxford rightly pointed out, this issue is about repeat offenders. In Kelowna, 15 individuals committed 1,500 crimes in a single year. In Vancouver, 40 people, in one year, were arrested 6,000 times. The chronic high-volume offenders this bill targets are not filling prisons and leaving. They are cycling through the system repeatedly, generating arrest after arrest, hearing after hearing and breach after breach.
When this legislation was announced, it was informed by direct consultation with police chiefs, police associations, mayors, victim advocates and families of people killed by repeat offenders who should have never been free in the first place, but under Liberal bail law they were. I urge every member to support this bill at second reading.