Juno News - Ontario proposes driving licence ban for car thieves

00:00:00.000 Again, priorities are entirely out of whack. You have government saying that the big things

00:00:13.840 they need to do are giving millions of dollars to pasta companies. And then you have people

00:00:17.760 in Canadian cities looking around and wondering how things got so bad. We've talked about

00:00:22.780 homelessness and drugs on the show, which have ballooned into these massive problems

00:00:27.200 in pretty much every community in Canada. One we haven't given as much attention to has been

00:00:32.420 auto thefts. Now, I'm very fortunate in that my car has been broken in June, not for several years,

00:00:37.780 but it has never been stolen. There are people in cities like Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal

00:00:43.900 who have had their car stolen multiple times. This has become such an incredible way of life

00:00:49.260 where I believe in Toronto, cars are stolen every 14 minutes. A car is stolen every 14 minutes in

00:00:56.460 Toronto. I think that's the stat. It's certainly in and around there. So the Ontario government has

00:01:01.640 decided to get tough on this. One of the things they're going to do, if you do it more than three

00:01:05.700 times, they're going to revoke your driver's license. Yeah, that'll show you. You can't drive

00:01:13.160 because now when you steal the car, well, you won't be able to because you don't have a driver's

00:01:17.400 license. Look, I'm all for tough on crime stuff. This kind of strikes me as one of these things where

00:01:23.200 it sounds good on paper, but it's like a lot of gun control things and a policy predicated on

00:01:28.980 criminals following the law, which by definition they are not doing. But let's bring in someone

00:01:33.800 much smarter in the ways of the criminal law and the justice system than I, Ari Goldkind,

00:01:39.220 host with SiriusXM and Criminal Lawyer Extraordinaire. Ari, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming

00:01:44.440 on today. Great to be with you. And before we get to this, I was just listening to the last few

00:01:49.320 minutes of you talking about 200 and something dollars per person per day. You're one of the

00:01:53.960 few people in Canada who has the guts to talk about it. It should be at the top headline from

00:01:58.900 the Globe and Mail, which used to talk about and write about things like this. And God forbid the

00:02:03.320 Toronto Star never will. So for whoever's listening, I really applaud you for talking about it because it

00:02:08.260 is the third rail. And hopefully the more people who start to talk about it now with Elon Musk's

00:02:13.520 permission, of course, I think is the only way to make a difference. So I don't mean to

00:02:17.720 divert from what we're going to talk about, but what you've just talked about is really

00:02:22.640 important. And it drives me absolutely back, fill in the blank, because those are my absolutely

00:02:27.640 wasted tax dollars. And I can assure you, Andrew, you and your listeners can figure out how much

00:02:32.500 I pay a year in tax. Well, no, I appreciate that, Ari. And it affects everyone. And like a lot of

00:02:38.840 policies, it is a consequence of bad policy elsewhere. Because people say, okay, well, we have these

00:02:45.040 asylum claimants here. What are we supposed to do about them? Well, yeah, let's go back to the 1.00

00:02:49.260 first principle there. Why are they here? Because the government has not protected the border and has

00:02:54.120 basically allowed this ridiculous loophole in the asylum process to unfold. So anyway, now you're

00:02:59.700 getting me to do a secondary rant on that. But I appreciate the kind words, Ari. You always tackle

00:03:04.520 things in a very fearless way as well. The auto theft thing in Toronto, in Vancouver, in Montreal,

00:03:11.140 it's actually quite ridiculous. And I don't buy that this is going to discourage people,

00:03:17.440 the threat of having their license taken away, which is, again, less severe than the threat of,

00:03:22.280 you know, going to jail because you stole a car in the first place.

00:03:25.560 So you use the term ridiculous, which is a very good word. I use that all the time, too,

00:03:30.140 to describe everything Trudeau. And, you know, I'm not a partisan. I've been on your show where I've

00:03:34.720 complimented certain things that he's done. To me, I'm issue by issue by issue. Ridiculous sort of

00:03:41.040 minimizes what this is. It's actually insidious. And there is a difference between ridiculous and

00:03:47.220 insidious because the Trudeau government knows exactly who's doing this. It's not being done

00:03:52.160 by the Mennonite and the Amish. They welcome the people by the tens of thousands who come here

00:03:57.760 only to run and ruin havoc on our streets. This is what we're going to talk about today with the

00:04:03.240 licensing, the driving, the thefts, the carjacking, the home invasions. And, you know,

00:04:09.020 I take a bit of a different view, Andrew, than you did in your intro, which, you know, you're

00:04:13.520 right. Look, I'm a criminal defense lawyer. People will hear me talk here and go, wait a minute,

00:04:17.940 how does this man defend these people? That's my day job. But that also means I understand how the

00:04:23.660 sausage is made. So if we want to get to the truth, let's get to the truth. So you're absolutely

00:04:28.480 right, Andrew, that it's not going to likely deter the kind of criminal mind,

00:04:34.940 the kind of teenager, the kind of new Canadian, the kind of criminalized Canadian who is not at all

00:04:43.320 concerned with what the rule changes are or even being licensed. But that to me, Andrew, while you're

00:04:50.240 right, I still think there's an important thing the Ford government did today. And if you watch the

00:04:55.820 Minister of Transportation, Sakarya, who had a very, very compelling seven or eight minute press conference

00:05:02.640 today, and I watched it. And then he had the volunteer from Mothers Against Drunk Driving,

00:05:07.780 who lost her father, and then her son in separate drunk driving crashes. To me, and I'll pause after

00:05:16.400 this, whether or not it deters a criminal, a thug from doing what they do, the fact that you have the

00:05:23.440 Ford government essentially coming out and saying, you know, whether it makes a difference or not,

00:05:29.200 we're still going to do what we think is right, we treat having a driver's license as a privilege,

00:05:35.340 not a right. So whether it makes a difference or not, I think the changes they've brought forward,

00:05:41.300 whether they're symbolic, whether they make a dent, I don't think they hurt. And I think they're likely

00:05:46.620 to help. And there's a really powerful symbolism to me, to the Ford government speaking to taxpayers

00:05:53.260 and saying, you know, we actually prioritize you over the criminals you're paying for.

00:06:00.300 That's actually quite a cogent defense of this. And if I then sort of realize that you've persuaded

00:06:06.020 me slightly on this, I would also point out that it's something that comes relatively no cost. I mean,

00:06:13.040 symbolic policy that comes at a cost is dangerous for other reasons. But you know, the amount,

00:06:17.860 this really is the kind of thing that you can do. I mean, government can find ways to blow money on

00:06:22.380 things that you shouldn't think would require a bit. But doing something like this really doesn't

00:06:26.480 cost anything.

00:06:27.820 It really doesn't not cost anything. It actually saves on the back end, because whether you and I

00:06:33.080 are right or wrong, that it deterred, look, it's not going to deter a thug, Andrew, it's not. But if

00:06:39.020 you look at impaired, which is a great line of work for criminal defense lawyers like me. So if

00:06:44.780 something is great for me, it's bad for everybody else. So well,

00:06:49.240 That's the same for me as a talk show host, by the way, the worst thing I have to think about that.

00:06:56.100 But if it's good for me, or if it's good for an immigration lawyer, it's bad for everybody else.

00:07:01.200 Now, what's the point I make about that? It won't deter a thug who's going to drive unlicensed,

00:07:06.460 uninsured, who goes the wrong way on the 401 when he's out on bail for 13 things. But if you actually

00:07:12.860 look at who commits a lot of impairments, and you know, there's this myth out there, Andrew,

00:07:17.360 that they just got caught that one time they did it, it was that one time that they had those two

00:07:23.740 extra drinks. No, no, no, no, no. If you're getting caught, it probably means you didn't get caught the

00:07:30.220 other 20 times. So why does that link to my point here about the costs? A lot of people will hear

00:07:36.380 about this. And if they're going to a Leaf game, they're going to a Raptor game to watch both of

00:07:41.160 those teams lose. If they're going to a wedding or a bar mitzvah, just something in the back of

00:07:47.200 their mind, and I can't prove this, Andrew, might make them say, look, nothing has worked before to

00:07:53.640 deter them. Now my license could be taken away for a year or two or five or life, maybe one or two.

00:08:01.120 Now, again, Andrew, I'm making this point very distinctly. Maybe one or two people a week or a

00:08:07.920 month might say, I'll take an Uber, or I won't drive. But that one or two Perth people could be

00:08:14.560 another Marco Muzzo. And so for this to simply add suspension length, to add driving prohibition

00:08:21.440 length, to add some administrative penalties, to add some interlock, does not cost the taxpayer.

00:08:28.400 And the greatest denouement I can make to this sentence is look at what your first segment

00:08:34.060 talked about, about 230 bucks a day to people who have no business being here, and a lot of the time

00:08:41.940 are grifting us. This is a $0 investment by the Ford government. And I think is a bit of a shot across

00:08:49.100 the bow, Andrew, to the Trudeau government, to say, you be soft on crime, we'll be harder on crime,

00:08:56.920 not that the Ontario government can make criminal legislation, that's a constitutional issue,

00:09:00.660 different story. But I think that's a very good place for the Ford government to be. When there's an

00:09:06.440 exodus out of Toronto, there's a real frustration about the increase of crime, lack of social cohesion,

00:09:13.000 you name it, people are not happy with the state of our big cities across this country. Let Trudeau be

00:09:19.320 the guy to own that. Let Ford be the guy to say, I'm fed up, and I can't take it anymore.

00:09:24.880 Well, you touch on a very important part of this here, which is that criminal law is the domain of the

00:09:29.580 federal government. And there have been a number of areas of law where the federal government has

00:09:33.780 bungled it so much, it's really pushed provinces to get very creative and say, okay, yeah, what can

00:09:40.540 we do in this realm? I mean, in the case of Alberta and Saskatchewan, they've done an end run around the

00:09:45.340 federal government on a lot of firearms policy. In the case of just general criminal law for car

00:09:51.700 theft, here you have Ontario saying, okay, we can't get tough on this through criminal power, but this is

00:09:57.420 the thing we can do. They make, because a lot, you know, look, you get a number of criminal lawyers

00:10:03.220 on, they're all going to, I think they're all, oh, there's a constitutional problem. It'll be

00:10:07.440 challenged. Maybe it'll be overridden. Maybe one judge who really has never had anybody killed by a

00:10:14.380 drunk driver will say it's the separation. Okay, wonderful. Great. I don't care. There is a legitimate

00:10:20.660 HTA purpose here, Highway Traffic Act. They can make, so long as they hire good lawyers

00:10:25.900 to make their case, that there is a nexus. There is a connection here. It is not criminal.

00:10:31.580 They're taking a suspension that would be three days and turning it to seven. It's already on the

00:10:35.940 books. They're taking highway licensing, driver's licensing, which is an Ontario or provincial thing.

00:10:42.300 Other provinces have done that. If they were to say, look, on your third one, we're giving you an

00:10:46.880 extra 30 days jail. That's not what they're doing. So when I see in the last two, three days, a lot of

00:10:53.540 comments that, you know, maybe this won't stand up and it's going to be challenged. Who cares? That's a

00:10:59.540 Ford government problem that they would welcome. It's like Pierre Polyev, as you well know, Andrew, came out

00:11:06.200 last week and said, our bail system is broken. By the way, full disclosure, it is. And his position was given a

00:11:12.520 Supreme Court decision on parole and Paul Bernardo's and Veltman's. He'll use the notwithstanding clause

00:11:18.760 if he has to. Do you think he cares that a bunch of commentators on the equivalent of MSNBC

00:11:24.960 come out and say, oh, he can't do that. It's not constitutional. That's a battle that he can easily

00:11:31.920 win. And that's a battle in the courtroom of the public opinion that I think is a very, very wise

00:11:37.460 battle to be fought. Well, yeah, I mean, and anytime you get like the CBC panel assembled to

00:11:43.140 talk about, oh, the, you know, the, the constitutional precedent and all of that, you have, you know,

00:11:48.300 suburban moms in London, Ontario, in Kelowna, BC that are looking at yet another press release from

00:11:54.580 the local police department of a high risk offender that's been released into the community. And I don't

00:11:58.700 think they give a hoot about the charter. The crazy part of it, Andrew, if you really want to stretch

00:12:03.560 this to how crazy this is, look at the family that was killed on the 401 where that monster

00:12:08.940 Singh who was out on bail on two or three bales. And again, nobody wants to have this conversation.

00:12:15.880 He did not kill Caucasian, Caucasian, Caucasian John Smith, which usually makes it disappear 0.80

00:12:22.080 in the paper because the victim is not chosen. He killed Indian people. He killed a baby. He killed 0.98

00:12:29.980 Indian grandparents. We're, and nobody wants to point out the fact that are we allowed now to

00:12:35.700 talk about the system being broken? Is it okay now? The point that I'm making is there's so much

00:12:41.560 wokeness. There's so much identity politics brought into this. I invite people to go back and watch the

00:12:48.980 minister who today spoke for five to seven minutes, very powerful. His name is Minister Sakarya. I don't

00:12:54.840 know who he is. I've never seen him before. I wouldn't have picked him out of a police lineup until I saw

00:12:59.720 this. The words that he said about why they're doing this, about people driving, law-abiding,

00:13:05.740 innocent, rule-abiding, drive lawfully people with their families, with kids in car seats,

00:13:12.500 that this government will do everything they can to try and make the roadways more safe. And then,

00:13:18.620 as I said, brought in the volunteer from Mothers Against Drunk Driving who has lost her father and

00:13:25.340 her son to this. Why shouldn't a government, with all the powers that they have, lawfully,

00:13:31.860 constitutionally, do everything they can to send a message to the public that there is going to be

00:13:38.380 a price for a decision being made? Andrew, here's the kicker of why impaired is such an under,

00:13:44.760 it's taken for granted. It's taken lightly. Impaired driving are usually caused by people who

00:13:52.240 should know better. It's not a homeless person stealing a sandwich from Loblaws. It is a person

00:13:58.300 usually with a job, usually who knows better, but has been so cavalier with their approach to how they

00:14:05.640 treat society and driving. And then they end up, Andrew, only with a $1,200 fine. Explain to me

00:14:12.520 why potentially killing people, Marco Muzzo just got unlucky. He went through the wrong stop sign.

00:14:18.980 Explain to me why this kind of behavior in this environment where every morning we wake up to

00:14:24.740 road rage and crashes and drunk driving and new stats from the OPP. Explain to me why that's only

00:14:30.780 worth $1,200, but stealing a sandwich or a homeless person or a drug addict who's not doing something

00:14:36.640 violent, they go to jail for two, three months. That's a calculation that will never make sense to

00:14:42.140 me. Well, I'm glad you spit fire on this, Ari. We definitely need it and your industry needs it 1.00

00:14:48.140 and politics needs it. So maybe you could be coaxed into becoming Attorney General or something in a

00:14:53.440 couple of years' time. And your mouth is somebody's ears. Fair enough. Good to talk to you, Ari. Ari

00:14:58.160 Goldkind. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by

00:15:03.580 donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:15:08.020 you

Juno News - May 19, 2024

Ontario proposes driving licence ban for car thieves

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