EDITORIAL: Time to end catch and release bail

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We take no comfort in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s choice as justice minister. 

Sean Fraser, the Nova Scotia MP who announced he was quitting politics to spend more time with his family, then changed his mind, is now the new attorney general. 

Fraser has had a spotty career. He was previously housing minister and minister of immigration. We now have an unprecedented housing crisis and immigration is a shambles. We’re sure it’s just a coincidence. 

Fraser will have his work cut out for him. His predecessors gave us loosey-goosey bail laws that follow a pattern: Catch, release. Rinse, repeat. 

Cops arrest violent criminals and our weak-kneed justice system spits them back onto the streets to reoffend. 

Postmedia columnist Joe Warmington reported this week on a horrifying case in Toronto. Multiple women allege they were sexually assaulted by a male predator, who police allege was not just out on bail for a previous sexual assault charge – he was convicted of sexual assault. 

This comes on the heels of an incident last November in which a video posted on social media showed revellers at a party waving guns around. It ended in a shoot-out which had police officers ducking for cover. One officer described how the car was riddled with bullets. 

Warmington reported at the time that 23 people were arrested and 72 charges were laid. One youth had been charged in an earlier murder. Police allege two of those charged were out on bail, with one facing three gun prohibitions. 

Earlier last year, the country’s premiers wrote to former prime minister Justin Trudeau demanding changes to bail laws, following the murder of a woman in B.C. She was killed by a man with a long history of violence who’d been charged with breach of probation just weeks before the killing. 

The feds’ response was to tell the provinces to enforce bail laws.  

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called for the federal government to restore mandatory minimum sentences for violent offences and an option to refuse bail for violent crimes. 

The Liberals stole large portions of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s election platform. Let’s hope they steal his tough on crime measures. Then maybe we could restore safety to our streets and the innocent could sleep securely in their beds.