Justice Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[Michael Spratt]

I mean, look, one thing we don't do well is talk to people who are victimized and are the victims of crime. I think the wrong way to respond is with statistics. I think it's wrong to say that we've never been safer, and that Individual A over here was released on bail for first-degree murder and then was found not guilty and was innocent. I think that is not a good way to respond. I think it's appropriate to respond with compassion.

I also think it is appropriate, when responding to those individual people and the community as a whole—I say this to all the parliamentarians—to make sure that we don't weaponize the criminal justice system as a political wedge issue, and to make sure that when we're talking about rates of offence, the purposes of the bail system, the risks and trade-offs and the balancing of rights, we do that accurately and not for political reasons. I think that goes a long way to helping people understand.

I know that criminologists have done lots of research. People might feel upset or that the criminal justice system is unjust, especially when looking at particular cases. However, when they are provided with all the information and all the facts and are educated about the principles, a lot of that dissatisfaction goes away.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Thank you.

Ms. Lattanzio, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today and contributing to this valuable study.

My first two questions will be directed to you, Mr. Bytensky.

The “jail, not bail” framing of Bill C-242 may sound very appealing, but it ignores the nuances of the existing bail law that we have today. How do the measures of Bill C-242 risk undermining proportionality and the fundamental purpose of pretrial release decisions?

[Boris Bytensky]

As all three of us have been saying today, our existing laws give us the necessary weapons to assess risk and detain those who pose a risk that is deemed to be too high to the community. That's what our trained and experienced judges and justices of the peace in Ontario and throughout Canada are trained to do.

We want to ensure that the people who deserve to be detained—in other words, those who pose an unmanageable risk—are in fact detained. Imposing artificial standards that won't reduce the risk and won't actually have any meaningful impact on protecting the public but are simply catchy or sound good, such as “jail, not bail”, won't take any steps forward in terms of ensuring that our system gets it right. What we need to do, as all of us have said, is to get rid of the low-hanging fruit, or the things that tie up our courts. Give our courts more time to deal with the serious cases. Rushed decisions are not good decisions. If we give our courts the weapons to deal with the serious cases, they're going to get it right as often as they can—and more often than they get it right right now.

No one is saying that dangerous people shouldn't be detained. We're simply saying that we detain too many others we don't need to detain in our hunt to try to cover off anybody potentially dangerous. We have way too much overreach when we try to do that.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

You've also spoken publicly about proportionality and fairness in sentencing.

How do we maintain those values while we're responding to public safety concerns?

[Boris Bytensky]

Again, if we were to randomly select people from the street to act as judges for any given case, then we might want to have some guidelines that we legislatively set out that these untrained people would have to impose on any particular case, but we go through a rigorous process of selecting the best to be our judges. We have to trust that they will apply the law that's handed down from the Supreme Court of Canada and provincial appellate courts appropriately. It's their job to assess any particular case and apply the proportionate, proper sentence for every individual.

It's an individualized process. When we go for medical treatment, we don't say that every person treated with cancer has to be treated with the exact same drugs in every single case. We individualize the treatment plans based on the person who's getting the treatment, and we should be doing the exact same thing when we're sentencing somebody for a particular crime.

Some people should be sentenced harshly. I accept that for public safety, but we have to give judges the tools to do the right thing in every case.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you.

My next two questions will be directed to you, Ms. Myers.

In your research on bail and pretrial detention, what evidence have you seen of data-driven approaches that can approve the outcomes without compromising public safety?

[Nicole Myers]

Thank you.

One of the most important things we can look at is thinking about the ways we can support people in the community. What we want to be doing is thinking about, when folks are coming out, how we can best support them. What is it that they need to be able to continue to come back to court as required and to comply with all of the conditions?

These are some of the things that were already spoken about by Michael Spratt's talking about bail verification and supervision programs or bail beds. These are the kinds of opportunities that can provide the support that folks might ultimately need.

The other critical thing that we really need to be doing is system minimization, finding alternative ways of holding people accountable for relatively minor things. It's not to say that we don't do anything, but to the extent that we can keep them out of bail court so we can really focus our time and resources on those things that are most risky or most dangerous will allow us to not only move people through the process in a timely manner but reserve detention for those for whom it is absolutely required.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

You've written about the importance of proportionality in bail decisions.

What safeguards would best ensure that the principle is maintained in real-life practice?

[Nicole Myers]

That's a really good question. It might be a little beyond my legal expertise.

One would be making sure that we maintain the essential principles of our bail system and keep those at the forefront of mind and not let rhetoric get involved in making these very difficult decisions.

Some things we may want to think about are what might be some of the hurdles or barriers we want to have in place before we admit someone to custody. If we're thinking about proportionality in the context of sentencing, where there's supposed to be some equation between the harm and moral blameworthiness in the sentence, at bail perhaps we ask, “If this individual were to be convicted, would they even get a custodial sentence?” We're holding a lot of people in custody, and they are very unlikely to receive a custodial sentence at all.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Spratt, you've said in past committee appearances that reactionary bail measures risk creating longer delays and a less efficient justice system. You've said that again today.

Do you believe that Bill C-242 would exacerbate those pressures and further overwhelm provincial court resources?

[Michael Spratt]

It's not just provincial court resources but the superior court. The idea that we have more bail hearings in the superior court is only going to tax a system that is already at its breaking point, a civil system that is falling apart under delay and a criminal system—we've heard about this for the last number of years—where serious cases are at risk of being thrown out of court because of a lack of judicial resources.

Part of the problem with bills like that, despite catchy slogans, is that they don't look at the cost. When you detain more people in these conditions—inhumane, terrible conditions—there's a cost to that. One of the benefits might be that you prevent one person from reoffending, but when you detain thousands to do that, there is a downstream cost. That cost is steep given the conditions, given the resources and given the other drawbacks that we've all spoken about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Spratt.

Your time is up, Ms. Lattanzio.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Mr. Fortin, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the three witnesses for being here.

I will speak in French. I understand that this may pose an additional challenge.

Let us talk about rehabilitation and how to solve the problem.

I support the presumption of innocence. I think that the justice system, which aims to allow people to be free as long as they are not convicted, is good. I also agree with the idea that when the accused pose a risk to public safety, this must be taken into account.

In fact, the risk to public safety involves three conditions: the risk to public health, the risk of the accused not appearing at the next hearing date and the risk of bringing the administration of justice into disrepute. These are three problematic and troubling situations.

There is also the right of victims. My Conservative colleagues have often spoken about this, and rightly so. Not only must the public be protected, but the fears of victims and of society as a whole must also be taken into consideration. When a victim fears the release of their abuser, that victim is not the only one who is afraid. Many people close to the victim are afraid as well. Society as a whole is at risk.

How should the right of the accused to be free until found guilty be reconciled with the right of society and victims to be protected from harms that may seem foreseeable?

There have been recent cases, including one in my riding. A man was found guilty of breaching his release conditions 16 times. While he was still at large, he killed his ex-partner.

I am sure that all three of you would agree that this makes no sense. However, we do not know whether it is possible to protect ourselves against such a situation. My question is a long one, and I apologize for that.

What is the solution? How can we ensure that the justice system does not infringe on the rights and freedoms of the accused, on the one hand, and protects victims and society in general, on the other?

I would ask Mr. Bytensky to answer first, and then Mr. Spratt and Dr. Myers.

[Boris Bytensky]

If we're going to look at one case at a time, it's easy to do a retrospective analysis and say we got something wrong. We have to look at things in a system as a whole.

We're not good at predicting future dangerousness. When someone is arrested and they have a long history of violent offending, we can be pretty confident that they are a significant risk and that person will usually be detained. However, we don't know how to predict very well whether somebody arrested on a minor property offence and released will then go out and kill their spouse. The only way to avoid that, in retrospect, is to jail everybody, which I've already said we can't do.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I agree.

I am sorry to interrupt, but we really are running out of time.

We do not want to jail everybody. You say that we should look at things as a whole, not at specific cases.

Unfortunately, it is the specific cases that are a problem. I have confidence in our justice system, in the judges' judgment and in common sense. I would say that 99% of judges, if not all, have good judgment.

As legislators, how can we prevent specific cases, which you do not think we should talk about, but which do concern us, from spoiling it for everyone?

[Boris Bytensky]

We have to accept that an imperfect system is a functional system. If 99% of people—I'm using that number intentionally; it's not the number—comply with their bail but one person commits a horrible crime, the system has worked; it has not failed. We cannot achieve 100%, and if we aim to do that and think we've failed otherwise, the system will not be seen by the public as working. Respectfully, we have to accept that there is an unquantifiable degree of risk that we cannot capture in any possible way. The test is a “substantial likelihood of reoffending”, and we do a pretty good job of putting those people behind bars.

I have one final thought about your domestic violence case. There are thousands of individuals charged with domestic violence offences every day who do not kill their spouses before their trial, and they are rightly released on bail—but some of them will. Unfortunately, we can't identify those ones in advance very well. The solution isn't to jail everybody, because that will result in more violence and more harm to victims in the big picture, long term.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Bytensky.

Mr. Spratt, I will ask you the same question.

[Michael Spratt]

As a criminal defence lawyer, I think we are in a good position to talk about this. We don't just represent accused people. A large part of my practice is representing victims of crime as well. One of the things I hear most often from those people is that they want to make sure that when someone is released, there are conditions imposed that allow them to feel safe in the community.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

What happens if they do not comply with the conditions?

[Michael Spratt]

Yes. As Mr. Bytensky said, the only solution to that is to detain everyone. This is cold comfort to someone who has been affected by crime, but as legislators who look not just at specific cases but at everything, I would commend you to look more broadly, because the answer—the cold answer—is showing sympathy for that crime but saying that if we detained everyone, it would be even worse.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Miller]

Your time is up, Mr. Fortin. You may have an opportunity to ask more questions later.

We will now begin the second round of questions.

Mr. Baber, you have the floor for five minutes.