Over the past decade, Canada has seen:

– a sustained increase in violent crime,
– heightened public concern about repeat and dangerous offenders, and
– growing frustration with what appears to be inconsistent and lenient outcomes.

But the causes are not reducible to one factor.

They include:
– Supreme Court jurisprudence, particularly Jordan, which is a one-size-fits-all solution imposed by courts that ought to have been studied and enacted by parliament. It has forced speed at the expense of substance and resulted in thousands of stayed or withdrawn cases;
– court backlogs and delay, which inflate remand populations and harden offenders;
– organized crime and national-security-linked criminality, which our tools are poorly designed to address;
– the striking down of hundreds of mandatory minimums without replacement architecture; and
-a sentencing framework that relies heavily on broad principles but offers little structured guidance, leaving room for too much discretion and unpredictability.

Bail decisions sit downstream of all of this.

Bill C-14 responds to real public anxiety, particularly around repeat violent offending, and some of its sentencing amendments may help at the margins.

Canada’s public safety issues are significant, but bail is not the primary problem. The real issues are repeat violent offenders and the expanding reach of organized crime. We need to address organized crime and national security gaps in enforcement and prosecution, reduce excessive judicial discretion, and pursue selective expansion of non-custodial sentencing options.

Full testimony and recommendations here