Will the Liberals’ proposed bail reforms make Peterborough safer? Some local justice advocates aren’t so sure.

In the early hours of Friday June 2, 2023, gunshots rang out at the Wolfe Street tent encampment near downtown Peterborough. Police arrived to find a 36-year-old woman suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. She was rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead, leaving behind two children. Days later, Peterborough police charged 33-year-old Jonathan Murphy with first degree murder in relation to the shooting death.

While announcing the arrest, Peterborough’s police chief said that Murphy was out on bail when the shooting happened and had a lifetime weapons ban. “We continue to see violent offenders released out onto our streets who subsequently commit more violent offences,” Stuart Betts said.

Betts’ comments echoed those made by other Canadian police chiefs and politicians recently in response to other violent crimes where the accused was on bail, including the shooting death of OPP Const. Grzegorz Pierzchala last December.

In the wake of Pierzchala’s murder, provincial premiers called for changes to the bail system to detain more people who face criminal charges rather than release them into the community while awaiting trial.

The federal Liberals responded with new legislation this spring that would make it harder for those accused of some violent crimes to get bail. If passed, Bill C-48 would create a reverse onus at bail hearings for people charged with a serious violent crime involving a weapon who were convicted of a similar offence within the past five years.

Normally prosecutors must convince judges why an accused person should be kept behind bars until trial. But “reverse onus” means it is up to the accused to instead prove why they should be released on bail.

The bill would also introduce reverse-onus bail provisions for some firearms offences – such as illegal possession of a loaded, restricted firearm and breaking and entering to steal a firearm – and expand their use for intimate partner violence offences.

Currents asked Statistics Canada for data on how often people on bail are charged with violent crimes in Peterborough, but the agency said it cannot release those numbers for individual cities.

However, province-wide data on instances where someone was accused of a violent crime while on bail for another violent crime charge show the numbers rose in Ontario between 2014 and 2019. The Statistics Canada data shows there was a 52 percent increase in such incidents in Ontario over that five-year period – amounting to 802 more incidents in 2019 compared to 2014. Statistics Canada said more recent data is not available.

Advocates say bail reforms won’t improve public safety

Social justice advocacy groups, including the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS), have rejected the federal government’s claim that its bail reforms will boost public safety.

“Recent and dangerous discourse on bail reform is pushing law and policy in a direction that will harm rather than protect Canadians by further restricting access to an already onerous bail system,” said Emilie Coyle, CAEFS executive director, at a press conference this past summer.

Coyle said too many people who are still legally innocent are behind bars in provincial jails, and Bill C-48 will only make matters worse. According to Statistics Canada data, 79 percent of inmates in Ontario’s jails last year were in pre-trial detention. Those denied bail were held behind bars for more than two months on average in 2021, according to a report from Ontario’s Auditor General.

In a recent letter to provincial premiers, CAEFS and other groups argued that putting more people behind bars while awaiting trial will only exacerbate social issues, such as poverty, that can lead to crime.

“The evidence continually demonstrates that overall, public safety is served not by widespread and punitive use of incarceration, but by enhancing social welfare supports such as increasing investments in education and health care, keeping people in the community, and improving reintegration programs and supports for those who have been incarcerated,” the letter reads.

Bail programs that reduce re-offending “under-resourced,” advocate says

Peterborough’s Bail Supervision and Verification Program, run by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Peterborough, helps people get bail when they don’t have someone in the community to put up money for their release and ensure they follow their conditions. If not for the program they would likely be detained at the Central East Correctional Centre, in Lindsay, until their trial, according to Correen Day, who manages the program.

Day understands what’s fueling the push to restrict access to bail, but said it’s not the right answer to rising crime levels.

“There were individuals that were released and some really heinous things happened that should have never happened,” she said. “[But] it paints the whole bail system as if it’s just based upon individuals getting out and then recommitting very violent offences.”

Many of the people Day sees come through the bail program are struggling with poverty, homelessness, substance use and mental health challenges. “We’re seeing a lot of people unable to provide what they need for their necessary daily living,” Day said.

The bail program helps people connect with housing, mental health and addiction treatment and other services, which reduces the risk of future involvement with the criminal justice system, Day said.

“We see the significant impact that being out in the community can actually make not only for the individual, but for the public,” she said. “Being able to have those open conversations with those individuals to start addressing some of those factors, really does … assist to ensure that they don’t continue going through the criminal justice system.”

Day worries Bill C-48 will mean more people will be forced to wait for trial behind bars, where they can’t access the services they need to improve their lives. On top of that, time in jail can exacerbate mental health and addiction challenges, making it harder for people to find a stable footing once they’re released, she said.

Instead of stricter bail measures, Day said governments should invest more in bail supervision programs and other services that steer people away from crime.

Peterborough’s bail supervision program is one of many across Ontario. But the provincially-funded programs are currently “under-resourced,” according to Safiyah Husein, a senior policy analyst at the John Howard Society of Ontario.

“The bail verification and supervision program is a really good example of something that exists in the province that has a good track record,” Husein said.

The programs mainly serve accused people who are deemed lower risk, but they could be bolstered to work with people accused of more serious violent crimes who are still eligible for bail, Husein said.

“We’re not going to punish our way out of this”

Christian Harvey, co-executive director of One City Peterborough, said the federal government should focus on alleviating poverty if it wants to reduce crime – not imposing harsher bail measures.

He said “tough-on-crime” legislation is usually designed to make people feel safer, “but seldom does it result in us actually being safer.”

He said rising crime levels are a sign that “more and more people are in desperation.”

“We’re seeing the results of having inequality in our society,” he said. “We’re not going to punish our way out of this.”

Peterborough also needs more programs that help people involved in the criminal justice system reintegrate safely into the community, Harvey said. That’s the focus of Circles of Support and Accountability, or COSA, a program One City runs that provides people convicted of sexual offences with a support group to work through challenges in their lives and help them make better decisions. (COSA, first developed in Hamilton in the 1990s, is now operated around the world.)

To explain why the program works, Harvey quoted psychologist and author Marshall Rosenberg, who asserted that “violence is a tragic expression of unmet needs.” Harvey said people need to be given space to explore what human needs they were trying to meet through their acts of violence.

“When you begin to help someone journey towards not finding an excuse for what they did, but finding the real reason why they did what they did, and to find alternative ways of meeting that need, that’s true accountability that leads to change,” Harvey said.

“Let’s keep the violent people in custody,” police chief says

In an interview with Currents, Peterborough Police Chief Stuart Betts said he supports Bill C-48.

“When we have people who are committing criminal offences with firearms, with knives… those are the people that I want to see off my streets, quite frankly,” he said.

He said it’s “admirable” to focus on rehabilitating people who commit violent crimes as a long-term goal. “But in the meantime, they can wreak havoc and destroy lives in the short term.”

“For those who are in custody for the property-related offences, there might be a way to more appropriately handle and deal with those folks, and get them the services to get them back on track,” he said. “[But] let’s keep the violent people in custody.”

Amid the debate over bail reform, the Ontario government announced $112 million last spring to “strengthen” the province’s bail system. Much of that money will go toward helping police monitor people on bail to make sure they follow their release conditions. Betts said the Peterborough Police Service is applying for some of that money to acquire technology to track people on bail.

Conservative MP Michelle Ferreri was not available for an interview, but her office sent a response to Currents’ questions by email on her behalf.

The statement from Ferreri, who represents Peterborough-Kawartha, said the Liberals’ bail reforms don’t go far enough and “will continue to allow repeat, violent offenders to access easy bail.”

Ferreri said Canada is seeing a “massive crime wave” that is the result of previous changes the Liberals’ made to bail. “The Trudeau government needs to fix the problem that they created when they loosened Canada’s bail laws, and this bill does not do that.”

The federal Liberals previously updated bail provisions in the Criminal Code in 2019. That legislation called for restraint when setting bail conditions, following a 2017 Supreme Court decision that said detainees should be released “at the earliest reasonable opportunity and on the least onerous grounds.”

Ferreri also dismissed concerns that holding more people in pre-trial detention could worsen social problems that contribute to crime.

“Ultimately the point is not about having more people in pre-trial detention, it’s about getting people who pose a risk to public safety to be in pre-trial detention, which too often they are not,” the statement said.

Ferreri said that a tougher bail system would allow bail supervision programs to “focus their resources on bailees who don’t pose a risk to public safety, rather than stretching resources to surveil repeat violent offenders who go in and out of the revolving door justice system.”

The House of Commons passed Bill C-48 last week and it is now being studied by the Senate legal committee.

Senators pushed Justice Minister Arif Virani this week for evidence that the legislation will produce the desired result of reducing violent crime, according to the Canadian Press.

Virani said he is “confident” the bill will have an impact, but said the government currently does not have the necessary data to track what that impact will be.

The Canadian Press also reported that groups representing Indigenous and Black lawyers told Senators the proposed bail reforms could result in more Indigenous and Black people being held behind bars. A justice department official told the committee the government lacks race-based data on what demographics could be affected by stricter bail measures.