Prime Minister Mark Carney visits an RCMP detachment in Etobicoke, Ont., on Thursday, where he announced that the government will table legislation next week to change the bail system.Laura Proctor/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney had no trouble saying he was breaking with Justin Trudeau’s crime policy. It was very much the message he wanted to send.
Politicians sometimes seem sheepish about admitting they are turning their back on their own party’s policy. But Mr. Carney has done it, very deliberately, many times.
When a reporter asked at a news conference Thursday if he was breaking with Mr. Trudeau’s legacy on crime, he had a longish answer that included saying “yes” repeatedly. The whole point of Thursday’s crime announcement was to underline that the Carney crime policy is not the Trudeau crime policy.
The substance of the announcement was no surprise. Mr. Carney was telling the country that the Liberal government will do what the Liberal Leader promised six months ago in the election campaign.
Mr. Carney said that bail reform legislation will be tabled next week, but not the more restrictive bail reform that several provincial premiers of all political stripes have been asking for. He also repeated the promise to hire 1,000 people for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which really would be a big deal for law-enforcement in this country, if and when those people actually get hired.
If there was any surprise, it was that the government waited so long to reannounce it.
Mr. Carney’s crime policy was always a political shield for the Liberal Party, shoring up a vulnerability that hurts the Liberal’s voter support in suburban swing ridings in Ontario and B.C.
Ottawa to proceed with promised bail reform legislation next week
Six months after the election campaign, Mr. Carney’s political machine is finally getting around to talking about the same political weakness it had six months ago.
Voters rate the Liberals’ performance on crime as weak. In a recent Abacus poll, the party’s lowest marks for handling issues were in immigration and crime. But perceptions of the Liberals are often tied to Mr. Trudeau’s era. Mr. Carney wants to shake that.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre made bail reform the centre of his crime policy, arguing “catch-and-release” bail policies were responsible for many crimes. Police groups and premiers, including the NDP premiers of British Columbia, joined a chorus calling on Ottawa for change.
Not everyone bought in. Criminal lawyers’ associations note that over 70 per cent of people in provincial jails are awaiting trial, not serving a sentence.
Montreal lawyer Lauren Shadley, vice-chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s criminal justice section, said the system is burdened with hearings for a large group of repeat offenders with untreated mental-health or addiction issues charged with low-level, non-violent offences.
“We do want to have more attention and resources focused on the higher-risk cases but that’s not what’s happening right now, and I don’t think these reforms achieve that,” she said in an interview.
But there’s little doubt the political imperative right now is to send a signal that bail will be restricted.
Toronto Police Association pushes tougher sentences for young offenders
Six weeks ago, Mr. Carney made it sound like he was turning more hawkish on bail reform, telling reporters he agreed with Ontario Premier Doug Ford on these issues.
Mr. Ford has called for automatically denying bail to those charged with a list of serious crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, drug crimes and robbery, among other measures, which would require overriding the Charter of Rights. The bail reform Mr. Carney announced Thursday was not like that.
He announced the government is expanding the list of offences for which a reverse onus is applied for bail, meaning the accused must show they should be granted bail. That’s what was in the Liberal election platform.
It is essentially building on the kind of reforms that were introduced in 2023 legislation and passed as the Liberals attempted to fend off accusations they were soft on crime. That was during Mr. Trudeau’s tenure, but it didn’t do much to change his political fortunes.
Mr. Carney’s bail reform is more or less Trudeau-plus. But without Mr. Trudeau.
Mr. Carney’s crime-fighting superpower is that he is not Justin Trudeau. At least, that’s what he plans to use in the political fight over crime.
No wonder Mr. Carney was willing to say his government had learned lessons from what is happening on the streets, and that it was changing the approach from what had been done in the past – and to imply Mr. Trudeau’s crime policy is dead. That’s what the bail announcement was all about.