Will calls in Manitoba to reform bail help make communities safer? Not quite, experts say

Caitlyn Gowriluk · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 22, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 12 minutes ago

Experts accidental they hold Canada's transgression justness strategy has a occupation with radical being arrested for caller crimes portion connected merchandise for different offences — but they accidental caller calls to betterment the bail strategy implicit concerns it's go excessively lenient are missing the point.

Defence lawyer Christopher Gamby said mostly speaking, radical arrested for different offence portion connected merchandise are often nabbed for things similar spot crime, "not the crimes of the century."

"We're not locking radical up and throwing distant the cardinal for petty theft. And I deliberation it's clip for america to really inquire wherefore that idiosyncratic is engaging successful this behaviour successful a repeated and astir compulsive fashion," said Gamby, the communications manager for the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association of Manitoba.

"Is it due to the fact that that idiosyncratic is fundamentally a atrocious idiosyncratic and they should beryllium separated from society? Or is it due to the fact that they're surviving with a truly atrocious addictions occupation and don't person basal needs met? 

"I've had clients connected merchandise who are saying to me, 'Look, I truly request assistance with this.' And assistance is not casual to travel by."

Calls for bail betterment person grown recently, including successful Manitoba, wherever municipal leaders gathered earlier this period to rise their concerns astir the contented up of the upcoming national election. 

But concerns what's been described arsenic a unsafe revolving-door transgression justness strategy are better explained — and perchance addressed — by considering the basal causes of the crimes being committed, said Adelina Iftene, an subordinate prof of instrumentality and the transgression justness program co-ordinator astatine Dalhousie University's Schulich School of Law.

"It's not that the bail strategy is lenient," Iftene said. It in information often "works connected overtime … successful presumption of however overmuch it incarcerates people," she said, noting much radical successful provincial jails are mostly awaiting proceedings than serving sentences.

"But it does not supply the supports that these radical request successful bid to forestall their reoffending and to support radical successful the assemblage from the assorted issues that led to that."

Ben Wickstrom, a spokesperson for the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys, said successful a connection immoderate calls for changing bail laws successful Canada besides request to beryllium met with "proper resources" for prosecutors to beryllium capable to grip their workloads.

Iftene said it's important to retrieve that adjacent radical who are denied bail, oregon those who are aboriginal convicted of their charges and service a sentence, volition yet beryllium released from custody.

Without the enactment they request to code what led them there, the chances they volition reoffend stay precocious — an effect Iftene said tin beryllium adjacent much acute successful smaller communities, wherever specified resources are often scarce.

"Nothing suggests that much remand is keeping communities safer," she said.

"On the contrary, determination is simply a batch of enactment that's showing that the deficiency of opportunities for rehabilitation, which see keeping radical successful prison, is really what's making america a batch little safe."

'Always going to beryllium immoderate risks'

In Canada, radical accused of crimes are legally presumed guiltless unless proven blameworthy — and nether the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they person the close to bail unless there's a compelling crushed to support them successful custody.

More caller authorities changes successful effect to bail concerns tightened immoderate aspects of Canada's regime, including expanding the usage of reverse onus provisions for definite offenders — meaning the idiosyncratic charged has to amusement wherefore they should beryllium released, alternatively of the authoritative having the onus to beryllium they shouldn't be.

Lawyer Gamby said it's the benignant of bail betterment immoderate person been asking for — and from what he's seen, it's hard to accidental what effect it's had.

"If that's not making a change, possibly they request to inquire a antithetic question, right?" helium said.

"This thought that bail betterment is going to beryllium however we marque wholesale changes to the justness strategy and marque our nine dramatically safer, I conscionable — with the top of respect, I conscionable don't spot it."

That doesn't mean Canada's bail strategy is perfect, said Christopher Sherrin, an subordinate prof and subordinate dean with the module of instrumentality astatine Western University successful London, Ont. — determination will always be cases where, successful hindsight, a bail determination is seen arsenic inappropriate.

But there's besides a outgo to not granting radical bail, some successful the fiscal consciousness of having to incarcerate a idiosyncratic and successful the consciousness that it takes distant the liberty of a perchance guiltless person.

"The world is that with a bail system, unless you support everybody down bars pending trial, there's ever going to beryllium immoderate risks taken," Sherrin said. 

"[But] erstwhile prosecutors spell into a courtroom and a justness makes a decision, they don't permission their communal consciousness astatine the door. They are members of the communities similar anybody else, and they are acutely live to the concerns and the risks that are contiguous with bail decisions."

And adjacent without changes to national legislation, determination are steps provinces can, successful theory, instrumentality to tighten bail successful their ain jurisdictions, said Danardo Jones, an subordinate prof successful the University of Windsor's module of law.

That includes hiring bail compliance officers to marque definite radical are pursuing their merchandise conditions, utilizing much GPS monitoring, empowering prosecutors to garbage to consent to much bails and assembling specialized teams of Crown attorneys to grip those bail hearings, helium said — immoderate of which Manitoba is already doing.

But "if we're going to fundamentally rewrite our bail laws, we person to marque definite that we're doing that successful a mode that's accordant with data," not conscionable governmental discourse, Jones said.

"The bail strategy tries to strike appropriate balance. Is it perfect? No. But what are we asking for? Are we saying that due to the fact that it's not perfect, we should conscionable get escaped of the full thing?"

He said wide changes to the bail strategy are possible, and Canada could "go back, if we wanted," to a clip when a idiosyncratic could beryllium "accused successful the greeting and sentenced successful the day and … [hanged] in the evening."

"But I mean, I deliberation we would each hold that that was an unenlightened clip — and not a clip that immoderate of america privation to spell backmost to."