After an election that saw the Conservative campaign strongly on crime While the Liberal Promised strict measures for offenses such as violent car flights, the new minority liberal government has a stack of new crime policies to be implemented.
Lisa Kerr, an associate professor at Queen’s University Law School, said that the proposals are “all, in general, in the sense of being more difficult to crimem, but in a way that is addressed to more serious delinquents”.
She said they “would probably still preserve the discretionary power for prosecutors and crown judges to respond appropriately to individual affairs”.
Proposals include stricter directives on the surety and determination of the sentence for certain crimes, and the creation of new criminal offenses involving intimidation in schools and places of worship, as well as online sexploitation.
Justin Piché, professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa, said that the moment reminded him of the moment when Bill Clinton became president of the United States and proposed laws to increase the use of police and prisons and impose stronger sentences.
“I don’t necessarily think it is because he believed in them. I think it is because he did not want to get rid of the right on these questions and lose power and the ability to govern more widely,” he said.
He said that the Liberals did not want crime “to be a problem for them, and it is clear in the kind of politicians that they promote”.
Conservative chief Pierre Hairy has spent a large part of the recent federal elections to campaign against what he nicknamed the “Hug-A-Thoug” criminal justice policies of the previous liberal government. He promised to counter these policies with measures such as compulsory perpetuity sentences for several offenses.
When the experts said that a number of these policies would be unconstitutional, Hairylevre said that he would be willing to use the notwithstanding clause to make them.
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The Liberals presented their own list of crime policies, including a promise to “move aggressively” to implement more strict laws on bailing for a certain number of offenses.
They have undertaken to make the surety more difficult to obtain for people accused of theft of cars involving violence or those carried out for a criminal organization, and for invasions at home and certain offenses of milking and smuggling.
Kerr said that the decision to establish a reverse for the liberation on bond for these crimes – which makes the burden of the prosecutor emit the accused’s proof – is “probably a response to a part of the rhetoric animated around the deposit which was part of the federal elections”.
But she said that those who make decisions before the surety court “are already attentive to public security in these cases, and we have seen rates in constant expansion of pre -trial detention in a province like Ontario for decades.”
Michael Spratt, a criminal defense lawyer based in Ottawa, said that people with previous archives who were on deposit during their arrest and those who used weapons to commit crimes, “already face a difficult battle” to obtain a deposit.
“Promising to repress or treating these cases seriously ignore the fact that our courts are already doing,” he said.
He gave the example of a liberal electoral promise to demand that the courts prohibit individuals from having firearms or weapons if they are accused of violent offense or an offense involving a criminal organization. Spratt said it was already something that happens.
Spratt said that the Liberals gave “a few lead nods” to difficult crime approaches but described some of these measures as “largely performative”.
He argued that these promises are “much less detrimental to our democratic institutions than the hammer that the Conservatives and Pierre Hairy wanted to use to obtain crime permanently as an undervaluant and the protection projection of the charter.”
The Liberal Party platform has also promised guidelines for determining the stricter sentence for repeated car thieves and violent and organized crimes. They promised to allow a consecutive conviction for certain cases of car flight and for serious and violent offenses.
Liberals also walked to make it a criminal offense to intentionally obstruct access to places of worship, schools and community centers, or to intimidate or threaten individuals in these places.
This is a problem that the Conservatives have used to attack the Liberals on several occasions. The liberals were accused by certain Jewish organizations not to do enough to protect the Jewish communities from acts of violence and hatred.
Carney has also promised to distribute non -consensual sexual depths a criminal offense and to introduce a bill to protect children from sexploitation and online extortion.
Kerr said that the proposal on Deepfakes is “just a reasonable response to the evolution of technology”.
Spratt called this an example of “positive reform of criminal justice which is really necessary to follow modern times”.
The measures will be in the hands of the new Minister of Justice Sean Fraser. It is not clear which of promised policies will be the government priorities – Carney has published a single mandate letter for all its ministers and it does not mention justice policies.
Carney made a sign of the importance of crime problems to his government by appointing Ruby Sahuta to the new post of Secretary of State for fighting crime.
Spratt rejected the move, using the “Eyewash” baseball term.
“It is the performative act of making your uniform dirty to give the impression that you are trying very hard,” he said.
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