Tighter bail restrictions are not the solution we are looking for

On Monday, October 28^th, the provincial government issued a press release urgently calling on the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to tighten bail provisions for public safety and to close what they deem the “revolving door of justice”. Among their calls for change is the complete removal of bail availability in situations where the offender has been charged with various crimes, including intimate partner violence.

While we support the government’s efforts to improve systemic responses to IPV, we respectfully suggest that bail reform should not be the focus.

Many survivors are charged with IPV because of being misidentified as the primary aggressor by police under Ontario’s mandatory charging policies. What happens to these survivors, most of whom are women, when they are charged? Taking away the availability of bail in these circumstances further victimizes and traumatizes survivors and does nothing to address the violence to which they have been subjected. Survivors in these circumstances are at risk of pleading guilty just to escape the grim reality of pre-trial detention and, for some, to get back to their children so they can keep them safe from the abuser.

These changes will have even more impact on survivors from marginalized communities, particularly survivors from Indigenous, Black and racialized communities who are already disproportionately criminalized. Further bail restrictions will exacerbate the already high and disproportionate rates of survivors from these communities in the pre-trial detention and prison system.

What happens in situations where both the survivor and abuser are charged if they have children? If they are both denied bail, will the children end up in the child welfare system? This could have a devastating impact on families, particularly those from marginalized communities who are already overrepresented within the child welfare system.

Even when the abuser is the one who has been properly identified and charged by police, removing any possibility of bail can have a detrimental financial impact on the family, which may be financially dependent on the abuser. There are also situations where a survivor calls the police to de-escalate an urgent situation without any desire for the abuser to be charged. Now, these same survivors may be less likely to call the police for help, knowing that it may not only result in a criminal charge but also the possibility of pre-trial detention without any possibility of bail.

Having an abuser spend more time in a pre-trial detention facility may also escalate the violence. The abuser may start threatening or harassing her from jail, have his friends or family intimidate her, and it could result in violence escalation once he is released.

We are also concerned with Ontario’s already overburdened jail system. How will the jails accommodate all of the new inmates being held on pre-trial detention? What conditions will they be subjected to once incarcerated?

To read more about our concerns about bail reform, we encourage you to read our joint submission on Bill C-48. In 2023, Bill C-48 brought about changes to Canada’s bail system to include repeat IPV offenders as part of the reverse onus bail provisions in the Criminal Code. We, along with other GBV organizations, raised concerns about these changes at the time because we could see the unintended yet predictable and preventable negative impact they could have on survivors.

If not bail reform, what should the provincial government focus on instead?

1. Immediately move Bill 173 to third reading and officially declare IPV an epidemic in Ontario.
2. Review Ontario’s mandatory charging policies. These policies continue to result in the criminalization of survivors, and there have been various calls for review in the 40 years since these policies were first introduced.
3. Prioritize support to community resources and services that address GBV.  
4. Re-instate the Violence Against Women Roundtable to bring government and community-based experts together to discuss ways to address GBV in Ontario.
5. Advocate for the creation of a federal GBV Commissioner to improve accountability when it comes to implementing the many recommendations and reports we already have about GBV and how to address it. See the report published by LEAF last week.