Politicians claim new bail law will make B.C.'s streets safer
The B.C. government is celebrating a new bill that makes it harder for some people to get bail.
On June 16, Bill C-14, the Bail and Sentencing Reform Act, received royal assent, which is when a bill becomes part of Canadian law.
Bill C-14 makes it more challenging to get bail in specific circumstances, including in cases of repeat and violent offending and intimate-partner violence.
“Too many families in British Columbia have experienced devastating loss because of repeated violence. These changes will help better protect people before harm occurs,” said Niki Sharma, B.C.’s attorney general, in a press release.
She said she is encouraged by the changes to reverse-onus bail provisions, which she said were one of B.C.’s “top priorities” in their proposals to the federal government.
Typically, if a Crown prosecutor is to deny bail to an accused person, they first have the onus to show the court that they have cause for doing so.
Reverse onus, however, shifts the onus from the Court to the accused. In this case, the accused person has to be detained while waiting for trial, unless they can prove to the court why they should be released on bail.
“In cases involving choking, suffocation or strangulation, the burden is now on the accused to justify whether they should be released on bail, rather than on prosecutors to argue for detention,” said Sharma.
Nina Krieger, minister of public safety and solicitor general, said Bill C-14 is an “important step to keep repeat offenders off our streets.”
She said that the reform is a direct response to concerns that local governments, the business community, and B.C. residents have been calling for.
“These reforms respond directly to the concerns raised by local governments, the business community and the people of British Columbia who have been calling for tougher measures to address crime and improve public safety,” Krieger said.
“With stronger consequences for people who repeatedly flout the law, we’re making important strides toward safer streets throughout B.C. and Canada, and restoring confidence in our justice system,” she added.
The Business Improvement Areas of British Columbia (BIABC), which represents dozens of business improvement districts and over 55,000 small businesses, sent out a release on Tuesday, applauding Bill C-14.
However, they also urged senior levels of government to build on these reforms.
“While the legislation addresses several categories of repeat offending, it does not fully address the broader challenge of prolific non-violent repeat offenders whose actions – including those related to retail crime – continue to have significant impacts on businesses, employees, customers, and communities,” said Jeremy Heighton, the president of BIABC.
‘An appearance of toughness’
However, Mike Beckett, a criminal justice attorney, told Daily Hive in an interview earlier this year that he’s concerned that these changes won’t “meaningfully improve public safety” nor that it’s an “evidence-based fix.”
He said judges already detain people who are high risk or repeat offenders, and that he hasn’t seen any “solid national data” showing that bail leniency is driving crime.
“I think it creates an appearance of toughness, really delivering a cosmetic change. And so that’s obviously attractive for politicians, because it makes them look like they’re doing something about it.”
Further, he said the new law will keep people detained who are presumed innocent, cause longer and more contested bail hearings, and increase jail populations and pre-trial detention centers. This will result in more backlog in the system.
Beckett added that this bill will affect marginalized groups the most.
“These sorts of reforms ignore the root causes of crime in the first place — addiction, poverty, lack of support. And what it can tend to do in this regard is deepen over-representation in prison populations, without really enhancing public safety.”
“You’re going to end up detaining people who either pose no risk or are factually innocent. This approach will inflate remand costs, create delays, and raise the risk of wrongful convictions via guilty pleas to get their case over with. And this does nothing to stop the truly prolific offenders who slip through the cracks due to systemic failures elsewhere.”
Beckett acknowledged that there’s a small group of people who are repeat offenders.
“But I think when you have these prolific offenders catching headlines and then that being cast as representative of the entire bail system, I think that’s where the error is.”