Full Comment - Best of 2025： Don’t let police take away your right to self-defence

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00:01:27.580 What are the limits of self-defense in Canada?

00:01:34.980 It's the type of story that pops up every time someone's charged with defending their own home.

00:01:39.960 Hello, I'm Brian Lilly, and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:01:43.260 This is a best-of episode from the 2025 season.

00:01:47.020 We had a lot of great episodes in 2025, and I want to thank you, the listener, for being part of this,

00:01:52.000 for supporting us throughout the year and look forward to, well, another great season in 2026.

00:01:58.360 Now, back to the issue of self-defense.

00:02:00.200 We revisited this again after a man in Peterborough, Ontario, was charged with assault for fending off an intruder into his own home who came in with a crossbow.

00:02:11.780 That led to calls for castle laws to be enacted in Ontario, well, across Canada, but Ontario Premier Doug Ford was one to call for them.

00:02:21.260 Do we actually need to change castle laws or self-defense laws in Canada?

00:02:25.800 Solomon Friedman is a longtime criminal defense lawyer and someone who says,

00:02:29.380 no, we don't need to change the laws at all.

00:02:31.560 Well, we just need to honor and respect the ones already on the books and maybe change a few rules about how they're applied.

00:02:38.400 This is our conversation.

00:02:42.180 The right to self-defense, is that something that we even have in Canada?

00:02:46.020 It's become a big debate of late after a couple of high-profile cases and after some comments by a chief of police.

00:02:53.120 Hello, I'm Brian Lilly, and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:02:55.920 And today we're going to delve into this issue.

00:02:58.160 You may have heard of the story of a man in Lindsay who defended himself with a kitchen knife after an intruder broke in with a crossbow.

00:03:06.280 And you've most definitely heard of the case of a man in Vaughan, Ontario, shot and killed by home invaders after putting a gun to his four-year-old daughter's head.

00:03:15.220 These are trying stories.

00:03:17.460 They are difficult to listen to.

00:03:18.740 They are difficult to deal with.

00:03:20.060 But they have brought on a discussion about self-defense and whether that even exists in Canada.

00:03:25.380 Some people would claim, that's American, we don't have it.

00:03:29.020 They would be wrong.

00:03:30.220 But unfortunately, many people in high positions tend to help feed into that idea, including York Region Police Chief Jim McSween, who had these comments to say last week.

00:03:41.160 As it stands, we know the best defense for most people is to comply.

00:03:47.620 As you've just heard, a number of safety recommendations will allow for those that are victimizing members in the community to leave and not harm anyone.

00:04:03.420 So, what is the reality?

00:04:06.460 What is the truth?

00:04:07.220 What does the law actually say?

00:04:09.280 For this, I turn to an old friend, Solomon Friedman.

00:04:11.760 He is a partner at Friedman Mansour Law.

00:04:14.920 He is a law professor at the University of Ottawa, criminal defense lawyer, and an expert in self-defense.

00:04:20.560 Here is our conversation.

00:04:22.340 So, Solomon, when you heard Chief Jim McSween make those comments about be a good witness, about go hide in a bathroom somewhere, what did you think?

00:04:32.480 I mean, my view is, yeah, for some people, that is the right answer, but that is not the only answer, and it's not the answer for everyone.

00:04:39.220 And to me, it just felt like it was the head of police saying, we're not really interested in people defending themselves.

00:04:47.960 We're willing to let criminals do what they want to do.

00:04:52.280 Yeah, you know, what struck me first and foremost was that it was terrible legal advice, okay?

00:04:59.300 Not so much that it was bad life advice.

00:05:01.680 In other words, if someone is in that, and it's a horrifying scenario, we need to understand that, right?

00:05:06.800 Because this has both, you know, legal but very much real-life implications.

00:05:10.440 It's a horrifying scenario.

00:05:12.180 Your home gets invaded, usually in the middle of the night.

00:05:15.320 You've got strangers who are armed and making demands if they're not there just to do harm.

00:05:19.620 But the legal response is not necessarily the same as the practical response.

00:05:25.280 And what really irked me listening to that, I'm obviously listening to it through lawyers' ears, which is there was no discussion about what is legal and what is not legal.

00:05:35.640 So instead, you have the chief of police of one of the largest police services in the country essentially giving life advice.

00:05:43.300 But when it comes from the chief of police, people think that it's legal advice.

00:05:48.140 And the number of calls or texts that I got, whether it's from, you know, professional colleagues or friends or family saying, is that right?

00:05:54.420 Is that the law?

00:05:55.580 Is the law that I have to comply with a home intruder, an invader?

00:06:01.240 And I said, of course, that's not the law.

00:06:02.740 So that's number one, is that it's bad legal advice.

00:06:06.140 What he said is not the law.

00:06:08.440 So my take on it was that this was not just a response to the shooting death of Abdullah Alim Faruqi in his home in Vaughan.

00:06:21.720 This is the man who was shot during a home invasion while the thugs, you know, apparently had a gun to his four-year-old daughter's head.

00:06:30.600 I mean, what father is not going to react viscerally in that?

00:06:34.020 We don't know how he reacted, but we do know that in the end, the thugs killed him and left.

00:06:38.340 But my thought was he is also responding to the ongoing debate in Canada related to the incident in Lindsay, Ontario, where a guy breaks into someone else's home with a crossbow.

00:06:53.240 And the man whose home it is defends himself with a kitchen knife and is therefore charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon.

00:07:03.940 He was trying to justify that, in my view is, and you've dealt with this in a lot of cases, you know.

00:07:12.100 Listeners that don't know you might be saying, well, he's a criminal defense lawyer.

00:07:15.760 He just defends these thugs.

00:07:16.940 You've defended a lot of people on issues like this, of defending themselves and then being charged.

00:07:23.900 The idea that you cannot defend yourself is foreign, but cops and prosecutors do not like Canadians defending themselves.

00:07:33.560 Yeah, you know, I'm thinking back now.

00:07:35.880 So, um, I, I represented, uh, an individual going on about 10 or 12 years ago.

00:07:44.480 Um, it was a father and a son, okay.

00:07:47.220 Their home was invaded.

00:07:49.240 They come onto the sort of the scene of this individual who was totally hopped up on drugs.

00:07:55.480 Uh, the father tries to confront him.

00:07:57.760 He gets the father in a headlock and he is choking him out.

00:08:00.860 Um, and the son, who is a young man, uh, got a knife and obviously in an effort to do nothing more than save his father's life, stabbed this man to death, okay.

00:08:12.480 They were arrested by police.

00:08:15.120 Uh, they were held.

00:08:16.800 Uh, and ultimately, you know, and maybe there was some reasonably good lawyering involved as well.

00:08:21.520 Um, it was a, it was a, uh, a drawn out process, but the police made the decision not to lay charges, okay.

00:08:27.620 Uh, what they did was absolutely legal.

00:08:29.960 And in fact, if we go back to the practical advice side, it was the right thing to do if this young man was going to save his father's life.

00:08:37.580 Um, so self-defense is absolutely legal in Canada.

00:08:43.340 It is a full defense to a charge up to and including murder.

00:08:48.780 In fact, it is so serious of a defense that once the individual establishes that that defense is even remotely possible, to use some, uh, legal terms here, air of reality, that it has an air of reality.

00:09:03.640 The crown has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that self-defense was not legally engaged here.

00:09:11.800 The trouble is though, with the police, that the police, and I'm seeing this more and more in my practice, they often take a charge first and ask questions later perspective.

00:09:20.640 Sort of saying, look, maybe it's self-defense, maybe it's not, let the court sort it out.

00:09:26.420 Uh, and in some ways, by the way, for the people who are charged, even though many of them are acquitted, the process is the punishment in and of itself, which then has the effect of deterring others from, from defending themselves.

00:09:36.720 For someone who is charged, how long does that process take, this punishment that you're talking about?

00:09:40.960 It's years, isn't it?

00:09:42.860 Yeah.

00:09:43.200 I mean, I'll give you, if it's a murder case that can only be tried in the superior court, the time limit that the Supreme Court set from charge to trial is 30 months.

00:09:54.000 It's two and a half years.

00:09:56.120 That's, that's, that's, that's a good, that's, that's the limit.

00:09:58.800 So it takes years to move through the system.

00:10:01.760 And by the way, during those years, let's remember, you have been publicly identified and branded as a criminal by the police and in the media.

00:10:10.960 You are probably living, if you're, you're lucky, by the way, if you're on bail, because you may be in custody.

00:10:16.500 If you're not, you're probably living on very strict conditions, maybe house arrest, maybe you have a GPS monitor, all because you are sort of in the crosshairs of the state because you exercised self-defense.

00:10:28.520 So absolutely the process is the punishment, both in terms of time, in terms of conditions, but also in terms of the stigma of being charged with a really serious criminal offense.

00:10:36.660 Yeah, I, I, look, even a year of going through that is incredibly horrifying.

00:10:41.460 Six months of going through that is horrifying.

00:10:43.420 Nevermind 30 months. 0.98

00:10:44.920 That is, that is ridiculous. 0.56

00:10:47.740 So why is it that police and, and, you know, you got to face off against crowns. 0.95

00:10:53.840 Maybe you don't want to talk about them, but to me, it's crowns as well.

00:10:57.540 It is this view that, no, no, no, despite what the law says, and we'll get into how clear the law is in a moment, despite what the law says, we don't like what the law says.

00:11:07.920 And so we're going to put you through this process.

00:11:09.960 You know, I think, I think there's, there's a cultural element to this as well, in the sense that, you know, we sometimes hear different terms and it's really important to, to, to just attack them because they have no place in this discussion, including, by the way, our friendly police chief.

00:11:28.900 He talked about people taking the law into their own hands.

00:11:33.020 And you sometimes see that also, uh, the phrase vigilante justice or vigilantism.

00:11:40.080 Okay.

00:11:40.240 If you break into my home, it's not vigilantism for me to beat you out of there.

00:11:44.640 Correct.

00:11:45.200 And it's not taking the law into your own hands.

00:11:48.380 In fact, what would be taking the law into your own hands is after they, you know, they get your stuff or they're running away, you get in the car and you fire up flashing lights and you go arrest them and you get a posse together.

00:11:59.220 Like that's a different story.

00:12:00.660 Now, by the way, there are rights of citizens to make arrests, but much dicier in that territory.

00:12:06.200 But defending yourself is not taking the law into your own hands.

00:12:10.980 It is not vigilantism.

00:12:12.600 So I think there's a cultural issue here.

00:12:14.920 And, you know, the trouble with 90% of us living along the American border is that culturally, whether it's politicians or police or prosecutors, we're always comparing ourselves to the American experience.

00:12:27.360 And there's this sort of, you know, innate dislike of what happens in the United States.

00:12:32.240 And we don't want to be like the Americans. 0.98

00:12:33.960 That's what they do in America. 0.63

00:12:35.620 That's cowboy justice.

00:12:36.840 When really, the criminal code has self-defense provisions, which, by the way, are not new.

00:12:41.860 They are ancient.

00:12:43.160 They go back to the earliest foundations of the English common law.

00:12:46.660 They happen to be today codified in the criminal code.

00:12:49.000 But this is old common law stuff.

00:12:51.900 The right to defend yourself, other persons, and your property.

00:12:57.200 That is a longstanding right that now is in the criminal code.

00:13:00.700 So it's not taking the law into your own hands.

00:13:02.900 But unfortunately, I think there's this sort of cultural bias where that first reaction is, well, why didn't you comply?

00:13:09.460 And we see it in the statement of the chief.

00:13:13.700 Well, I want to read you a statement that Chief McSween put out in response to some of the media criticism that may have come from, I don't know, myself, my colleague Joe Warmington, anyone with a brain, lots of people on talk radio, but not Andrew Coyne.

00:13:30.620 It states,

00:14:00.620 So that goes back to your earlier point, that this was life advice.

00:14:15.900 This was Chief McSween being dear Abby.

00:14:20.040 Which is not the place of a chief of police, right?

00:14:23.440 It's not what one expects.

00:14:24.460 It's also, by the way, anytime a figure in authority says that the evidence says, right, the research shows, I say I want to see that research.

00:14:37.300 Because there has actually been an enormous amount of research done in the United States in particular about the links between things like stand your ground and castle laws, which I'm happy to talk about in the United States.

00:14:51.480 But also the prevalence of armed citizens and the deterrent factor that that has on criminals from committing home invasions.

00:14:59.000 So, in fact, it actually cuts the other way.

00:15:01.000 If you tell everybody to comply, what that is actually telling criminals is you are going to have a free hand.

00:15:05.640 It's funny, John Lott, the great researcher, the man behind the book that most Canadians would scoff at, More Guns, Less Crime.

00:15:14.980 It's true.

00:15:16.080 I believe you know.

00:15:16.900 It's on my bookshelf, by the way, in my office, Brian.

00:15:19.220 I've got a signed copy.

00:15:20.060 I believe you know, John, as do I.

00:15:23.000 And John called me after he saw what Chief McSween said, and he said, we have to talk.

00:15:28.240 And he was going, he said, unfortunately, you don't have the same data in Canada as we do in the States with their, I forget the name of what it's called, but they look at outcomes of crimes.

00:15:40.400 And he was able to tell me what specific actions in confronting intruders work and what don't.

00:15:49.540 And he was able to say that, you know, especially for women being attacked by men who are often larger than them, that hitting them with their fists is, yeah, that's a really bad course of action.

00:16:00.540 But pulling out a gun, you don't even have to shoot.

00:16:03.920 Just showing it is often enough to save their lives.

00:16:06.900 But he said, just rolling over does not actually lead to safer outcomes.

00:16:13.440 And he disputed what the chief was saying there.

00:16:16.000 Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, you know, and I've read that data.

00:16:20.260 And in fact, that conversation refreshed my memory and it made me go back and look at some of those studies.

00:16:26.700 And they're really eye opening.

00:16:29.820 And it really comes down to and we're going to we can talk about this later, as we know, as we talk about criminal law policy generally and what laws might be able to be put in place.

00:16:38.000 Can laws actually be directed to this kind of behavior?

00:16:40.700 But, you know, I'm I'm a believer in my experience in criminal law shows me that there's very little in terms of legal deterrent that is going to deter individuals from committing this kind of crime.

00:16:52.960 Like the person who's doing a home invasion is not like, well, there's now a mandatory minimum of life in prison before it was just 10 years.

00:17:01.600 I'm not going to go kick down that door trying to feed my addiction by stealing or robbing, et cetera.

00:17:07.060 Doesn't mean we shouldn't do those mandatory minimums.

00:17:09.860 No, no.

00:17:10.140 But it's you and I disagree about that.

00:17:13.320 Yeah.

00:17:13.840 And I'm happy.

00:17:14.560 It's a good discussion to have.

00:17:15.880 It's an important policy discussion to have.

00:17:17.220 But what everybody who studies deterrence concludes is that one of the biggest actual deterring factors to criminals is fear of being apprehended or of being harmed in the commission of a crime.

00:17:33.500 So you got to think about that for a minute.

00:17:34.680 Right.

00:17:34.900 So things like police presence.

00:17:37.080 So it's not the sentence.

00:17:38.120 It's being caught or shot.

00:17:39.820 Exactly right.

00:17:40.940 Right.

00:17:41.160 When you're in that frame of mind.

00:17:43.440 Right.

00:17:43.540 Remember, your life's taken a certain path if you're kicking down doors in suburban GTA and performing home invasions.

00:17:51.660 So, you know, jail, the possibility of jail is rarely the immediate deterrent.

00:17:56.380 The deterrent, however, is getting arrested at that time or being shot.

00:18:01.020 And that's what the data shows from the United States, that that actually has a deterrent effect on criminal behavior.

00:18:07.100 So my worry is that when Chief Nick Sweeney is talking, remember, he's speaking to two audiences and he might not even realize that audience one are the innocent homeowners.

00:18:17.300 And whether the advice he's giving them is good or bad, we can debate that.

00:18:20.380 And I think it's generally might be poor advice.

00:18:23.280 But he's also speaking to criminals.

00:18:25.580 They're listening.

00:18:26.440 And what message did you just send?

00:18:29.640 Exactly.

00:18:30.340 You kick that door down.

00:18:31.680 It's going to be easy peasy for you.

00:18:34.440 Nobody is going to put up a fight.

00:18:35.880 You are not going to be harmed in the commission of this crime.

00:18:38.820 You have a free reign to engage in this kind of dangerous and antisocial behavior.

00:18:43.100 Like, to me, that is really troubling.

00:18:45.540 All right.

00:18:45.800 Let's talk about what the law actually states and then about what Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has suggested in terms of clarifying the law.

00:18:57.960 I hear people say, well, we need Castle Law in Canada.

00:19:01.580 And my response to them is, no, we don't.

00:19:05.440 We have it.

00:19:06.740 Am I wrong?

00:19:08.660 It depends how you define Castle Law.

00:19:11.000 If you define Castle Law as no obligation to retreat when faced with the threat of violence, you're absolutely right.

00:19:19.080 We have it.

00:19:19.720 OK, what Castle Law in some jurisdictions means, and I think it would be helpful in Canada, would be that if you commit a violent offense against an uninvited visitor into your home, the presumption is that you are acting in self-defense unless the Crown can then rebut that presumption.

00:19:41.080 In other words, self-defense gets put on the table automatically.

00:19:43.900 That's what happens in some other states.

00:19:45.240 So just like there is no one version of Castle Law, but I agree with you that if we're talking about no duty to retreat, you don't have any duty to retreat.

00:19:52.120 OK, so let's talk about the, you said it was ancient, comes from the common law.

00:19:56.520 Yeah.

00:19:57.080 Explain what it actually means and is required right now, because too many Canadians, Andrew Coyne, believe that any self-defense is too American.

00:20:09.260 You alluded to that earlier.

00:20:11.820 This is not reality and never has been.

00:20:16.540 No, not only is it not reality, but you almost certainly have a constitutional right to self-defense.

00:20:22.780 That is, if the government tomorrow passed a law amending the criminal code and removing self-defense, that would be found to be contrary to Section 7 of the Charter, because it would put your life in jeopardy and it would be contrary to the principles of fundamental justice.

00:20:38.240 I thought that section only defended bike lanes in Toronto.

00:20:42.980 Well, bike lanes, I think that gets about 50% of the attention.

00:20:46.760 But as an actual constitutional litigator, I can tell you that you have a constitutional right to self-defense.

00:20:53.280 The government, that's my view, and I think it's well supported by the jurisprudence, the government could not essentially amend out self-defense.

00:21:01.780 So, let's start with that.

00:21:02.980 So, this notion that it's American, that it's foreign to us, is nonsense.

00:21:07.980 It is part of that constitutional guarantee.

00:21:10.260 It goes back centuries.

00:21:10.960 Absolutely.

00:21:11.460 It goes back centuries in common law, Section 7, and now codified.

00:21:16.940 Yeah.

00:21:17.340 So, since the earliest criminal code in Canada, there has been a self-defense provision.

00:21:24.040 And let's talk about what today's criminal code allows for, right?

00:21:28.540 So, remembering that self-defense is a defense, okay?

00:21:32.880 It is an answer to a criminal charge.

00:21:36.500 And that can be a lot of criminal charges, anything from murder and on down.

00:21:41.460 And what is the defense?

00:21:43.060 How does it work?

00:21:43.740 So, it has three elements to it, right?

00:21:46.760 The first element is that the person who acts in self-defense has to believe on reasonable grounds, which means that their belief is reasonable.

00:21:56.260 They don't have to be right, by the way.

00:21:57.660 They just have to be reasonable.

00:21:59.300 That force is being used against them, another person, or that force is going to be used.

00:22:05.360 That's also really important, by the way.

00:22:06.940 Self-defense doesn't mean you have to hit me first.

00:22:08.940 If you have a reasonable belief that a threat of force is being used, you're in self-defense territory.

00:22:14.960 So, that's number one.

00:22:16.220 So, for example, this incident in Lindsay.

00:22:20.400 If I'm staring down a guy who is coming to my home with a crossbow, and I'm guessing that most listeners have never fired a crossbow.

00:22:30.020 They are incredibly precise and deadly instruments in the right hands.

00:22:33.500 I would be terrified.

00:22:34.380 I would assume that they were going to shoot me with said crossbow.

00:22:38.440 I would be within my rights to attack in defense.

00:22:43.480 Yeah.

00:22:44.320 Absolutely.

00:22:44.920 And I'll just say this about the Lindsay incident.

00:22:47.440 And I'll say this about any incident where all the evidence has not been aired in court, tested by cross-examination, and ruled on by a judge or jury.

00:22:56.200 We don't know all the details.

00:22:57.920 We just don't know, right?

00:22:58.540 Which is why I got asked to comment a lot on it, and I was really reluctant to comment on that case because I have no idea if the knife was used with a crossbow raised or the crossbow was wrestled away and the homeowner was like, you know what?

00:23:13.260 You so-and-so, I'm going to get this knife and I'm going to show you what happens once I have you defenseless.

00:23:18.340 Or somewhere in a spectrum in between those things.

00:23:21.420 I just don't know.

00:23:22.700 But when you talk about the law, so absolutely, that that would seemingly engage a belief on reasonable grounds that force is being used.

00:23:32.300 So that's number one.

00:23:33.240 You have to have that belief.

00:23:35.520 Number two, the act that you are engaging in has to be for the purpose of defending yourself.

00:23:43.420 Right?

00:23:43.640 So you don't now just get a free hand to break any law.

00:23:47.440 The act has to be for the purpose of defending yourself.

00:23:50.520 So to give you an example, let's say you have somebody has broken into your home.

00:23:56.580 Okay?

00:23:57.520 And they, you have reasonable grounds that force is being used against you.

00:24:02.680 That's true.

00:24:03.560 But what you do is you, let's say you see their car in the driveway, you go slash the tires.

00:24:08.120 So that criminal act, slashing someone's tires is a criminal act.

00:24:11.000 It's not for the purpose of defending yourself.

00:24:12.900 Right?

00:24:13.540 The act has to be for the purpose of defending yourself.

00:24:16.440 And then the third thing, and this is the trickiest part, because number one and number two are almost givens in every self-defense case.

00:24:25.520 The third element is the trickiest, which is your actions have to be reasonable in the circumstances.

00:24:33.240 And until, by the way, the Harper amendments to the self-defense provision in 2012, that's where the section ended.

00:24:40.440 And let's take a break right now and come back and talk about the Harper amendments, because that is part of the pushback against what Pierre Polyev is saying.

00:24:48.440 And people saying, well, the law's already been clarified.

00:24:51.320 I was there for it.

00:24:52.820 I watched it from beginning to end.

00:24:54.940 And I don't think a lot of people get it.

00:24:57.100 So quick break.

00:24:58.160 Back in a moment with Solomon Friedman.

00:24:59.820 This is Tristan Hopper, the host of Canada Did What?

00:25:02.860 Where we unpack the biggest, weirdest, and wildest political moments in Canadian history you thought you knew and tell you what really happened.

00:25:11.200 Stick around at the end of the episode to hear a sample of one of our favorite episodes.

00:25:15.640 If you don't want to stick around, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What? everywhere you get podcasts.

00:25:21.960 Well, if you don't want to get shot or beaten up, don't break into people's houses.

00:25:24.860 It's pretty straightforward.

00:25:25.980 I don't know.

00:25:27.880 This sounds like pretty good advice from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to me.

00:25:31.300 You know, you don't want to get shot, don't break into somebody's home.

00:25:33.800 Although, you know, there's a whole debate about whether you can actually use firearms.

00:25:37.400 But Solomon, let's talk about the 2012, I believe it was, amendments to the criminal code.

00:25:44.380 And that all started with a bill that was actually originally suggested by now Toronto mayor, then NDP MP, Olivia Chow, and Liberal MP, Joel Volpe.

00:25:58.680 And it was called the Lucky Moose Bill.

00:26:01.940 And this is named after a grocery store.

00:26:04.320 I believe it's on Dundas Street, downtown Toronto.

00:26:06.720 Guy was tired of habitual criminals sneaking in and stealing from him.

00:26:11.640 And so one day he just stopped him and tied him up.

00:26:15.080 And the cops charged him.

00:26:16.560 And no, it's self-defense.

00:26:18.080 That prompted a huge debate around self-defense.

00:26:23.420 And at that point, the NDP, the liberals, the conservatives all said yes.

00:26:27.100 Now, it didn't pass as a private member's bill, election happened, so on.

00:26:31.660 But the Harper government picked it up after the election, passed it, and they clarified it.

00:26:35.800 What did they clarify back in 2012?

00:26:38.780 Because in my mind, what was happening then is what's happening now, is policing prosecutors are saying, hmm, I know the law seems pretty clear to you, but we're going to take a different view of it, and we're going to do what we want to do.

00:26:53.600 That was my feeling then.

00:26:54.980 That's my feeling now.

00:26:55.960 What did the Harper changes clarify?

00:26:58.580 Yeah, and I think in particular, we now have 13 years of hindsight.

00:27:03.500 And my conclusion is that they didn't clarify anything at all, and it didn't actually change the way that self-defense operates in our courts.

00:27:11.840 So having tried cases before the amendments and after.

00:27:14.380 But let's talk about them a little bit.

00:27:15.700 And it's really funny.

00:27:16.260 I'm really glad you brought up the Lucky Moose context, because this is what happens, Brian, when you've been around for a while.

00:27:22.240 You remember things.

00:27:23.640 You remember things, and you realize there is nothing new under the sun.

00:27:26.900 And this is no exception to that.

00:27:28.920 So that was David Chen.

00:27:30.380 David Chen was the shopkeeper, the proprietor of Lucky Moose.

00:27:33.840 And it galvanized.

00:27:34.760 You have a better memory than me.

00:27:35.800 I just, you know, like, I think, Brian, to be perfectly honest, I think that I have appeared on a show of yours, you know, 13, 14 years ago, and we've talked about this.

00:27:45.340 Yes.

00:27:45.820 I just, I got a feeling that that happened.

00:27:47.920 So, you know, and that led to this sort of uproar, and the same discussion we're having now, which is, you know, are police charging people appropriately?

00:27:58.260 Are prosecutors prosecuting?

00:28:00.000 Are people being wrongly convicted?

00:28:01.560 So this is what happened, all right?

00:28:03.680 And we'll get, we'll come back to exactly where we left off before the break, which is the third element of the self-defense analysis is, was the act that was committed reasonable in the circumstances?

00:28:16.660 And prior to 2012, like so much of our law, by the way, the details and the explanation was left to the common law, which means it was developed through case law.

00:28:30.920 Judges would apply that, they would say, well, this is reasonable, this isn't reasonable, some of those judges would get overturned by the Court of Appeal, maybe that would get overturned by the Supreme Court, and over generations, the law gets clarified that way, all right?

00:28:45.040 And judges in their decisions would say, how do you know an act is reasonable?

00:28:49.360 Well, you look at this factor, you look at this factor, how big were the people, what were their weapons used, what was the threat of violence, all this sort of thing, okay?

00:28:58.960 Yeah, if a seven-year-old comes into my home with a knife and I shoot them, you know, that's not reasonable.

00:29:05.640 Correct, and different if a man comes in, you know, without a knife, if a guy's just banging on the front door, if they're inside the home, or for example, if it's somebody who you know to be extremely violent, right?

00:29:20.340 All, you're right, there's so many things factor in.

00:29:23.780 So, what this amendment did, basically, was they got some law student or parliamentary intern to go search the case law to find all of the factors that judges have previously considered in assessing the reasonableness of an act, and they just listed them in the criminal code.

00:29:43.500 That's it. That is actually what was done.

00:29:46.220 So, for me, as a lawyer, someone who understands how the common law works, it wasn't necessary in the first place.

00:29:51.440 The trouble is, police often didn't know about them, maybe some crowns weren't familiar with all of them, but they existed in the law.

00:29:58.100 Nothing new happened in that provision.

00:30:00.800 All of the factors were ones that were already recognized in the case law, and instead now...

00:30:05.200 But it should have informed pre-charge.

00:30:08.720 It should have informed the police and prosecutors, but I don't think it has.

00:30:13.020 Brian, I'm going to tell you what I told you 13 years ago when we talked about this.

00:30:16.600 So, I said, the law is not the problem.

00:30:21.360 Policy is the problem.

00:30:23.680 Parliament does not have to pass any laws.

00:30:26.020 What has to happen are the provinces, who are responsible for the charging decisions of police.

00:30:32.080 They need to amend the policy handbooks of the police services and of their Crown Attorney's offices.

00:30:38.180 Because every province, and in the jurisdictions where it's federal prosecutors, like the territories, they have desk books, policy manuals for prosecutors.

00:30:48.680 And it has their policies on every type of offense, from domestic violence to sexual assault to major crime to homicide.

00:30:55.600 The policy needs to change.

00:30:57.140 And guess what?

00:30:57.800 The policy never changed.

00:30:58.820 So, of course, the charging practice and the prosecuting practice never changed.

00:31:03.280 That's something that Conservative MP Larry Brock brought up.

00:31:08.000 When Pierre Polyev held his news conference to talk about this, Larry said, the provinces and territories could deal with this right away.

00:31:15.620 Just send out a note.

00:31:16.960 Stop doing this.

00:31:18.020 That's exactly right.

00:31:18.920 Amend the policy.

00:31:20.680 And like I said, they have policies on every type of offense.

00:31:23.380 They have policies on defenses.

00:31:25.100 They have policies on how they prosecute, what charges they lay.

00:31:28.920 You know, it's actually interesting.

00:31:30.640 A possible remedy.

00:31:32.400 Ontario has an interesting system.

00:31:34.800 So unlike British Columbia and Quebec, for example, in Ontario, the charges themselves, criminal charges, are not vetted by prosecutors before they're laid.

00:31:44.860 Police lay them.

00:31:46.180 Then prosecutors decide what to do with them.

00:31:48.240 There's a pretty good argument that in Quebec and British Columbia, where prosecutors actually have to approve the charge before it gets laid in court, you end up with a much more legally consistent and legally accurate charge form.

00:32:06.180 That the charges themselves tend to comply to the law to a much greater degree.

00:32:10.680 So that's something, by the way, that's been called for in Ontario.

00:32:13.620 But policy is what drives all of this.

00:32:16.520 Not the law.

00:32:18.240 So, okay, a couple of things.

00:32:22.300 One, I'm not opposed to the law being clarified once again.

00:32:26.300 And I say that just as someone who watches bill after bill get passed, that is nothing but a clarification of bills previously passed.

00:32:33.600 So the argument that, oh, well, it was done in 2012, so we never need to touch it again, that doesn't wash with me.

00:32:39.580 And if they want to clarify it, that's good.

00:32:41.280 But that's been a lot of the knocks against polyevs.

00:32:43.340 But I understand what you're saying, and I think, yeah, there should be a push on that.

00:32:47.540 And, you know, the next time Premier Ford brings this up, I may raise this issue and say, well, it is up to you.

00:32:55.240 But, you know, I may have whispered his name a couple of times, but, you know, a certain columnist in the Globe and Mail is denouncing the idea that we would further clarify the law of saying, well, we don't want to be like the Americans.

00:33:07.600 And that Polyev's stand guard legislation, proposed legislation, would go further than the Americans.

00:33:17.640 I don't really care what the Americans are doing.

00:33:19.880 I care what our law is.

00:33:21.200 I care what our traditions are.

00:33:23.280 And our traditions and our law uphold this ability.

00:33:27.820 Yeah.

00:33:28.040 And, you know, it's interesting that the case law bears that out.

00:33:32.040 I don't know if you remember, actually, I'm sure you do remember, because we talked about it also.

00:33:35.940 So you remember everything we talked about, but you remember the Ian Thompson case in Ontario.

00:33:39.980 Yeah.

00:33:40.380 Down in St. Catherine's area.

00:33:42.100 This is a man whose home was surrounded by thugs and firebombed with him inside it.

00:33:48.300 And he happened to be a licensed firearms owner and a target gun instructor and a gun instructor.

00:33:54.220 And he defended himself with a revolver and that dragged through the court.

00:33:59.340 He didn't even shoot them.

00:34:00.680 He fired over their heads. 0.96

00:34:01.780 Over their heads.

00:34:02.340 Warning shots.

00:34:02.720 And was still charged.

00:34:03.860 Still charged.

00:34:04.420 And ultimately, completely vindicated.

00:34:08.280 Completely vindicated.

00:34:09.700 So, which tells you, I think that most of the time, and I know that defense lawyers love to gripe about judges and complain about rulings that we get.

00:34:18.360 But I actually think that most of the time, judges get this right.

00:34:21.540 I think that they do apply the law of self-defense well and that people who are entitled to acquittals get acquittals.

00:34:27.660 But once again, I'll come back to where we started this conversation.

00:34:31.020 That's really cold comfort.

00:34:32.800 When you've lost your reputation, you've lost your business, maybe you've been detained, lost your firearms, your family and friends think you're a criminal.

00:34:40.220 Your name is splashed across media.

00:34:42.340 Right.

00:34:42.560 It's always very interesting, by the way.

00:34:44.340 I ask people about this when they say, well, what's the real stigma?

00:34:47.360 Like, I say, can you tell me the names of the people who firebombed Ian Thompson's house?

00:34:52.880 No, you can't.

00:34:54.180 Nobody remembers them.

00:34:55.360 I'll admit this is someone in the media.

00:34:58.260 You rarely, if ever, publish that someone isn't guilty.

00:35:03.360 Unless it's a big profile one.

00:35:05.360 So, you know, the police blotter that every newspaper has that, you know, runs on local TV where you just say, oh, so-and-so was charged.

00:35:14.720 The high-profile cases, of course, there's an announcement they were acquitted, found not guilty, what have you.

00:35:21.000 But the average person who gets their name splashed through the media doesn't get that.

00:35:26.900 And that is a travesty.

00:35:28.800 That's on my industry.

00:35:29.980 And I'll say this also.

00:35:30.700 It's supposed to yours.

00:35:31.260 By the way, on defense, the defense lawyers play a role in this too.

00:35:34.080 I, as a matter of practice, if there has been a story that my client was charged and the media, for whatever reason, didn't follow the acquittal,

00:35:41.120 I go back and contact every journalist who wrote a story and ask that they either update the original story or write a new story.

00:35:47.120 And the media is quite responsible when it's brought to their attention.

00:35:49.540 But the trouble is, it's often not brought to their attention.

00:35:52.160 Yes, just often we don't know.

00:35:53.920 There are so many criminal courts going on.

00:35:56.180 I want to spend the last few minutes that we've got talking about political response to this.

00:36:02.060 And Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday did talk about updating the criminal code.

00:36:09.420 And he said a few things that surprised me because the Trudeau liberals brought in a bail reform package back in 2019 that was a disaster.

00:36:22.380 It followed the same philosophical pattern as places like New York State and other progressive jurisdictions.

00:36:26.840 And I just want to point out that New York State and other progressive jurisdictions in the United States saw the same horrific results as we did with repeat violent offenders going through a revolving door.

00:36:37.960 And, you know, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul in New York did a full reversal on that.

00:36:44.380 We did a very partial one on specific cases.

00:36:47.820 But, you know, guys who are doing carjackings with guns who are caught, charged, let out on bail, and then do it again, still get bail because of the way the criminal code is written in due to Bill C-75.

00:37:04.420 So I want to play a clip of Mark Carney.

00:37:07.300 He was asked about keeping people in the country, you know, in terms of keeping high quality people in the country and, you know, boosting the economy.

00:37:18.160 And he started talking about quality of life.

00:37:20.480 And he started talking about crime and the need to crack down on crime.

00:37:24.100 And here's what he had to say, which I wasn't expecting from him.

00:37:28.720 This government is committed to reforming the criminal code to ensure that organized crime, gang crime, crime with handguns, home invasions, auto theft, that the individuals who participate in those crimes pay the price.

00:37:45.180 They should, with consecutive sentencing, that they are not in a position where they commit a crime one day and they're arrested and then out on bail the next.

00:37:58.060 So bail reform being at the heart of it.

00:38:00.680 We're committed to having more officers at our border, a thousand more border agents, more RCMP, committed to working more closely with the provinces.

00:38:08.680 And I'll give you a specific example with respect to the last.

00:38:13.280 We've been working with the Council of the Federation, all the provinces on bail reform.

00:38:17.860 We will be legislating on that.

00:38:19.720 We're proposing legislation, I should say, to the House on that next month.

00:38:25.000 I met with Premier Ford this morning as part of an ongoing conversation about how we can address these issues, what the federal government needs to do on the criminal code.

00:38:36.400 I agree with Premier Ford on these issues, and that's why we're moving on them, what the province and the municipality can do in terms of policing more effectively.

00:38:45.840 So we're working very closely.

00:38:47.800 Solomon, were you surprised to hear that from the Prime Minister?

00:38:51.440 I was surprised, you know, that those are not liberal talking points traditionally.

00:38:57.340 They come from the other side of the political spectrum.

00:39:00.060 And I'll say this, and, you know, Brian, you and I have disagreed over this, and one of the wonderful things about speaking to someone like you is open-minded and thoughtful is you can have really polite and interesting disagreements.

00:39:11.620 I think this is the wrong end of the policy problem.

00:39:15.320 If you're talking about sentencing, bail is an interesting one.

00:39:19.000 We could talk about bail.

00:39:19.660 I think there is something to talk about bail.

00:39:21.140 Once you're talking about consecutive sentences, number of sentences, you really admit, I can't solve the problem, so maybe on the back end I can punish the people who are doing this, but I can't do anything about the problem.

00:39:34.060 I think, like, you know, I live in Ottawa, and I have seen downtown Ottawa degenerate into a pretty scary place.

00:39:42.560 And all of that, by the way, has been fueled by government policy.

00:39:45.200 You know, drug distribution centers, we see what happens, we see what happens when petty crime is ignored, we see what happens when, essentially, there's no enforcement whatsoever of the kind of public order offenses that there used to be.

00:39:58.660 The police have just given up, just given up completely.

00:40:01.780 You mentioned Ottawa, and I used to live there as well.

00:40:05.120 That's how we got to know each other.

00:40:06.260 But when I left 580 CFRA in January 2019, that's a station that I had worked at off and on since 2002, and I knew the byword market very well.

00:40:18.860 But I never had to step over people openly shooting heroin or fentanyl into their arms the way I did as I was leaving some of my last radio shows at 10 p.m. at night before I moved down to Toronto.

00:40:32.260 And it degenerated horribly, only gotten worse during the pandemic, and that is due to government policy.

00:40:40.340 You're correct.

00:40:40.740 Right.

00:40:40.960 And look, I want to be very clear.

00:40:42.180 Like, you know, drug addiction is something that I would never wish on my worst enemy.

00:40:47.280 It is a horrible affliction.

00:40:49.460 It deserves our compassion.

00:40:50.960 It deserves our attention.

00:40:52.160 It deserves treatment.

00:40:53.260 Absolutely.

00:40:53.420 But you walk down in the byword market, and you have random people who are high on drugs yelling at you, threatening to stab you, threatening you.

00:41:02.560 Like, that happens all the time.

00:41:04.000 And it is just totally ignored because progressive social policy dictates that you can't do anything in any way to deal with our neighbors who use drugs.

00:41:12.960 Right?

00:41:13.640 Not fentanyl addicts who are stabbing people.

00:41:15.420 Before I left, the police have been instructed just to ignore open drug use and problems around it, if it was anywhere near the safe injection sites and the like.

00:41:25.220 And by the way, this is a tourist area, an economic engine for our nation's capital that is steps from Parliament Hill.

00:41:31.940 But so what is your philosophical issue with consecutive sentences, though?

00:41:37.240 So my understanding of the research is that increasing sentences has no deterrent effect on criminal behavior.

00:41:47.300 So once again, if you want to get to the root of the issue and say, how can we stop people from doing this?

00:41:53.780 Sentencing does nothing to deter criminal behavior.

00:41:57.200 So philosophically, that's it.

00:41:58.440 So really what you're end of, it's sort of at the end of the day, you're saying that doesn't mean there is there's no power in it.

00:42:02.940 But it's important, number one, that people who are a danger to the public be kept away from the public.

00:42:09.340 That's a pretty good reason to have prison.

00:42:11.580 What I would say on the other side, and, you know, I may be a libertarian when it comes to firearms.

00:42:16.980 I mean, but I do have this soft, maybe we'll call it a little progressive side to me.

00:42:21.180 And that is what I would like to have in the world that I live in is a world where people who go into prison come out better than they went in.

00:42:30.600 That is actually what would make the public safer, right?

00:42:34.120 And that's...

00:42:34.660 Well, to do that, you'd have to have things like drug treatment programs and therapy and...

00:42:39.680 Yeah, and spend a lot of money.

00:42:41.040 Instead of handing out needles, which is what people are advocating for, or in some instances happening.

00:42:47.060 Well, and I'd say this, by the way, I think like, and, you know, I'm not an expert on the penitentiary system.

00:42:53.320 I know a little bit from my work as a criminal defense lawyer, but it's a university for criminals, Brian.

00:42:58.000 People go in there, they're probably, you know, had a BA in crime, they leave with a PhD, because that's the environment that it is, right?

00:43:06.160 And that, by the way, makes us all profoundly unsafe.

00:43:09.580 So, once again, if you're just talking about we're going to lock someone up for longer, if you're not locking someone up for life, like they're a dangerous offender, they're people like that, they're only coming out, generally speaking, worse than they went in.

00:43:21.140 Okay.

00:43:21.400 Look, we've got a court system that has struck down a bunch of mandatory minimums. 0.67

00:43:26.680 I don't think that we ever had really harsh mandatory minimums in this country, but we've had some struck down for like, your third offense on a gun crime, you're going to get three years.

00:43:36.220 I don't think that's a horrible idea.

00:43:38.520 But our courts strike them down using what they consider reasonable hypotheticals. 0.99

00:43:43.980 I think that's absolute garbage. 0.69

00:43:45.740 I think that we do need to have some mandatory minimums. 0.99

00:43:48.260 I don't believe in three strikes and you're out and we're locking you up for life.

00:43:51.480 That goes too far and doesn't have any effect.

00:43:54.780 Is there any effect in terms of denunciation and keeping dangerous people out of general society?

00:44:03.540 Yeah, and those are really important sentence and principles.

00:44:05.660 So, you know, one of the things that can also be done, and this is an important one, is to give judges other tools that they can use when it comes to community supervision, when it comes to probation.

00:44:20.380 One of the problems that when people get out often, they have very limited support and supervision, right?

00:44:25.940 Because you have to remember, and I say this to people, and it's hard for people to hear, particularly for conservatives, which is 99% of people who go into jail are going to come out.

00:44:34.820 And we have to deal with that effect.

00:44:37.440 Now, if they come out with no support, then they go back exactly to the life that they went to previously.

00:44:42.660 And if the courts had tools where they could have exercise further control, so I'm a big believer in things like probation, things like community supervision, but if you don't fund those properly, they're useless.

00:44:54.480 And if you don't give judges actual tools that have teeth, where you can pee on probation for longer periods of time, so, you know, when I started practicing that, that length was two years, now three years, I think that people, they should have longer supervision orders, right?

00:45:09.080 Where they have real mandatory, very challenging things, whether it's drug testing, whether it's, you know, unannounced visits.

00:45:17.160 But to do that, you've got to pay money for these probation officers, police officers to be enforcing that.

00:45:21.680 So, I think that just saying, oh, we're going to give you a consecutive sentence, and we have consecutive sentences, by the way, in the criminal code, for criminal organization offenses, for terrorism offenses, for other kinds of offenses, there are consecutive sentences.

00:45:33.940 But the violent crime problem in this country just keeps getting worse.

00:45:36.740 So, I would advocate for doing, you know, not just doing the same thing, but trying something different.

00:45:42.100 Let me ask you about bail before we let you go. 0.97

00:45:47.220 Bill C-75.

00:45:49.140 I mentioned it earlier.

00:45:50.080 It was adopted.

00:45:52.400 It seemed to be something that came out of the academic world.

00:45:55.200 Oh, we should just, you know, give people bail all the time.

00:45:58.120 Yeah, most people should get bail.

00:46:00.020 Most people should not be held in prison until their trial.

00:46:03.220 But, repeat, violent offenders, I don't think, fall into that category.

00:46:07.760 How do we deal with this in a reasonable way?

00:46:10.960 I've talked to friends who are JPs, and, you know, there was one case, I could tell you the address that this happened at, and you would be like, I'm not surprised.

00:46:21.360 You know, repeat violent offender found with a loaded gun in their car, up on the dashboard, out on bail on existing gun and violent criminal charges, denied bail, overturned by, you know, a higher court.

00:46:39.820 And so, even if people are denied bail, the higher courts say no, they've got to have bail.

00:46:46.420 Where do you draw the line, and how do you do it?

00:46:50.480 And I get all the arguments that people like Doug Ford and other premiers need to build more prisons, because growing population, we haven't done that.

00:46:59.060 More crime, we haven't done that.

00:47:00.560 But, where do you draw the line legislatively?

00:47:03.680 Because Prime Minister Carney has said he will give a review.

00:47:06.480 So, let's say you're in a briefing with Mark Carney.

00:47:09.640 What do you tell him on this?

00:47:11.580 Yeah.

00:47:11.940 So, I like to start from the beginning, which is the supreme law in Canada.

00:47:16.380 So, the supreme law in Canada is the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

00:47:21.540 The Charter of Rights and Freedoms says everyone has the right to reasonable bail.

00:47:25.060 Okay, so we have to start there.

00:47:26.220 So, there is a constitutional right to reasonable bail.

00:47:29.080 What does reasonable bail mean?

00:47:32.200 So, the courts have said, for example, it means that you can't make a rule that for certain offenses, bail is impossible to attain.

00:47:39.960 Okay?

00:47:40.240 So, there's no offense that you can say it's impossible that you get bail.

00:47:45.160 So, you might want to ask yourself, well, why is this?

00:47:47.260 That's fair.

00:47:47.760 Yeah.

00:47:48.200 But, what is this reasonable bail all about?

00:47:50.140 And you hit the nail on the head, which is, if we really believe in the presumption of innocence, like really believe in it, not pay lip service to it,

00:47:57.900 then, if someone's presumed innocent, then in most cases, they are not going to be detained before the state has an opportunity to prove that they're guilty.

00:48:07.140 So, I actually see, and, you know, I'm not avoiding the question directly.

00:48:12.080 I'm saying that there are other elements to this solution.

00:48:15.000 So, one of the problems comes back to the first thing we talked about.

00:48:17.200 What did we talk about?

00:48:17.800 We said how trial in the Superior Court, the Supreme Court set a limit for 30 months.

00:48:21.960 If trials only took four months to get to, three months to get to, you know that in California, you can be charged with any offense under the sun, you've got a right to trial within 90 days.

00:48:36.740 In 90 days, the state has to be ready to go and prove their case against you.

00:48:41.060 All of a sudden, by the way, the bail dynamic shifts, because the downside is not somebody sitting in detention for a year or two years or three years, right?

00:48:50.460 So, that's a big problem, that we have a massive backlog, which means we have to free people, because, A, we don't have the resources to hold them.

00:48:58.240 So, you're talking about resources.

00:49:00.020 The provincial detention centers are bursting at the seams.

00:49:03.160 So, practically speaking, we actually can't really detain more people than we're detaining.

00:49:06.600 Now, there's 100% an issue where individuals who are charged with very serious violent offenses get out on bail for those, and then commit other serious violent offenses.

00:49:20.640 That is, without a doubt, a problem.

00:49:23.680 And we see it happening, right?

00:49:26.540 What I worry about, though, and by the way, this is what's going to happen.

00:49:29.400 I can tell you, and you can have me back on six months from now, and you'll say you're right.

00:49:33.780 There's going to be a review.

00:49:34.800 There's going to be a lot of discussion, and if there's anything passed, it will be symbolic and meaningless.

00:49:42.060 That is what's going to happen out of Prime Minister Carney's review, right?

00:49:45.700 Because, legally, there are restrictions to what you can do to limit people's access to bail.

00:49:51.600 Because you have people who are innocent who get charged with offenses, sometimes even serious offenses,

00:49:56.060 and you can't have those people detained pretrial.

00:50:00.160 My view is, I'll come again to the same thing I said when it comes to sentencing.

00:50:05.600 There are alternatives to detaining people pretrial, but they are really expensive and they require resources, right?

00:50:14.680 A number of jurisdictions in the United States, they have real bail supervision programs, right?

00:50:20.480 So, the trouble is, bail, if it's just bail and you get out, you don't have a lot of supervision.

00:50:25.620 So, there's some GPS monitoring in Canada, but they're really, the police do not have the resources to monitor alleged offenders who are on bail.

00:50:32.800 And notice, I said alleged offenders, because they are only alleged offenders.

00:50:36.700 But, once again, those are things that cost money.

00:50:38.760 My worry is, every time the criminal code gets amended, and it gets amended over and over again.

00:50:43.880 I have in my office, I have criminal codes from the 50s.

00:50:46.480 I got a good library.

00:50:47.380 Yeah, every once in a while, you get a really old offense, and it's good to go pull out the annotated criminal code from the 50s.

00:50:51.340 Every year, the criminal code gets thicker and thicker and thicker, because governments love adding to it, because the criminal code doesn't cost any money to amend.

00:50:59.500 Now, it has huge costs, financial and social downstream, but it doesn't cost any money.

00:51:04.020 When the real solutions, from what we started talking about this, whether it's addressing drug addiction, or how about actually addressing mental illness in our community, right?

00:51:12.240 The prevalence of individuals who have untreated mental illness, and nobody wants to go anywhere near that, because it's expensive and resource-intensive.

00:51:21.240 It costs money to do those things.

00:51:22.740 It costs money to have actual programming in jail, as opposed to just warehousing human beings.

00:51:27.760 It costs money to supervise people when they're out, after they've completed a sentence.

00:51:31.600 It costs money to supervise people when they're on bail.

00:51:34.020 So, the government always does the easy thing.

00:51:35.860 Let's just pass another law.

00:51:37.360 Let's make another mandatory minimum. 0.91

00:51:39.360 Let's make another consecutive sentence.

00:51:40.960 And in my view, those are Band-Aid solutions, and they don't get at the root of the issues.

00:51:46.040 You're taking me to one of my views of the phrase that I hate hearing from politicians all the time.

00:51:52.280 Some horrific event happens, and they say, we need to make sure this can never happen again.

00:51:57.240 Well, in those types of circumstances, there's nothing that they can do to make sure those things don't happen again.

00:52:04.220 What you're talking about is there are things that they can do, but they don't want to do them, and they don't want to fund them.

00:52:11.820 That's exactly it.

00:52:12.760 And if we keep going down that circle, so the don't want to do them is an interesting one, because the don't want to do them is they're politically unpopular, particularly where these progressive views that certain subjects are untouchable.

00:52:23.420 Like, just so you know, when you say safe injection site, and you can say that to any criminal lawyer, we are a small-L liberal bunch.

00:52:30.860 We believe in freedom.

00:52:32.260 We believe in liberty.

00:52:33.800 But you talk about safe injection sites, they're handing out drugs to people.

00:52:37.620 Those people, the research clearly shows they are selling those drugs and buying more powerful drugs.

00:52:42.540 Who are they selling the drugs to?

00:52:43.800 Who are they selling the Dilaudid to?

00:52:45.280 They're selling it to kids who don't qualify for these programs.

00:52:47.960 They're selling it to teenagers, high school students.

00:52:49.540 The research in BC is outrageous, and then they're buying fentanyl.

00:52:53.300 So that's what we've done, basically.

00:52:55.220 In the name of what?

00:52:56.820 Progressivism and compassion?

00:52:57.860 That's not compassion.

00:52:58.840 That's abject cruelty.

00:53:00.340 And it has all these terrible downstream effects when it comes to violent crime.

00:53:04.620 So, once again, the hard to do means maybe we have to challenge some of these previously untouchable political third rails.

00:53:12.160 I don't know how they got that way, by the way.

00:53:13.400 They weren't that way when I started practicing law.

00:53:15.500 And that just makes me feel old.

00:53:17.120 But now that this is received truth, it's nonsense.

00:53:21.440 And it results in an unsafe community.

00:53:24.120 And it's something that we should take on.

00:53:25.720 We should elect politicians who are brave enough to take it on.

00:53:29.200 Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the pattern we've been following the past decade.

00:53:33.500 All right, Solomon.

00:53:34.140 Whether it's having you back on the podcast or not, I will check back with you six months after Prime Minister Carney's review and changes to bail have come in.

00:53:42.440 And unfortunately, I fear you will be right.

00:53:45.120 Thanks so much for the time.

00:53:45.940 My pleasure.

00:53:46.740 Thanks for having me.

00:53:47.720 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:53:50.160 My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:53:51.800 Kevin Libin is the executive producer of this program.

00:53:54.660 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx.

00:53:56.700 Theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:53:58.640 Please make sure that you hit subscribe on whatever platform you listen to us on.

00:54:02.600 And share this on social media.

00:54:04.380 Help us out.

00:54:04.960 Leave us a review.

00:54:05.860 And tell your friends about us.

00:54:07.260 Thanks for listening.

00:54:08.060 Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:54:09.600 Here's that clip from Canada did what?

00:54:17.820 I promised you.

00:54:21.900 So, although, although abortion was sort of accessible, it really wasn't.

00:54:29.660 But then 1988 rolls around.

00:54:32.220 And what's the law on abortion then?

00:54:34.660 Suddenly, there wasn't one.

00:54:37.220 Literally no restrictions existed in 1988.

00:54:40.660 Abortion went from heavily restricted to completely unrestricted almost overnight.

00:54:46.840 There was no referendum on this.

00:54:48.560 There wasn't even an act of parliament.

00:54:50.740 This whole thing is due to a somewhat surprised decision out of the Supreme Court of Canada.

00:54:55.980 And it came about in large part because of one man.

00:54:59.100 A Canadian doctor who had been relentless about running illegal abortion clinics since the 1960s.

00:55:04.500 And was determined to overturn the laws prohibiting the practice.

00:55:08.460 Along the way, he endured multiple arrests, constant raids, a jail term, a firebombing of his clinic,

00:55:14.080 an attack by a fanatic wielding garden shears, the approbation of virtually his entire profession, 0.76

00:55:19.980 and frequent death threats.

00:55:23.660 If you want to hear the rest of the story, make sure you subscribe to Canada Did What?

00:55:29.020 Everywhere you get your podcasts.

Full Comment - December 29, 2025

Best of 2025： Don’t let police take away your right to self-defence

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