The Ben Mulroney Show - Bail reform. FINALLY. The people fighting it and the people who fought for it.

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

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Conditions apply. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It is Friday, October 17th. Some very big news coming out of our prime minister and our government. Mark Carney announced some changes to the bail system in this country. A lot of things to like about these proposals. The big headlines are the reverse onus bail. so an accused must prove why they should be released.

Consecutive sentencing allowing for multiple convictions, which absolutely should happen. If you murder three people, you should be in jail three times as long as if you murder one. Conditional sentences serving time in the community are restricted to certain sexual offenses, and new penalties are introduced for organized retail theft. So that's the high-level stuff.

A lot to be happy with. When this comes to pass, it will be a better system than what we had before. But if you listen to the people who are in charge of enforcing our laws and interfacing with people who will find themselves in the criminal justice system, you talk to the cops themselves, they're saying not enough and the devil is in the detail. So, of course, we're going to have to wait to see the entire document, the entire bill. but I do not want to rain on the parade. This is a net positive for the country, as far as I can tell. Let's listen to our prime minister about what he's proposing. We're strengthening the criminal code to get tough on bail and sentencing,

keeping violent criminals and repeat offenders off our streets and out of our communities. And second, we are investing in front. frontline law enforcement hiring 1,000 new RCMP personnel to keep our country and communities safe. Yeah, I mean, that's a net positive. You can't deny it. Having more members of the RCMP is a good thing. And a thousand? I don't know how many.

Can you look that up? Tell me how many members of the RCMP there are. A thousand versus how many are actually. Yeah, we'll look that up and we'll let you know. And look, I'm not the only one who's happy that this is coming to pass. Let's listen to the Mayor of Guelph, who was on with Greg Brady on Toronto today just a little bit earlier this morning. Oh, my goodness gracious. This is way too long and coming.

I mean, honestly. And so if they do the legislative work that needs to be done and do it fast because it should have been done years ago, I think a lot of people will be very happy about that. Frankly, I do not care what party brings in this necessary bail reform and other reforms that we need to actually hold criminals to account. But, you know, our communities have been really, really devastated by some of these changes over the last 10 years. And it really, the pendulum has swung way too far in favor of the criminals. You can hear the relief in his voice. He believes that better days for his community are just around the corner.

And yet, we have to take a moment to appreciate that things on this front are going to improve. Are they going to improve as much as some of us want? No. But that's sort of how things go. Things happen incrementally. And Mark Carney, by the way, from what I'm learning about him, is he is, he has, He has a method, right? He doesn't do all at once.

He doesn't try to boil the ocean. And I have to assume, as a pragmatist, he thinks this is the first, I'm sure this is the first step for him, hopefully not the last. All right, RCMP, there are about 30,000 total members of which just over 19,000 are police officers. So if they're hiring a thousand new police officers, then that'll bring it up to 20,000 RCMP officers. That's a big number.

It is a big number. It's a big number. And you have to hope that we'll make a big difference. But as we've heard from police officers and associations, it doesn't matter how many of them there are. We need the laws to be able to, you know, for bail reform, for all the different reform acts and border security. That's stuff that has to be in place for them to do their job effectively. So I think it's important to ask ourselves,

how did we get here in the first place? I mean, we've been living in what a lot of us feel is the upside down for so many years. How did we get there? Who was advising the government to make the changes that put us in the position where we have all felt like criminals have more rights than victims? And criminals have more rights than everyday citizens. And, well, some of them are the people who are advising the government under Justin Trudeau, they are coming back trying to warn against these changes. Here is some audio of a member of Parliament, Andrew Lawton,

with the Conservatives asking sociology professor Nicole Myers about bail. You mentioned that the bail system is the harshest it's ever been. Those were your words. Do you think bail should be made easier to access after the culmination of our research here? I think it absolutely needs to be more readily available for a lot of people in custody. I think we can acknowledge that there are some people who are perhaps too risky or the allegations are too serious. We want to focus our attention on those, not an automatic decision to detain, but to be able to focus on those. We need to be released more available for all kinds of others who are there for more minor reasons.

You talked about in your career as an academic, quote, interviewing justice officials and accused individuals. Yes. You didn't mention victims, victims of crime. Have you interviewed them as part of your research? No, I studied the criminal justice system, not rather than what happens with victims. Do you think that the experiences of victims should have any bearing on how offenders are treated by the justice system? Absolutely. The victims are critically important in all of this.

But nonetheless, we need to remember the very important constitutional rights that we have and that those must absolutely be protected. So we need more. We need more bail. We need more. Yeah, that's what you said. Not less. We shouldn't be circumscribing the rights of the accused and in some cases accused of heinous crime. So we should be doing less.

And this sociologist, who I'm sure is a fine person, I'm sure is a wonderful person in her research, never explored the effects of this on victims. Never spoke to victims. Okay. All right. Meanwhile, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which does great work and really does stand up for our civil liberties. they say they want numbers. They oppose bail reform. Here is a quote from the director of the criminal justice program.

He says, there is no evidence that bail causes crime. Yeah, that's, okay, bail doesn't cause crime. No evidence that bail causes crime. That's like the argument, bike lanes don't cause traffic. Sure, the bike lane itself doesn't cause traffic and the bail doesn't cause the crime. but it's the impact of the bail. The fact that the bail allows a repeat offender to be out on the street instead of in jail where they can repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat time and time again.

Where was that information you had about the? The one person in Colonna. Yeah, over the course of 2024. You're going to love this. Colonna BC found that 1,335 police files were caused by just 15 people. over 1,300 police files caused by 15 people. On average, each of the 15 was getting the police called on them once every four days. And one man violated his bail conditions 31 times.

And this story is repeated in pretty much every city in the country. So when you say bail doesn't cause crime, you're right. the actual thing, the bail, doesn't cause crime. But giving bail to one of these guys allowed him to violate those conditions 31 times and commit other acts that run afoul of the law. So what does the CCLA want? They want to, they think judicial discretion is the key. Yes.

And how effective has that been, Ben? How many stories have we done on this? Lawmaking, absent evidence can't help but be bad law. and taking away judicial discretion and sentencing is the wrong move. If someone shows excellent prospects of rehabilitation or has already addressed the issues that brought them into the court, judges should have the ability to impose an individualized fair and proportionate sentence. But we're seeing what's going on with a judicial discretion.

I pointed it out in the last segment. You're seeing judges making decisions about sentencing based on what they feel are systemic inequality. And therefore, we've got to give a lesser sentence to someone who had a harder life. Let's take a look at the roads with 640 Toronto, big trouble traffic. All right. Well, our prime minister has signaled that his government is going to be taking a different position on bail and criminal justice than his predecessor. and it looks like they are going to be rolling out a bill in the House of Commons, what is it, next week, that is going to make some significant changes to our bail system. And rather than dive in myself, let's bring in our guest whose opinion I definitely want to get on this, Andrew Tumman's Durham Regional Police Association President.

Andrew, thank you for your service and thank you for being here. Thanks for having me again, then. All right. So let's go through the key points that have that we know so far, right? The reverse onus bail on major crimes, meaning that the accused has to prove to the court why they can be trusted to be released, not the other way around. I have to assume that police writ large will be happy with this. Yes, we definitely will, back. First off, I wanted to say that we welcome any effort. to strengthen Canada's bail system because it's long overdue. Our members are tired to seeing violent repeat offenders released back into the community

only to reaffend days later. The federal's government's announcement is a step in the right direction, but the test will be on how it's implemented. Okay. Because the principle of restraint is still there. Tell me what that means. So the principle of restraint is the idea that release should always be the starting point is a major problem in this system.

Because we have gone to where restraint is an approach to put ideology ahead of safety and is failing. And are you saying that so far of what we know about this bill, that is still going to be in place? To my knowledge, yes, it's still going to be in place. The PC government that tried you implement their act through the House a couple weeks ago and was turned down was to get rid of principle of restraint. Yeah, the, the Conservatives put forth their bill, I think it was Bill C-242 or 262 called the Jail-Not Bail Act, and it was voted down.

But the liberals did commit at that one. They said the Tories will be happy with what we put in the window. And look, I'm just going to guess that you and your membership and police around the country would say to what we've heard from Mark Carney thus far. all of this is good. All of these changes are what we need, but we do need you to go even further. And that's correct.

Because as we know, implementation is always the biggest challenge. It's too often good policy intentions are lost in the courtroom. We're concerned about uneven applications across jurisdictions and the lack of accountability for bail breaches. What we're hearing,

I'm happy that they're moving in their direction. But until we actually see it and see how it's working, that's going to be the big problem moving forward. Now, police in this country, police associations have not been afraid to voice their concerns over safety in our streets and the laws that govern, sort of how we interact with each other and those laws and the impact that they have on the ability of your membership to police. and so I assume that you guys are going to what you're going to get your hands on this bill you're going to read it and then you're going to put out your own perspective and opinion for sure I know that Clayton from Toronto's already been vocal about his opinion on it the PAO is aware of all the concerns of all the presidents and once it's made public and we read it all that will be the deciding factor of how we move forward

the PAO is our voice for us provincially and I'm sure Mark Baxter is just waiting to see what is the actual wording so that we can see whether they've gone far enough. Have you been surprised that, I mean, surprised me that it took them this long to get to this. The fact that there was a gun buyback program that was put into effect before dealing with bail reform really perplexed me because crime isn't a left-right issue. It's a right and wrong issue.

And I was so surprised that this came after a gun buyback program that they, didn't get elected on that nobody asked for. Surprise not being the right term. I think disappointed is more of a better term. The gun buyback problem, you've seen that even the chiefs and other associations have been very vocal throughout this that the gun buy back program

is not going to solve the problem of crime. We have been vocal about that. We've been vocal about bail reform. And yes, we are finally getting something. But I am disappointed on how long it took us to get here when this was the number one priority of associations and chiefs. And they've said that the gun buyback program is a failed system. So why keep pushing that and take your time with ones that we can tell you as the experts, what will help us? Well, I heard that you were telling my producer before we came to air that one of your biggest concerns about

this bill is or about the the criminal code moving forward is the the notion of judicial discretion uh tell tell me what you meant by that well you know we're not against the idea of judicial discretion like you have to use common sense common sense has to be used but when it's so different between regions between uh even judges don't have the same guidelines then that's when it starts to get into the weeds of what would get you convicted somewhere or help for bail somewhere may not necessarily be the same thing that would get you held for bail somewhere else. Because we don't need restraint.

We need responsibility because the first duty of the justice system is to keep people safe. And right now, do we think they're doing that? I'm not sure that it is. And also something that seems to have popped up at least on sort of my radar over the past few months. It certainly wasn't part of the conversation that I remember prior to the election, but it's a story has been popping up in the press about how depending on what your cultural background is, you are going to receive a different sentence. Even if you, like, if I commit a crime and somebody from a different cultural background commits the exact same crime, we'll probably get different sentences because of systemic racism, I think, or something like that. That, to me, flies in the face of the notion of equality before the law. Like I said earlier, it's an approach that puts ideology ahead of safety, and it's failing our community.

Restrain has gone from being a safeguard to being a loophole, and our officers in our communities are paying the price for that. Yeah. And, of course, we haven't heard word one about any changes coming to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which has to get dealt with at some point. because the criminal element has found a way to weaponize it, and it is not doing what it was intended to do. 100%. There was an article just recently of a, for lack of a better term,

a gang in Hamilton that is made up of 9 to 11-year-olds who are committing violent-type crimes. Sorry, I've got to get you to repeat that. You're telling me that there is a gang operating somewhere in Canada that has a membership that starts at nine years old? Nine to 11-year-olds committing crimes and there's really nothing that the police can do on it because they fall under the age

where we can't criminally charge them. Yeah, and we actually predicted that. We said, you know, at some point this is going to happen. They are going to, the criminals are going to get their hands on kids that don't even fall into the Youth Criminal Justice Act. And what do we do then? What do we do then? What would you suggest the government do on this, on the Youth Criminal Justice Act?

The same, I would say the same thing that we said about the bail. You need to re-look at it, but you can't do it from the lens of all the community support groups having the say in it without the police being involved in it. And the police being the chiefs and the association, because a lot of times, as you're aware, Ben, there's a lot of different views between what the membership think, and they're the ones out there on the road and what commands sometimes think. Well, I'm listening to you, and I'm listening to the tone in your voice. And it, I mean, am I wrong to think that after this, this bill becomes a law, you're under the impression that not a whole lot is going to change materially for the work that your membership has to do? Well, it's, I'm based on not ban on what I've seen in the past. And I'm very hopeful, like I said, any change is good change.

hopefully they're going to make it stronger. We really don't know until we see it. So I don't want to talk completely at a turn. But we are sometimes that voice that doesn't get heard. My membership are the ones that are dealing with it. Andrew, we're going to have to leave it there. Andrew Tumman's Durham Regional Police Association President. Really appreciate your voice in this conversation.

No problem. Thanks for your time, Ben. This podcast is sponsored by Better Help. If you've been following the news, like really following it, you know how exhausting it can be. Politics, conflict, uncertainty. It's a lot to carry. And for many men, there's this expectation to stay calm, stay in control, and not talk about how it's affecting you. But the truth is, you're allowed to feel overwhelmed.

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Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be reviewed. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrini show. Thanks so much for sticking with us. We're continuing our conversation on bail reform being brought forth by the liberal government in Ottawa. A lot to be hopeful about. A lot to hope for to see more of in the future. And I'm so glad to be joined now by a really important voice in all of this. Sondren Fenerata. He's made a name for himself as a watchdog online. line with his social media presence, life with Sonderen. Sondren, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me again, back. All right. So to give me your assessment of what we know so far.

And right now, we don't have the details, right? We've got what the prime minister has said. And so we've got some high-level information. Exactly right. We still need some details. But look, number one, I'm glad that we're finally making some movements towards a positive direction. But again, I think some of the details, like the biggest one you mentioned previously is the

fact that, yes, they're giving some of this now onus on reverse onus conditions as an example. They're going to be doing that harsher sentencing on these major crimes that they're calling, etc. But much of it still relies on the judgment of the judges. Right now, Bill C75 still suggests to them and says that they should be looking for opportunities to release them in the least onerous condition. So we need to figure out if this bill is somehow going to supersede Bill C75, what they're going to be doing about that. I hope we get those details in next week. But there are still missing pieces that I believe are very important to protect Canadians that are not even part of this proposed package. Lay them out for me.

So number one, we hear time and time again from the Toronto Police Association from various mayors, many of the crimes that are happening today, whether that's home invasions, armed car robberies, violent crimes are happening by our youth. The criminals that are working and organized crime are leveraging our youth against us. So we need reform around our youth justice. Act, number one. Secondly, none of the proposed package here does anything around stand your ground laws. And again, Canadians are put in a position today. If somebody breaks into your home, Ben, it's on you. The onus is on you to determine the level of threats of somebody coming in. And we know, Ben, it takes a matter of seconds to make a decision to protect your family

and not. It should not be, the owner should not be on you to determine if this person has a knife, if you should engage in a fight with them, or if they have a weapon or a gun. That is unbelievable that we still have that in Canada today. We need to make sure that we protect Canadians and their families in a time of need where they have no one else to rely on. Many of these home invasions happen, one, two, three minutes. Yeah. Police are not coming in that time.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's talk about, because a lot of people don't really get judicial discretion, what that means. I've got an example for our listeners, for our viewers. This is an example of judicial discretion that, probably needs to be re-evaluated. So there was a Toronto man who was accused of firing shots

at a downtown London cannabis shop and a justice of the peace ordered this man to be released on bail following a hearing when he pledged to pay one cent if he violated any of his release conditions. Sondren, we don't even use pennies anymore

in this country. We haven't for years. This guy was ordered to pay a penny if he broke the rules. The stakes are non-existent. That is insane on its face. It's irresponsible on its face. It's completely irresponsible, Ben. And honestly, I see this time and time again from our judges.

And again, they're following what this current government has mandated on lease owner's conditions. But to me, again, this is a matter of public safety. We need to change these laws in order to make sure that these people are off. This is silly. And by the way, Ben, many criminals. reached out to me. I did interviews with them. They made a quarter million dollars in cash doing these home invasions for these car thefts.

They were laughing with me. They were laughing because of how easy it was. That's the state that we're in. When it comes to the laws that we have today, the Youth Justice Act allowing this and organized crime, organized crime is very smart. They're taking advantage of the system. Now, listen, you and I sit here and we talk,

and you and I are going to basically agree on most of this stuff, what the problems are and what the solutions need to be. However, there are very smart, very influential thought leaders in this country who found themselves, for example, on Parliament Hill. You saw the sociologist talking with Andrew Lawton saying that we need more bail. You've got the Canadian Civil Liberties Association saying bail doesn't cause crime. And I appreciate their point and the word smithing of it all that bail probably in and of itself doesn't cause crime. but the fact that you give it to people causes crime. So we're still locked in a battle over sort of the future of where we go next.

Ben, there was a, I believe it was 163 people that were responsible for almost 10,000 crimes in British Columbia. If you look around the world, my sister just came back from Dubai. Now, I'm not saying those other countries have everything buttoned down perfectly, but there was no sense of crime. there because they have strict punishments around these crimes. Honestly, it's fairly simple. I have a two and a half year old daughter. I make it very clear.

If you do something bad, a bad thing will happen, and it doesn't happen. Yeah. It's really simple. Well, this entire idea of releasing the accused under the least onerous conditions possible, to me, takes away a big element of deterrence of the system, right? Like if you're told by a justice of the piece, okay, so you used a gun and you shot up a cannabis shot. Okay, so here are your conditions of bail. And if you break those rules, you owe us a penny. This is, someone is going to hear that and say, okay, I am going

to take a risk and I'm going to do something very similar because I know I'll be out that day at the cost of a penny. Sure. It is that simple. And here's the thing. I understand. Crime is happening as a multifaceted issue, by the way. And we are in an unfortunate position today. We talked about this. Our economy is not doing as well, especially versus our G7 counterparts. We have a lot of issues with unemployment in this country, not enough jobs. We brought in a lot of immigration without necessarily the infrastructure, the housing support them. All of this percolates where a percentage of people will start taking that risk to reward profiles of committing these crimes to survive. It doesn't make it acceptable, but that is what's happening. You know, Ben, I find this

so funny, I just renewed my passport. I go up there, there's a zero tolerance sign, cannot raise your voice cannot yell no, zero tolerance. Why do we not have zero tolerance for these crimes? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me. I laugh when I see those signs. We have zero tolerance for raising our voices in, you know, these service Canada, but we can tolerate these crimes that are happening in our communities that are endangering our families and children. That's the mind-boggling part to me personally. Well, Sondren, as much as we are sort of picking at the, at what this, these changes don't provide, they do provide some changes, which which are a net positive, right?

So would your recommendation to the conservative party be to vote for this? I think we should be, this is a good positive move. I don't want to take away from that. I'm happy to see that, you know, even, again, I didn't want to make this part of them. This is about the safety of our families. They have made steps to go ahead and improve the current conditions that we're in. I don't think it's enough, but I think what we should do is, yes, take some of the wins here that we do have,

but continue to fight for the other things that we know will help stop this crime. And the other thing is, we need real metrics. So we're talking about all of these things that they're going to be doing. They need to come to the table and give us the data to say, this is how much crime has happened across these various parameters. This is what we're hoping for and putting a goal on because of these changes. And let's track it.

And let's see what's going to happen. But regardless, I think this is one of those things and a mission that I know we're both on that. And it's like, we got to get crime out of this country. We need to bring back the old Canada that we once knew and loved where we can leave our doors open and feel safe with our families and children and have people come to this country, invest in businesses, invest in an opportunity and do it in a way that their household feels safe. Hey, in about 30 seconds, tell me your thoughts on Mark Carney's announcement of a thousand new Royal Canadian Mounted Police. So I think it'll do something. I don't think, again, it's the be all and all of things. I think it's a multifaceted approach that's going to be needed of investment.

I do appreciate and I do support our police services. They do need more support. But again, they are fighting between a rock and a hard place with some of the legislation, which obviously is changing now or it's being proposed to change. But I think it's better than nothing and we need to see more. Until crime is down fully across the country and we're making good progress on continuously bringing it down, that's when I think we'll find people, especially on the conservative side, be happy with the changes.

Sondra and Fennerated, thank you so much. Life with Sondren, we appreciate you. My friend, thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Canada's oil sands produce the energy the world needs, but it's the benefits that flow to all parts of our country, like hundreds of thousands of jobs in oil and gas and along the supply chain, and revenue to invest in roads, bridges, our national defense, and more.

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