Canada's "Catch and Release" Justice System

"Police services should not have to chase the same criminal three or four times because of an inadequate bail system. This not only represents a drain on policing resources, but is a hindrance to public safety."

"[The Canadian justice system] fundamentally needs to keep anyone who poses a threat to public safety off the streets."

Joint statement from Canada's 13 provincial and territorial premiers 

 

"The scale has tipped so far towards the right of the accused that the right of the public to be safe is almost a secondary issue, and that needs to tip back the other way."

"It's obvious that something is not working with this catch and release system whereby people are out on bail for violent crimes and cases where the police officers haven't even finished typing the report on it yet - and in some cases paroled and notations made in the file that they're highly likely to re-offend."

"I mean, what is wrong with that picture? It's not good for public safety, and it's certainly not good for officer safety."

Former OPP commissioner Chris Lewis

North Bay Police Chief says the public is fed-up and police officers are frustrated with repeat offenders getting out on bail.

"The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP) endorses the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s (CACP) statement issued on May 17, 2023, which welcomed the introduction of Bill C-48, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Bail Reform), by the Government of Canada."

"Ontario’s police leaders welcome the proposed changes to the Criminal Code of Canada related to the bail system. In our view, the legislative changes in Bill C-48 are a step in the right direction in eliminating and preventing potential threats to public safety and community well-being posed by repeat offenders with a history of violence."

"Incidents of repeat offenders with a history of violence being granted judicial interim release and committing violent criminal acts are not uncommon today. As police professionals, we will always advocate strongly for the public’s right to be protected from repeat violent offenders. The public’s need for protection from harm must be given far greater weight than is currently the case when bail matters are considered. The safety and security of Canadians must be paramount when it comes to this issue."

Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police

In the past decade, identity-based justice and a distaste for punishment has created a regime that allows chronic offenders to walk free. Tristin Hopper, National Post

In Canada, justices  must adhere to a 2018 federal government explicit provision to hand out bail readily in the instance of Indigenous suspects of crime. A guidance document instructs judges they are required to consider the "circumstances of Indigenous accused and of accused from vulnerable populations". A crime wave more extreme than anything before experienced struck Canada after the COVID-19 lockdowns with disturbingly serious crimes reaching heights never before seen.

 

Unprecedented numbers of police were killed, not matching the historical record where police in Canada are killed in the line of duty encountering violent suspects or executing a warrant. Instead, the recent police murders have resulted from cold-blooded ambushes. In major Canadian cities "stranger attacks" have become a daily occurrence. Where people have been randomly stabbed to death in public spaces. A 2023 Leger poll found that the vast majority of respondents not only feel less safe, but are in fact, less safe.

 

In the streets of Canadian cities people report encounters where they have been screamed at, threatened and assaulted and some experts attribute this situation to a justice system manipulated to accept that prisons produce worse crime outputs, that punishment as a social deterrent concept is outdated in a justice system that is more concerned with an offender's identity than their crime, and it becomes the former that punishment is predicated on. 

 

Before long, the criminal class understood that crimes they commit would lead to 'punishment light'.

 

Surveillance footage from what Vancouver police described as an 'unprovoked' attack on a man outside a convenience store on Commercial Drive early July 31, 2022. (Vancouver Police Department)

Most crime, according to criminology experts, tends to be committed by a tight little cohort of chronic offenders. Police forces in Western Canada use the term "super-chronic offender", defined as someone who commits over one crime monthly. The B.C. Urban Mayors' Caucus in 2022 detailed that 204 offenders were responsible for 11,648 career convictions among them, with an average of 54 crimes committed by each individual of the cadre. 

Individuals newly released from incarceration or police custody are now committing entire crime waves. Random, violent assaults plaguing the city of Vancouver saw its police service crunching numbers to find a trend among those arrested for committing a "stranger assault"; 78 percent already had an earned prior criminal conviction. In a three month period from March to June 2022, the Vancouver Police arrested forty suspects connected to stranger attacks. When all 40 individuals' "prior police interactions" were tallied; the total came to 3,892. 

These statistics and the conditions that lead to them explains why it is that police departments in Canada are increasingly vocal in the absurdity of the situation; apprehending criminals only to see them swiftly return to the streets on compassionate bail. In a 2023 letter, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police spoke of a "criminal justice system that renders much of our work pointless."

 

A sketch of Ryan Cunneen making a court appearance in Toronto on Tuesday. He is accused of killing an elderly woman in Toronto last week in a seemingly unprovoked attack in the city's financial district. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Alexandra Newbould

 

A Toronto police officer walks alongside a TTC streetcar after a woman, 23, was stabbed several times on the vehicle late last month. Another woman, 43, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, among other offences, in connection with the attack. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

"That Canadians have a right to feel safe in their own cities should go without saying."

"Yet it needs to be said, because too many judges, politicians and left-wing voters have leaned so far into the soft-on-crime, defund-the-police rhetoric,they fail to see that the lack of deterrence in our justice system is contributing to a culture of lawlessness on our streets." 

"Declining public safety and heightened dissatisfaction in a justice system that is seen as being too soft on crime, led to a major swing during last fall's municipal elections in British Columbia, which were dominated by law-and-order candidates, including Mayor Sim, who ran on a platform of hiring 100 additional police officers."

"Given the heightened fear and growing awareness of the inadequacies of our police forces and criminal justice system, there is now a significant opportunity for a political party to pull a similar feat at the federal level."

Editorial, National Post

The rise in the Canadian homicide rate can almost exclusively be blamed on gang-related killings, which represented 23 per cent of all murders. Photo by Gavin Young/Postmedia/File

When the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau resumed power after an unusually long period of Conservative rule under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, much changed in Canada. For one thing, many of the initiatives taken by the Harper administration to amend some of Canada's lax criminal justice laws on minimum sentences, on bail, and other issues were tightened. It took no time for the new administration under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reverse all these changes and the results have not been impressive.

 

A 22-year-old homeless man with a long rap sheet in Newfoundland and Ontario was involved a week ago in a spontaneous, unprovoked attack on a teen, Gabriel Magalhaes, who was siting quietly on a bench at a Toronto subway station. He was stabbed in the chest three times, killing the 16-year-old. The attacker, Jordan O'Brien-Tobin, had an outstanding arrest warrant for the past two years in Newfoundland. 

Despite which, during those two years when he moved to Ontario, he committed a series of crimes for which he was convicted -- of sexual assault, attacking someone with scissors, assaulting a man with a boxcutter, and breaching release conditions. A 150-day sentence was the most he received. Time after time the justice system deemed O'Brien-Tobin's mental health and addiction took priority over removing him as a danger to the community.

 

An ambulance is pictured here parked near a TTC sign late last month. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

This death was not in the realm of isolated incidents. A Toronto Transit Commission report recently released highlighted 1,058 violent incidents on the city's public transit system in 2022 representing a 60 percent rise over the 2018's 666 recorded incidents, at a time when ridership has been reduced to 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels.  Incidents of random violence include physical and sexual assaults, robbery, harassment and indecent exposure. And then there are the more fearsome attacks where TTC passengers and employees were stabbed and assaulted.

The report measuring last year's violent assaults on Toronto's public transportation system included a student who was shot, a woman pushed onto the tracks, another set on fire, and a homeless man killed in a swarming attack; this one by a group of teen-age girls. A recent poll verified that fully 40 percent of TTC users consider the system to be unsafe. 

"Nobody should ever feel unsafe walking around [our] city", Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim tweeted following a stabbing a week ago when a man was stabbed to death in the company of his fiancee and three-year-old daughter outside a Starbucks in the downtown. The stabbed man had requested of another man that he not vape in close proximity to his three-year-old child. The general consensus in Vancouver is in agreement that particular areas of the city are seeing a steep decline in public safety.

 

The casket of South Simcoe Police Service Const. Morgan Russell is carried into a joint funeral service in Barrie, Ont., Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. Russell and fellow SSPS constable Devon Northrup were killed in a shooting in Innisfil, Ont. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

 

Close to nine of ten people surveyed walking along Granville Street, a major downtown thoroughfare, responded to a survey that they felt unsafe in the area. A 2022 poll found province-wide that over half of respondents feel British Columbia's cities' downtown cores are in decline; 98 percent cited increased crime. The Vancouver Police Department show statistics of violent crime increasing 4.1 percent year-over-year to 2022's rise of 12.1 percent in comparison to the pre-pandemic average from 2017-19.

Toronto police data point to major crimes increasing 18 percent between 2021 and 2022. The number of major crimes reported to police for 2023 rose by 21 percent over 2022. Police too have been the recipients of violent crime, with nine police officers dying in the line of service since September. A week ago, Sgt. Maureen Breau, mother of two, was stabbed to death while making an arrest in Louiseville, Quebec. 

The man who murdered her has a long line of violent crimes, dating back ten years, while for various reasons he was not kept behind bars in the country's catch-and-release justice system. Between 1991 and 2014 there was a distinct downward trend in per capita crime rates. The last seven years have been spent by the federal Liberal government and the courts dismantling the criminal justice reforms instituted by the Harper government. Many mandatory minimum sentences were trashed.

People light candles during a vigil in honour of the victims of the nearby community of James Smith Cree Nation’s series of stabbings, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada,