09/10/2026
I have had enough of watching the same cycle in this town and then seeing it play out in every city in this country. Catch and release is not a talking point. It is how the system actually works. Police haul somebody in after a beating, a knife, a gun, a house set on fire, an assault on a kid, and a few days later that person is back on the sidewalk because a court decided public safety comes second.
Bill C-75 in 2019 told judges to release people at the earliest opportunity under the least onerous conditions. That is the principle of restraint. It sounds decent in a press release. On the ground it means a violent repeat offender walks while the person he just put in hospital waits months for a court date. Bill C-5 then stripped mandatory jail time off a pile of serious gun offences. Premiers begged Ottawa to stop it. Police chiefs begged. Victims begged. Ottawa talked. People kept getting hurt.
Look at the numbers because they are not opinions. Between 2023 and 2025 the OPP charged 9,710 people who were already out on bail. Those people generated more than 54,000 new charges. Over 7,500 of those were violent. There were 879 sexual assault charges, 146 robberies, seven attempted murders, and ten homicide charges laid against people who were supposed to be supervised in the community. Toronto police said 43.6 percent of violent offenders reoffended in that window. Calgary said 58 percent of violent offenders reoffended in one year and averaged more than four extra offences each. In Winnipeg a joint warrant unit found four out of five of the violent people they scooped were already on bail, parole, or probation. Almost one in five they arrested more than once. That is not a justice system. That is a revolving door with a badge on it.
It is not only the big cities. An OPP constable was unalived by a man who was already out on bail for fi****ms and assaulting an officer. A Toronto officer was shot in a coffee shop by a man with a record going back decades and a history of failing release conditions. Winnipeg’s mayor started publishing repeat offender bulletins because the same people kept walking. One man had two dozen violent convictions over eleven years and a dozen bail or probation breaches, got released after a shooting, then carjacked someone while still on that bail. Another was arrested sixteen times, breached court orders fifteen times, had nine violent convictions, then committed a murder while free on an undertaking. A third got bail after a shotgun in a taxi, bail again after bear spray, then fired a homemade gun into a street. Police objected. Courts released them anyway.
Now look at Yarmouth because this is not a downtown Toronto problem only. Rural RCMP charged a man with eighteen offences after he allegedly assaulted people inside a house, had a replica firearm, stole a vehicle, came back and tried to set the place on fire, and he was already failing to comply with a release order. That is catch and release with a match. A public emergency alert went out after a fight near Forest and William involving a firearm. When they grabbed the suspect they found a shotgun, an outstanding warrant, multiple failures to comply with a release order and multiple failures to comply with probation. He was already supposed to be behaving. A youth was left with life threatening injuries on a trail near Clements Ave and the man charged with aggravated assault then allegedly assaulted officers in custody. Another man at the same scene was charged with failing to comply with a release order. He was already out. A knife fight in a Starrs Road parking lot and the accused was released on conditions. Historical sexual interference and alleged child exploitation material and bail after a few nights. A taxi operator charged with sexual exploitation of youths released on conditions. I am not a court. I am a person who lives here. I see the same pattern and the same released pending line and I am tired of pretending this keeps anybody safe.
People will say the police are the problem. I do not buy that as the whole story. Officers in this town and every town I have watched are the ones showing up to the same addresses, the same trails, the same parking lots. They arrest. They write the file. Then a justice of the peace or a judge applies the restraint principle and the person is home before the victim is out of the hospital. When someone is already on a release order and they pick up new violence, that is not the cop failing. That is the law telling the cop his work does not matter.
Mark Carney’s crowd passed Bill C-14 in 2026 and called it sweeping reform. Reverse onus for some violent auto theft, home invasion, choking, a third violent offence. Fine. Better than nothing. It did not repeal the 2019 restraint rule that still sits underneath everything. Prosecutors and police are still telling committees the same people are walking. Weeks after C-14 became law you could still read stories of violent repeats getting out because the default is still release. That is why I do not trust speeches from the same party that built this. If they wanted it stopped they would have stopped it years ago when the premiers were screaming.
Law abiding people in small towns do not get a press conference when they change their route home or stop letting their kids walk a trail. They just live with it. Women do not feel safer. Shop owners do not feel safer. Kids do not feel safer. The people who follow the rules are the ones being managed. The people who break them get conditions, a curfew they ignore, and another chance.
I want dangerous and violent offenders held. I want bail to mean something. I want a third violent charge to mean you stay in until trial. I want police time spent on new threats, not rearresting the same man for the fourth breach. I want Ottawa to put Canadians first instead of managing decline and calling it compassion. Maxime Bernier and the PPC will say the quiet part. Keep the violent ones in. Protect the people who actually live here. I have had enough of watching this town and this country pretend a revolving door is justice.
