True Patriot Love - Bail Reform Is Back - But Are We Solving the Wrong Problem？(Bill C-14 Explained)

00:00:00.000 Hello, my name is Jeremy Grimaldi. I'm a crime reporter in Toronto and the surrounding GTA,

00:00:11.300 and I'm hosting today's chat with Shakir Rahim, who's the Director of Criminal Justice Program

00:00:18.500 for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Welcome to True Patriot Love. How are you today?

00:00:25.000 Thank you for having me on. I'm doing well.

00:00:27.160 Yeah. So could you tell me a bit about who you are in terms of your working life and a bit about what you do?

00:00:37.180 Absolutely. So I'm a lawyer and director of criminal justice for the CCLA.

00:00:43.920 And my job is to advocate for laws in Canada that uphold all of our rights under the Charter.

00:00:52.140 And we do that in a few ways. We sue the government on certain issues. We intervene in major cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. We attend Parliament and talk to lawmakers about proposed legislation. And we do research about topical issues like the bail system.

00:01:14.140 And your focus, I guess, is our, as in Canadian, civil liberties. What does that entail in your viewpoint?

00:01:23.620 Well, I think it starts with the rights that we have under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, one of which, Section 11E of the Charter, is the right not to be denied bail without just cause.

00:01:38.080 And so any right that's in the Charter or freedom that's in the Charter is one that we stand to uphold and protect.

00:01:46.220 And of course, we do that also mindful of the different kinds of policy considerations that matter, including public safety when it comes to the conversation around bail.

00:01:58.260 Yeah, and public safety, I guess, will be on tap today when we talk about this issue.

00:02:04.240 It's definitely got people talking.

00:02:06.260 it's had people talking for quite a while now, and there is concern out there. I know that

00:02:11.300 from my work and my personal life, it does come up quite often. And I was wondering if you could

00:02:18.620 take us back to when this really started. Sure. You know, I can maybe take us back even further

00:02:26.580 in time to how we even arrived at at the bail system we have today so you know for most of the

00:02:38.420 20th century there was not much in the way of established law that applied to how bail decisions

00:02:48.740 were made and why they were made and in the 1970s there was a significant amount of research that

00:02:56.260 was conducted by some leading scholars about the bail system in Canada and that research led to a

00:03:04.660 lot of findings. A significant one was that there were many people who might be suitable for release

00:03:11.460 but couldn't be released because they were too poor to afford the cash that they were required

00:03:17.380 to put up. So in the 1970s Canada passed something called the Bail Reform Act that sought to ensure

00:03:25.540 that bail was more accessible but that there were still important considerations around

00:03:33.060 when it could be denied, for example, on safety-related grounds and the conditions that

00:03:39.060 could be applied when somebody was released. And around that time in Canada, around about 25%,

00:03:46.820 20% started collecting the data in the early 1980s of people in provincial and territorial jails

00:03:54.740 were people in pretrial detention. So many decades later, the CCLA published a major report on bail

00:04:04.160 in 2014. And that report found that the percentage of people who were in pretrial detention had

00:04:13.520 markedly increased in Canada. And right now it's at a record level of 76% of people in provincial

00:04:19.940 and territorial jails. Now, at the same time, as I think, you know, you alluded to, we have seen a

00:04:27.000 rise in headline stories and events where somebody may have been out on release and allegedly

00:04:35.260 re-offended. And that's kind of driven this conversation that we have a really lenient

00:04:41.600 bail system and that a lot of public safety issues are because bail is too easy to obtain.

00:04:48.220 And so I think that's where we are right now in terms of the public debate, if you will, and kind of how we got here on a really high level in the bail system.

00:04:59.080 When I look at the issue of bail and how it's come to grow, or at least morph in Canada, do you see that things are changing or do you not agree with that assessment?

00:05:11.880 well i think the one of the challenges we have actually is the absence of good data about the

00:05:20.860 bail system so if you brought in let's say the minister of justice or a provincial attorney

00:05:27.160 general and you point black ask them how many people out on bail allegedly re-offended last

00:05:33.740 year they can't actually answer the question because canada does not collect that information

00:05:39.600 and so you know we have been advocating along with other groups for quite a while now that

00:05:46.600 we need to collect better better data we need to know um you know how many people are allegedly

00:05:52.100 re-offending what kinds of offenses uh is that occurring under um you know what percentage of

00:05:58.900 people out on release does that apply to uh and we need that information to ensure that any changes

00:06:06.200 we make to the bail system are grounded in evidence. And they'll address the cases that

00:06:12.700 we are concerned about, but they also won't erode, you know, the important right that is the right

00:06:20.000 to reasonable bail. You know, I'll just briefly mention, you know, I think it's important to

00:06:26.720 remember that before evidence is heard, before any arguments are made in the case, before a judge or

00:06:33.560 jury has passed judgment, right? So someone's accused you of something. Bail is really all

00:06:38.580 that stands between an innocent person and a prison cell. And so for us, it's an important

00:06:44.940 right because it protects people's liberty before they've been convicted of anything.

00:06:49.560 That doesn't mean that there aren't certain restrictions that can apply, but that when

00:06:53.740 we tinker with the system, we need to know that we're not eroding that protection for people who

00:07:00.380 can be released in a way that is safe for the community.

00:07:05.600 Sure. And yeah, I've definitely seen a rise in the number of police forces that are announcing

00:07:12.620 that people charged have been on recognizance, have been on bail. And as a result, readers and

00:07:21.180 citizens are seeing this. What do you say to people who read stories like one that I wrote

00:07:27.680 recently on a young man who committed a murder. This is in 2022. And it was found during his

00:07:35.480 sentencing that he had broken his recognizance seven times and was let out on bail again and

00:07:42.800 committed the murder days after. It's cases like this that I would imagine people shake their heads

00:07:49.780 at. Well, first of all, I think it's quite right to reflect on those cases and ask the hard

00:07:57.200 questions about public safety in the bail system when they arise. That is a concerning case and it

00:08:04.140 is one we should talk about. I think what's important is that when we then take that next

00:08:10.520 step of saying, how should we change the bail system or how should we modify it, that we have

00:08:18.160 that information. So maybe we say, okay, there's a certain kind of set of offenses or a set of

00:08:25.600 prior violations of a release order or whatever it might be that show there's a significantly higher

00:08:32.440 risk when on release of not complying with conditions. And then we tinker the system to

00:08:38.600 respond to that. So I think that that's a really legitimate question to ask. I think where it veers

00:08:44.320 into challenging territory, right, is where on certain cases people and politicians and sometimes

00:08:55.080 police services react to say well you know that's that's the kind of case where no one should get

00:08:59.320 bail or this shows we shouldn't have bail for this kind of offense um i'm sure you're familiar

00:09:05.000 for example with the story of umar zamir uh in in toronto mr zamir was a for listeners who might

00:09:11.800 not know um you know family man who was out on the town with his family and uh several people

00:09:18.760 approached him while he was in his car in a parking garage uh in plain clothes uh and you know

00:09:26.200 he panicked he had a pregnant wife accelerated his car away turns out those folks were undercover

00:09:32.120 police officers he was charged with with first degree murder and he was released on bail and at

00:09:37.880 the time everyone kind of pointed to that and they said well that's why you know no one like that

00:09:42.440 should be getting bail we shouldn't have any bail for for murder and in fact the ontario government

00:09:46.760 has proposed abolishing bail altogether for a certain set of offences.

00:09:51.680 But he was found not guilty.

00:09:54.340 It was widely seen that there were some pretty big problems

00:09:57.360 with police officers' testimony on the stand.

00:10:01.340 But there wasn't really much in the way of reflection

00:10:03.620 from some folks about their initial comments.

00:10:05.960 So I only mention that to say that it is why we really need this data

00:10:12.400 and this information so that we ensure that people like Mr. Zamir,

00:10:16.600 who were rightly released are, but that in other cases, we can make the kinds of interventions

00:10:22.480 necessary to prevent future harm to people. Sure. And that's a great case to bring up. I

00:10:30.620 remember it well. And yeah, it's important to know both sides, 100%. But like, for example,

00:10:38.620 if you're talking to like a layman on the street, do you think it'd be unreasonable for someone to

00:10:44.280 say, okay, if you're charged with gun offenses, or if you've been found to be holding a gun or have

00:10:52.240 a gun that's had a scrubbed off serial number, for example, that you should be held.

00:11:01.160 Well, let me give an example of why even in that kind of weighty situation, you need the

00:11:07.500 discretion of bail. So there was a shooting down at near, I believe it was Sudbury in Queen Street

00:11:16.300 in Toronto. It was either this year or late last year. And very publicly, several arrests were

00:11:23.280 announced of people at the scene. This was at a music studio. And there were a series of gun

00:11:29.280 possession charges that were late. And only a few weeks later, several of those charges were

00:11:36.020 withdrawn by the Crown because there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

00:11:41.980 And some of those folks were also on pretrial release, they got bail.

00:11:46.700 So why, might you ask, does it make sense for such a weighty allegation, an offense,

00:11:52.420 to still have bail as a possibility?

00:11:56.120 So often what happens is police might arrive on the scene, right?

00:11:59.800 And they may not have time to figure out who actually possessed what.

00:12:03.260 a bunch of people, there's a gun, there's different ways to have possession. So you

00:12:07.500 can have what's called constructive possession, where you might not be holding the gun, but

00:12:11.640 it's in the room next to you or in the room. And so you're connected to it in some way

00:12:15.220 or you knew about it. There's a lot of uncertainty at that stage. So often there might be a bunch

00:12:19.720 of charges late, but then there's more investigation or there is further information brought to

00:12:26.140 light. And it turns out that person charged with possession, clearly there's not enough

00:12:32.600 evidence to support a finding of guilt. And that information can also come out in the

00:12:36.940 bail stage because they look at, you know, what's the evidence, what is the nature of

00:12:40.040 the allegations. So the reason I mentioned that is to say that certainly there might

00:12:46.160 be certain gun possession cases where because of someone's record, the nature of the facts

00:12:52.420 and so on, pretrial release is not warranted. But because of the kind of stage of the criminal

00:12:58.940 process you're at it's not like each case is a is a slam dunk or even close to a slam dunk and so

00:13:04.900 that's why you need that room that okay maybe this person can be released maybe they have an ankle

00:13:10.540 monitor maybe they're under house arrest but it's not quite the same as we should categorically say

00:13:16.800 anyone charged with that offense should never be releasable. Sure yeah that makes sense I often

00:13:23.280 hear about it in a car six people five people in a car one gun everyone's charged exactly but i mean

00:13:32.000 then so a fair argument and then someone may say well what what about guys like um the story i

00:13:39.760 just mentioned uh a young young gentleman uh it breaches his recognizance six times and is then

00:13:49.120 released again. How does that kind of stuff happen? Well, you know, let me provide two thoughts on

00:13:57.200 that. So, you know, first off, in any bail decision, right, a judge has to provide

00:14:04.800 their reasons. And sometimes those aren't publishable until the case is concluded to not

00:14:10.780 prejudice the actual trial proper. But we can go and look at the reasons that are provided for

00:14:18.700 release in that kind of situation. So I'm not familiar, well, I guess none of us are yet with

00:14:23.640 the specific rationale there, but that would be, you know, where we can find the why. And

00:14:31.720 those decisions are also subject to appeal by the Crown, if they wish, if they disagree with

00:14:38.040 the judge's finding. One of the challenges, I think, you know, so, you know, you cite that

00:14:43.660 example, and I agree with you that it does cause some concern, serious concern. But what we don't

00:14:49.840 hear about is all the cases where someone is denied release. So, you know, as I mentioned,

00:14:55.060 you know, right now, we're at a record level in the country when it comes to pretrial detention.

00:14:59.740 In Ontario, it's over 80% of people in our provincial jails are in pretrial detention.

00:15:06.920 So the reason I mentioned that is that there are a lot of cases that we don't hear about,

00:15:12.380 where people are in fact denied bail.

00:15:16.580 And so it's not to minimize these other cases

00:15:19.940 that we're hearing about in the headlines

00:15:21.460 or the one you referenced,

00:15:22.600 but that to really get an accurate picture

00:15:26.200 of what's going on,

00:15:27.540 I think requires us to also think about

00:15:30.900 all of those cases we don't hear about

00:15:33.980 where somebody was not released

00:15:36.240 and those cases where somebody was released

00:15:38.920 even on a serious offense,

00:15:40.300 but never allegedly re-offended. Now, all of that is to say that I would not be being truthful

00:15:48.920 if I said there is a way to fully minimize risk, right? There is an element of risk in any system

00:15:55.920 unless you say as soon as you're charged, you're locked up. So there is some element of risk,

00:16:02.280 but how do we ensure that level is minimized as much as possible so that we have a system that,

00:16:08.360 you know, protects the presumption of innocence, but as you say and note, at the same time

00:16:15.060 ensures that we have protection for public safety and, you know, not to sound like a

00:16:19.440 broken record, but that brings us back to that data point is that we need to be able

00:16:24.560 to understand what's going on in the system to make those kinds of changes.

00:16:30.120 Yeah, 100%.

00:16:31.120 I mean, I guess it's difficult for people because, you know, as the public, they're

00:16:36.780 They're saying, well, you're the risk you're minimizing is the risk to innocent people who may have done nothing wrong and don't deserve to be to be the subject of violence, for example.

00:16:50.480 But but so that's why I guess the bail system becomes such a such a sensitive topic with people.

00:16:56.520 But as you say, it's important, it's vital that a democratic society has the means to allow people to achieve bail because they haven't been, nothing's been proven against them.

00:17:14.300 And that's the cornerstone.

00:17:16.160 absolutely and and again it's it's it's you know not to say that there aren't there there are cases

00:17:23.960 where we have to draw the line right and say actually the risk is too high here so you know

00:17:28.520 our position isn't we have we have a right to not be denied reasonable bail without just cause not

00:17:33.320 a right to bail in every case so I think it is important we recognize that public safety is part

00:17:38.880 of the conversation. But as you say, it can't be the only part. I'll give you another example of

00:17:46.600 kind of where that plays out, right? So we know that, you know, you can only be convicted of an

00:17:52.220 offense if you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, right? Because we say, look, we don't want

00:17:56.760 innocent people to be convicted of an offense and serve, you know, all this time in jail for

00:18:01.940 something they didn't do. So we've set the bar pretty high about what we got approved to send

00:18:06.880 someone to jail. Now, you might say, well, maybe it's too high. Let's lower that to it's more

00:18:13.540 likely they did it or not, right? You could have a society that did that, but then you'd have

00:18:19.700 a lot more cases of people who were innocent who go to jail, even if there might be some

00:18:26.560 public safety benefits. So it's a really challenging balance of how do you ensure

00:18:32.400 that we protect these rights, but also ensure the public is safe. And that's why you need that

00:18:40.000 evidence-based approach. If we're just going off of, well, here's how I'm feeling about how the

00:18:44.720 system is, or here's the, you know, this particular story that was outrageous, we kind of miss all

00:18:51.000 that really important nuance and deliberation. So, I mean, I guess lack of statistics means that

00:18:59.960 we don't even know if people are being irrational in saying the bail system is in crisis right now.

00:19:07.380 Is there any information to tell us one way or the other if it's an irrational thought that the

00:19:13.140 bail system is in crisis? Or are some of the popular opinion truthful in that things have

00:19:21.500 changed, things have gone wrong? What's your thought process there? And also, furthermore,

00:19:28.960 is it okay to tell people you're wrong when they feel something and they feel like they see

00:19:36.620 something? Is it okay to say, no, that's not actually what's happening when, again,

00:19:42.720 we don't really know? Well, I have a few thoughts. First, I would say,

00:19:48.360 I, like any other person, when you hear about something horrific that's happened and you look

00:19:53.460 the circumstances and you see maybe a decision to release was part of that, feel concerned.

00:20:00.100 And I think that's a really legitimate feeling to have and to want action on that. So I would

00:20:06.180 not for a second dismiss the legitimacy of that reaction. I think it is a fair reaction.

00:20:14.340 I think that the problem is that our political leaders, instead of then saying, okay, we see there are issues that are causing concern to the public, we got to, you know, get off our rear ends and do the hard work to figure out how we address this, have not taken the steps necessary.

00:20:38.380 I mean, you can go back to the parliamentary hearings in the 1970s and 80s, and legislators were asking government officials, where's the data?

00:20:48.520 Where's the information about the trends of the system and how we understand what you're proposing?

00:20:54.160 And they're like, we don't have it.

00:20:55.820 Well, I'll quote you, the current Minister of Justice.

00:20:58.500 This is what he said.

00:20:59.220 He said, it's not as though there is an effective national data set that will demonstrate conclusively that certain changes will or will not have a desired impact.

00:21:09.020 And he's speaking about his own bill right now, the bail reform bill at the federal level.

00:21:14.700 And, you know, we, CCLA, we met with his predecessor and the predecessor before him and others met.

00:21:20.440 And we've all been saying, get your act together, collect the data so we can actually make policy that we understand what it's going to do.

00:21:29.020 So I think that there's been a bit of a sleight of hand where instead of elected officials being held accountable for not doing the work they should be doing, they're actually willing to just say, well, I don't know what is going to happen here, but I'm content eroding access to bail for everyone in some hope of achieving something.

00:21:49.160 Even the legislation that's been proposed right now, Bill C-14, you know, you've heard people talk about repeat violent offenders, repeat violent offenders.

00:21:58.460 All the new reverse onus provisions, that's when you got to prove why you should be released,

00:22:03.240 supposed to the state, they apply to people regardless of their criminal record.

00:22:07.560 They don't have to have a prior conviction.

00:22:10.000 They don't have to have a record of violence.

00:22:12.080 The offenses don't have to involve violence necessarily.

00:22:15.320 So anyone who's an alleged first-time offender now for a bunch of these offenses is going

00:22:20.140 to face a reverse onus.

00:22:21.320 And so that's what I would say the public should really be calling upon their elected officials to do, is to do that hard work so that we have real solutions to what they're feeling.

00:22:34.140 So are you in opposition of C14 and the reverse owners?

00:22:37.720 Yes, we are. And the reason I just cited is one example why, is the fact that it's not actually restricted to the kinds of cases that we've been told are the bill's targets.

00:22:56.200 Gotcha. Yeah, so I'm assuming that you have a different approach that you'd take?

00:23:02.980 Do you see that there's a problem or is that not even something that you admit to or want

00:23:11.760 to venture down that path?

00:23:13.900 Well, I'd say we have kind of almost two sets of problems.

00:23:18.960 So as I said, I do think that the types of headlines that we've seen, you know, where

00:23:25.760 someone is released and allegedly we offended, we need to understand what is the frequency

00:23:31.420 of that relative to overall release numbers? What are the conclusions we can draw about

00:23:39.520 is there a type of offense or type of prior history that can inform risk of releasing

00:23:48.320 someone or the kinds of conditions? So we support taking those steps. And once we have

00:23:54.420 that information, legislating based on it. So that is our position. It's not that there's

00:24:00.480 no room for legislative change, but it has to be supported by that information. On the other hand,

00:24:08.100 though, it is also true that our bail system has some major problems in terms of, for example,

00:24:16.960 conditions in pretrial detention, right? So let's say we even do deny more people bail.

00:24:22.600 At the Toronto South and other facilities in Ontario, you know, there are regular long-term lockdowns, significant overcrowding, breakouts of various diseases.

00:24:36.560 I mean, judges have written, you know, over 100 decisions about the conditions there.

00:24:40.260 And that's also a public safety risk, because if you take someone and you put, you know, so now they're disconnected from any employment, family, community, you put them somewhere where, you know, they're in close quarters, they're dealing with all kinds of different physical or mental health challenges now, and then they come back out into our community, that's not setting anyone up for success, right?

00:25:06.960 And they might not even have been convicted of anything during that whole process.

00:25:10.260 Similarly, right now, the government's proposed, as you likely are aware, doing away with the hard ceilings on how long a trial can take.

00:25:21.360 You know, right now, that's 18 months in provincial court and 30 months in superior court.

00:25:26.480 So, again, if you're saying that or if the government is saying that, hey, we want to deny bail more, but also, by the way, we want to get rid of the ceilings for how long you're going to spend in jail before you have your day in court.

00:25:38.760 Well, that's a pretty big problem.

00:25:40.260 Right. So if they're going to be taking these steps, they should be ensuring that they're funding the system properly so that people are now not going to be spending even longer in pretrial detention.

00:25:53.180 So it's that I think we do see issues, but I think we see them from several different angles in the criminal justice system.

00:26:00.560 Yeah, almost every judgment or sentencing I read nowadays has some element of the conditions in custody, and you see credit given to seemingly almost everyone because of the conditions in these jails and prisons.

00:26:22.300 And you kind of wonder when that's going to stop.

00:26:26.000 That's a whole other issue.

00:26:28.520 But it was a real pleasure speaking to you and better understanding the issue from all sides

00:26:34.160 and the great work that you guys do over there at CCLA.

00:26:38.600 And yeah, I'm guessing we're going to see what the changes are if they make it through.

00:26:46.120 And it'll be interesting times ahead.

00:26:51.680 Absolutely.

00:26:52.500 Well, look, thanks for having me on.

00:26:54.040 I know it's a complex subject to kind of have a discussion over,

00:26:58.840 and I'm really glad we're able to kind of have a productive exchange reviews on it.

00:27:04.280 So really appreciate that.

00:27:05.960 Yeah, it was a treat. Have a nice day.

00:27:08.040 All right, you too. Bye-bye.

True Patriot Love - March 11, 2026

Bail Reform Is Back - But Are We Solving the Wrong Problem？(Bill C-14 Explained) ｜ with Shakir Rahim

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