Justice Committee on Sept. 25th, 2025

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

In the development of it, were you consulted for the effect it would have on your members and your members' willingness to participate in it?

[Brian Sauvé]

We were not, no.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Stamatakis, I would ask you the same question: Were you consulted in the development of the buyback by Minister Anandasangaree?

[Tom Stamatakis]

We provided feedback when that program was first developed. That was before the current minister—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

There's a point of order from Mr. Chang.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

It's on relevance. I don't think the question is relevant to the study.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Chair, I would say that the firearms policy in this country—when all witnesses have spoken about the expanse of gun crime—and the priorities of this government in dealing with it, are highly relevant. I actually think it's quite short-sighted for the member to suggest that going after legal gun owners is not relevant to a study on crime and bail and repeat offenders when firearms have been mentioned by our witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

It's a stretch, but keep it a little tighter, Mr. Lawton. I understand where you're going, but let's afford the witnesses the opportunity to answer, and perhaps stick closer to the theme of the study.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I will. My Liberal colleague actually raises an important point here, which is that law-abiding gun owners have nothing to do with crime.

I'll ask you this, Mr. Campbell, because you have spoken about it in the past: Do you believe law-abiding firearms owners in Toronto are a public safety risk?

[Clayton Campbell]

No, and we've talked about this before. The gun buyback program is going to have zero impact on the crime we're seeing in the city of Toronto, period. Quite frankly, I don't know if there's any plan in place, but if there were some sort of plan to try and obtain these firearms, I'm not sure who's going to do it or with what resources. If you want to help public safety in the city of Toronto, I can think of a hundred different ways we could do it.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Mr. Stamatakis, I'll put the question to you as well, because we have heard repeatedly, when speaking to police officers and police chiefs, that they do not have the resources to keep up with existing criminality on the street. Police lack the resources to check on bail conditions. I'm wondering if you can speak to that, first and foremost. How are police forces with scarce resources dealing with the amount of time it takes just to check up on people on bail?

[Tom Stamatakis]

They're not. We don't have the resources and we don't have the capacity to target repeat violent offenders who are released on bail to the extent that we should. You have to prioritize based on how prolific the violent offender is and what resources you have available.

Back to the buyback program, I agree with my colleague. There are a lot of resource challenges, and there are things we could be using those funds for that would be more effective than a buyback program that, to be blunt about it, police services in Canada don't have the capacity to try and manage.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Mr. Sauvé, do RCMP members want anything to do with having to go around collecting firearms from law-abiding gun owners?

[Brian Sauvé]

I haven't spoken to RCMP members about collecting firearms. We are on record as saying, back when Bill C-21 was tabled, that the appropriate use of resources to have an impact on crime in Canada is to target illegal firearms trafficking coming up from the States. If any government were to take any resources and put them into greater border enforcement or guns and gangs units with municipal or provincial police services, you would see a marked impact on gun crime in Canada.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Sauvé, you said earlier that the federal government can provide leadership. Do you see that leadership from this federal Liberal government on these bail issues?

[Brian Sauvé]

Well, we're sitting here, and I think this is a great thing. I've heard there are numerous pieces of legislation coming forward that are going to touch on different aspects of law enforcement, immigration, border security, bail—all of those things. That encourages me, and it should encourage Canadians that these difficult discussions that Canadians have been asking for are actually happening.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I'll put a question to you, Mr. Campbell.

There was a situation in St. Thomas, Ontario, where a homeless man and a repeat offender was released on bail with a curfew. He had a condition where he had to be in his home by 10 p.m. Is that something that's happened in Toronto—an unenforceable bail condition?

[Clayton Campbell]

I'll agree with Tom that there is not the capacity to look at these people out on bail and actually try to enforce. The province of Ontario has a recommendation to look at. It's an app. There are a lot of young police officers. It's essentially like MLS if you're looking for real estate, but for bad guys out on bail. it's something that's in the province of Ontario. Talking about information sharing, that is something that could be implemented Canada-wide that could help us if we had the capacity to actually track these bad guys.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Have you encountered bail conditions that are unenforceable?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Mr. Lawton, your time is up.

It's over to Mr. Housefather for five minutes.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, one of the things I hear most often from frontline officers who have to go to bail court is a frustration with the number of times there's a consent release, which I believe is where the Crown essentially agrees to a release plan without being heard before a judge.

Would you consider it to be an issue that there are too many consent releases? If so, yes, I know more resources is one of the remedies, but can you tell me what you think about that and whether that's something we should be looking at?

[Clayton Campbell]

I can speak for Toronto. Absolutely, our members don't have the time or resources to go to all these bail hearings and actually advocate sometimes to keep people in custody. If we had the resources to do that, they would 100% be there and be providing more information to the Crown to hopefully help them make the right decisions to oppose bail.

[Tom Stamatakis]

Ironically, the requirement to have police officers participate in bail hearings was essentially a result of downloading, because of resource challenges with the Crown. It was downloaded to the police, who don't have the capacity to begin with. This should 100% be an area of focus.

I think we've all alluded to it at different times. We need better information available to the decision-makers when it comes to bail release or any other type of release regime, so that they're making informed decisions.

One source of good information is the police, who are interacting with these violent repeat offenders every day, often multiple times a day. Also, there has to be a mechanism whereby we can include victims in this conversation, particularly for violent repeat offenders. What they're doing in our communities.... It's not just Toronto. It's not just the big cities across Canada anymore. It's the big cities, the towns and the villages from north to south and east to west, right across the country. Their violence is having a significant impact on Canadians.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Sauvé, do you have anything on that?

[Brian Sauvé]

I don't think I have anything I can add. These two guys covered it off pretty well.