Juno News - Police union chiefs speak their mind about failed bail policies

00:00:00.000 The U.S. economy has experienced a surge, while Canada continues its six-year-long pattern of

00:00:09.840 stagnant economic growth. Police union leaders gave a scathing testimony during a justice

00:00:15.400 committee against liberal bail laws, the federal gun confiscation program, and so-called safe

00:00:21.600 supply policies. A new report found that more Canadians are on medical wait lists than they

00:00:26.300 were at the end of the COVID lockdowns in 2022. Hello Canada, it's Monday, September 29th,

00:00:31.580 and this is the True North Daily Brief. I'm Isaac Lamoureux. And I'm Wally Tantan. We've got you

00:00:36.640 covered with all the news you need to know. Let's discuss the top stories of the day and

00:00:40.320 the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else. While the U.S. economy has enjoyed a recent

00:00:49.420 surge, Canada's economic growth has been stagnant for the past six years. University of Waterloo

00:00:55.300 economist Mikhail Skudard noted Thursday that Canada's real GDP per capita fell at an annualized

00:01:01.420 rate of 0.97% between the first and second quarters of 2025, according to updated population estimates.

00:01:09.260 Real GDP per person was higher in the second quarter of 2019 than in 2025, showing, quote,

00:01:15.240 no economic growth in six years. By contrast, the U.S. economy expanded at 3.8% annual pace from April

00:01:23.220 through June, a sharp upgrade from the government's earlier 3.3% estimate, according to the Associated

00:01:29.460 Press. Consumer spending rose 2.5%, up from 0.6% in the first quarter and well above the 1.6%

00:01:37.060 previously estimated. The spring rebound followed a 0.6% first quarter drop in U.S. gross domestic

00:01:42.980 product, caused largely by a surge in imports ahead of President Donald Trump's latest tariffs.

00:01:47.760 Imports then fell 29.3%, boosting second quarter growth by more than 5 percentage points.

00:01:54.480 A key measure of underlying U.S. economic strength, which includes consumer spending and private

00:01:58.900 investment, grew at a 2.9% annual pace, up from 1.9% in the first quarter. The contrast leaves

00:02:05.360 Canada's economy looking stagnant. With real output per person still below its pre-pandemic peak,

00:02:11.160 Canada has seen no per capita gains since mid-2019.

00:02:14.880 So, Waleed, what are some ways economists and business leaders have proposed to make

00:02:19.600 Canada more economically competitive?

00:02:21.600 Well, look, there's been a whole range of things, Isaac. Frankly, Canada's economy is not

00:02:26.160 looking good from any indication, whether it's our present situation on trade or the future

00:02:32.160 with our debt and deficits. Many experts that once I've been listening to throughout my coverage

00:02:37.280 on the economy have suggested that, first of all, Canada does need to look into potentially

00:02:42.640 striking that trade deal with the U.S. that Carney has promised since the election.

00:02:46.320 That trade deal itself will make a much larger difference than any deal with an Asian country 0.91

00:02:51.760 like Indonesia or any fringe European country out west simply because the United States makes up

00:02:59.920 such a large part of our trade and shared industries across the border that it will have a significant

00:03:05.280 impact. We'll talk about this later in the show. We also have a very precarious fiscal situation with

00:03:12.240 governments across the country running deficits and our overall debt looks to pass 2 trillion,

00:03:18.000 which is beyond our GDP already. So, frankly, Ottawa has to clean up on its spending, capping spending,

00:03:24.960 bringing a budget of austerity this fall and multiple budgets of austerity, of course, with much

00:03:31.040 greater spending cuts than that proposed 15% on the bureaucracy, which has, by the way, grown by 99,000

00:03:38.560 workers in Ottawa alone over the last decade. And, of course, with that, also wages for that public

00:03:45.840 service have gone up, not only in the House of Commons, but also among managers. I think there's around

00:03:51.760 about 9,000 government managers, bureaucrats that receive over $150,000 in annual salary. So, obviously,

00:04:02.240 spending is quite high. The military spending project, as well, is not going to help that situation any

00:04:07.520 further. The drop of tariffs, the elbows-down approach, so-called, by Mark Carney on the U.S.,

00:04:13.760 which, technically speaking, generates less government revenue, that will continue to increase

00:04:19.600 the deficit larger than that of Trudeau. And, of course, we've been hearing from the PBO

00:04:24.000 budget officer, the interim budget officer, who I don't expect they'll be staying around much

00:04:28.080 longer if the Liberals are in charge, talking about just how our future outlook looks very

00:04:32.880 grey at the moment. So, definitely spending cap cuts and austerity are the most significant measures to

00:04:40.880 drive, let's just say, a better economic growth outlook, where you can look at potentially cutting

00:04:48.320 taxes, red tape, taking off certain industry taxes and whatnot, cutting, of course, other carbon

00:04:55.440 tax-related policies and other environmental regulations would definitely have a tremendous

00:05:00.320 positive effect.

00:05:01.040 Yeah, well, I'll just mention quickly, because we, of course, saw the parliamentary budget

00:05:05.600 officer testify in the House of Commons last week, and it was damning, to say the least. Of course,

00:05:12.080 we haven't received a budget from this Liberal government yet, which is saying something,

00:05:16.080 considering we got budgets through World War II, the Great Depression, and so on. So,

00:05:19.440 the fact that we have one, don't have one, sorry, is inexcusable. And the parliamentary

00:05:24.880 budget officer, the interim one, that is, he said, the numbers he's seeing are, he said,

00:05:29.200 quote, shocking and stupefying. I mean, he was calling, I think, for economic collapse, almost,

00:05:35.840 within a year and a half, if the Liberals don't get their spending under control. So,

00:05:39.840 it's not looking good at all.

00:05:43.200 Police union leaders blasted the Liberal government on Thursday, pressing them on lax bail oversight,

00:05:48.880 repeat offenders and safe supply policies, and the federal gun confiscation program.

00:05:54.880 Several police unions' heads appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on

00:05:59.920 Thursday to express their concerns. The committee had not met since the early summer, when it adjourned for

00:06:06.080 several months despite rising crime in Ontario, and a last-minute pledge from the Carney Liberals

00:06:10.800 to enact substantive criminal justice reforms ahead of the most recent federal election.

00:06:16.080 After a lengthy delay, Canadian Police Association President Tom Stamatakis National Police Federation

00:06:22.080 President Brian Sauvier and the Toronto Police Association President Clayton Campbell appeared

00:06:26.880 before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on Thursday. They raised concerns about

00:06:30.960 officer safety, gaps in federal bail data, recruitment and retention challenges, safe supply programs,

00:06:37.680 and the need for stronger federal support for frontline policing. The Liberal government

00:06:42.000 firearms confiscation program, first billed as a buyback program in 2020, was also major focus

00:06:49.360 at the committee. The initiative, which banned more than 2,500 previously legal models, has faced

00:06:55.600 repeated delays, confusion, and controversy. It is now slated to conclude by the end of 2026,

00:07:01.200 at an estimated cost of nearly $2 billion. Conservative MP Andrew Lawton cross-examined the

00:07:07.280 witnesses, questioning the efficacy of the program.

00:07:10.000 My Liberal colleague actually raises an important point here, which is that law-abiding gun owners

00:07:14.880 have nothing to do with crime. So, I'll ask you, Mr. Campbell, because you have spoken about that in

00:07:19.280 the past. Do you believe that law-abiding firearms owners in Toronto are a public safety risk?

00:07:25.680 No, and we've talked about this before. The gun buyback programming is going to have 0.94

00:07:30.320 zero impact on the crime we're seeing in the city of Toronto, period. And quite frankly,

00:07:36.480 it's, I don't know if there's any plan in place, but if there was some sort of plan to try and

00:07:41.600 obtain these, these firearms, I'm not sure who's going to do it or what resources. And I can think

00:07:46.560 of a hundred different ways, if you want to help public safety in the city of Toronto,

00:07:50.000 that we could have other things to do.

00:07:51.920 So, Isaac, I heard you spoke to the Public Safety Minister before, but what I'm hearing seems to

00:07:57.200 poke some serious holes in the Liberal government's confiscation program. What other ways in the last

00:08:02.320 few weeks has the program been put into question?

00:08:04.240 Yeah, Walid. So, the numbers of which this program has been questioned and criticized seems endless,

00:08:11.440 but I'll break it into four concrete things that have happened over the last week or so.

00:08:16.880 So, first, a frontline assessment, which you mentioned briefly, because at the Justice

00:08:20.960 Committee on Thursday, Clayton Campbell, as you said, the Toronto Police Association president,

00:08:25.600 he testified that the federal confiscation scheme will have zero impact on the violence

00:08:30.000 as officers are seeing, so it will do nothing. He also said, of course, that as all police

00:08:34.480 associations have been repeating over and over and over again over the last several years,

00:08:39.760 that almost all of the firearms used in crimes are illegal and come from across the border,

00:08:44.640 and, in fact, that many of the offenders are already prohibited from even possessing

00:08:49.120 guns because, surprise, surprise, they're out on bail. And that testimony came alongside

00:08:53.280 broader union concerns about, as you mentioned, bail data gaps, repeat violent offenders, and safe supply

00:08:58.240 policy impacts on public safety. The second thing I'll cover is enforcement capacity, because

00:09:03.360 one of the many things in the leaked audio that Public Safety Minister Gira Anandasangri told his

00:09:08.400 tenant was that he doubted municipal police have the resources to do this. And, of course,

00:09:13.440 that was the same recording where he said he would bail out his tenant if he was arrested,

00:09:17.120 although he did also say that he would be unable to pardon his tenant's criminal record

00:09:22.160 when he would be prosecuted. But in a subsequent statement, the next day, actually, Anandasangri

00:09:27.840 tried to claim this was a bad attempt at humor while he was launching the Cape Breton pilot of the

00:09:32.880 program, but perhaps he just thought nobody was listening and he accidentally told the truth.

00:09:38.640 The third point is, of course, participation by police forces and provinces. Anandasangri himself

00:09:44.000 has confirmed that the Ontario Provincial Police will not participate in this. Alberta, of course,

00:09:49.040 has repeatedly said they will not participate in this, and they'll even block municipal police

00:09:54.160 forces from doing so. And then, of course, we know the pilot project for this gun confiscation

00:09:59.600 program is happening in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. But Nova Scotia police has also said they will not

00:10:04.800 participate in this and that the Cape Breton pilot is actually just some sort of agreement between

00:10:10.880 the federal government and the city. So the province is saying we're not doing this and the city is

00:10:16.160 moving forward with it. And then the fourth, again, which you mentioned is cost, timing and scope,

00:10:20.960 because we know this initiative was introduced in 2020 and now bans more than 2,500 firearms, but has

00:10:27.680 repeatedly been delayed and the amnesty has repeatedly been extended. I know you mentioned

00:10:32.240 it's now slated to end at the end of 2026, but that might just get extended again. And Anandasangri

00:10:38.880 has said that the budget cap is $742 million. But of course, we know experts are estimating this to

00:10:44.480 cost even $2 billion, and that could grow even further. But another thing that happened this week is,

00:10:50.880 of course, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation offered free legal counsel to Cape Breton gun owners, citing

00:10:56.800 police testimony about limited public safety benefits. And some other organizations have come out as

00:11:01.680 well. I think the Canadian National Firearms Association, they said something along the same

00:11:07.360 lines. So these firearms associations are trying to help the people proceed with this in any way they

00:11:14.400 can. But to your question, Waleed, beyond committee testimony, the program has been challenged by

00:11:19.920 police union evidence on efficacy, the minister's own recorded doubts about enforcement resources,

00:11:25.360 explicit non-participation by major police services and provinces altogether,

00:11:29.840 and ongoing uncertainty on costs and timelines, which, of course, has all been

00:11:34.080 repeatedly documented over the last few weeks.

00:11:40.800 More Canadians are now on healthcare waitlists for surgeries, specialists and diagnostics than there

00:11:46.240 were at the end of the pandemic, according to government data acquired by the think tank,

00:11:51.200 Second Street. Data that they obtained through a Freedom of Information request and available

00:11:55.600 government data shows that more than 3.7 million people are in limbo in the Canadian healthcare

00:12:00.240 system on waitlists. The think tank, Second Street, estimates the number is closer to 5.8 million

00:12:05.760 as several provinces are missing data for specialists. Data from Yukon and Prince Edward

00:12:10.160 Island are entirely missing as they either do not know or don't collect data on patients waiting in

00:12:14.960 the healthcare system. But the data does confirm that nearly 3.8 million people were on waitlists in

00:12:19.280 Canada, which is a 26% increase from the 2.9 million confirmed cases in 2022 at the end of the COVID

00:12:26.560 lockdowns. Second Street's communications director, Dom Lucic, said in a news release released on

00:12:31.680 Wednesday from the think tank that Canada's healthcare system is, quote, broken and needs reform. Lucic

00:12:37.360 said, quote,

00:12:37.840 Coming out of COVID, many were talking about the waiting list backlogs in healthcare. While the pandemic

00:12:42.720 certainly didn't help, it's telling that even three years later, the number of patients on waitlists

00:12:47.520 continues to grow throughout Canada. So, Waleed, how does Canada fare against other universal healthcare

00:12:53.440 systems in developed countries? Is the issue just a lack of funding?

00:12:57.440 First of all, we have to look at the public sentiment that we've observed in the country over the last couple of years.

00:13:01.840 I mean, in 2020, across the board, and this is work done by Angus Reid Institute, the poll at about 49% of

00:13:08.160 Canadians in 2020 said that they felt that the government was doing either a good or a very good

00:13:12.720 job in handling healthcare. That number declined to 38% in 2021, 25% the following year, and in 2023,

00:13:19.200 that number saw 24% across the provinces. So, obviously, the public sentiment has been going in one

00:13:25.440 direction, and that's downwards. So, why is that decline so clear? Well, because Canadians are waiting

00:13:31.360 too long for their services, about 46%, nearly half of Canadians surveyed indicated they waited

00:13:37.120 two months or more for a specialist appointment. That number declined to 15.1% in the Netherlands,

00:13:43.680 and 13.2% in Switzerland, two high-income OECD countries that do have universal healthcare systems

00:13:49.360 provided for their citizens. And about one in five, 19.9% of Canadians reported waiting more than one year

00:13:57.360 for non-emergency surgery. Just half a percent, 0.6% of Swiss respondents indicated a similar waiting time,

00:14:06.240 and no one in the Netherlands has reported that survey that they waited as long as that. So,

00:14:13.520 comparing to those two countries, the Netherlands, ranked higher than Canada, allows for private

00:14:22.240 insurance firms to negotiate with healthcare providers on prices to provide more competitive

00:14:26.400 pricing. And these insurance firms must also accept all applicants and charge their policyholders the

00:14:32.080 same monthly fee for coverage. Pretty much, they can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.

00:14:37.920 And Switzerland was ranked among the top three on critical healthcare measures. Patients must also

00:14:45.440 purchase coverage in a regulated private insurance marketplace and share 10 to 20% of the cost of their

00:14:51.040 care with an annual maximum protection for the most vulnerable. Now, that's exactly a critical point

00:14:59.120 of mistrust in our system is the fact that our system in Canada is a very high cost system. Most

00:15:04.400 Canadians don't actually know this, but in 2025, preliminary estimates suggested that the average

00:15:10.240 payment for public healthcare insurance ranges for $5,000 to $19,000 for six common Canadian family

00:15:18.160 types depending on the type of family. Between 1997 and 2025, the cost of public healthcare insurance

00:15:23.440 for the average Canadian family increased 2.2 times as fast as the cost of food, 1.6 times as fast as

00:15:29.520 the average income, and 1.6 times as fast as the cost of shelter. It also increased much more rapidly than

00:15:37.040 the average cost of clothing, which has actually fallen in recent years. The top 10% of Canadian families

00:15:44.240 earn an average income of $88,725 will pay an average of $8,292 for public health insurance,

00:16:01.760 and the families among the top 10% of income earners will pay a whopping $58,853, and that's all through

00:16:10.160 taxes. And this is, of course, according to the Fraser Institute's data. So high cost, competitively

00:16:16.560 speaking, lower quality, and turnover time of service provided. And of course, the system is very

00:16:23.760 clear to Canadians, hence why you see the client sentiment of satisfaction. So a lot of things need

00:16:29.680 to be done. And, you know, for now, your short answer to the question was, we don't all fare very

00:16:36.240 well against similar countries in terms of wealth, and countries that actually have that commitment.

00:16:40.880 So we're pretty low among the, let's say top 30, or we see the high income countries that have the

00:16:45.760 system in place that we want to achieve. We're pretty down near the bottom. But definitely high

00:16:51.440 on spending, I believe we're top two in spending in that category, and second only to Switzerland

00:16:56.720 has the ratio of our GDP.

00:17:01.360 That's it for today, folks. Thanks for tuning in. You can stay on top of new episodes every

00:17:05.120 weekday by subscribing to The Daily Brief on iTunes and Spotify. Also, while you're at it,

00:17:09.920 make sure to hit us with a five-star rating, and please leave a review.

Juno News - September 29, 2025

Police union chiefs speak their mind about failed bail policies

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