A bail reform bill is coming to the House of Commons next week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Thursday, Oct. 16.
Carney said his Liberal minority government would amend the Criminal Code to introduce reverse-onus bail for major crimes, allow consecutive sentences for multiple crimes, impose harsher penalties for organized retail theft and restrict conditional sentences — better known as house arrest and curfew — for certain sex crimes.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that judges must consider the earliest release of an accused person with the least amount of conditions, except when there is just cause for them to be held behind bars.
Crown prosecutors must prove to a judge that an accused person should remain in jail if there is a risk they will not attend court, could pose a danger to society and commit another offence or would otherwise harm confidence in the justice system. Someone charged with organized crime or terrorism would have to convince a judge that they be granted bail, also known as reverse onus.
Three experts who testified at recent hearings by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights offered differing opinions on what to do with repeat violent offenders.
Strengthening the Criminal Code is one way we’re combatting crime. We also need the people and the resources to enforce the law.
— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) October 16, 2025
That’s why Canada’s new government is hiring 1,000 more RCMP personnel across the country to keep your community safe. pic.twitter.com/zeEbQ4xnNy
They did agree that delays are unacceptable.
Brian Sauve, president of the National Police Federation, represents 20,000 RCMP members. He told the committee on Sept. 25 that frontline Mounties are repeatedly arresting the same individuals, often for crimes committed while on bail.
“This is dangerous, demoralizing and it drains police resources that could be better spent preventing crime,” Sauve told Members of Parliament from the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois.
The justice system is underfunded and leads to resource gaps that criminals exploit, he said.
“The federal government writes the Criminal Code, but provinces administer the courts and municipalities feel the greatest impact of repeat offenders, cycling through the system too often,” Sauve said. “Each level of government waits for the other to act and progress stalls.”
Sauve proposed better data collection and information sharing, because courts often make bail decisions with incomplete information. Bail hearings are often rushed, he said, and can involve officials who lack training. Monitoring and enforcement measures must be improved and a solution could include special constables dedicated to bail enforcement.
Finally, Sauve said the government needs to address youth exploitation by criminal networks who use teenagers to commit violent crimes because. If caught, the consequences are lighter.
Toronto-based Boris Bytensky, president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, called the system neither lenient nor perfect when he testified on Oct. 7.
“Decisions to change bail legislation must be evidence-based and not the product of public sentiment that is stoked by individual cases or by partisan politics,” Bytensky said.
Bytensky called remand centres, where those denied bail are kept, “highly criminogenic.”
“For every individual who loses a job, housing or a bed in a shelter or spot in a treatment program, simply from having their bail hearings delayed, even if bail is eventually granted, that individual also contributes to an overall increased risk to public safety in our communities,” Bytensky said.
He offered a three-pronged solution to attacking systemic delays.
Parliament should legislate a mandatory bail proceeding within 24 hours and limit bail adjournments only if requested by the prosecution for legitimate investigative reasons.
“If those guarantees are not met, then bail should be deemed not to be pursued by the Crown, and release should be granted, subject only to the mandatory conditions regarding weapons and protection of victims that exist in the Criminal Code,” Bytensky said.
Nicole Myers, an assistant professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., slammed catchy political slogans like “jail not bail” and “revolving door system.”
“These are not simply mischaracterizations. These are factually inaccurate,” Myers said on Oct. 7.
“For the most part, bail is about making predictions, and predictions about humans are seldom 100% accurate,” Myers said. “We only ever hear about the people charged with new offences. Nobody ever talks about the number of people who are released into the community, who show up as required and who do not commit offences.”
Myers said thinking about victims and community safety must be balanced with the presumption of innocence. The system needs streamlining, because the most-common decision on a daily basis is adjournment.
“We make very few bail decisions every day in court, whether that's a consent release or after a show-cause hearing every day, that is the most common outcome,” Myers said. “If we can reduce that and we can make that bail decision much sooner, we can avoid causing all kinds of harm that come from that extra time in detention.”
Myers pointed to the overwhelming majority of accused people in remand across the country, versus those sentenced for crimes.
In BC, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General reported 1,861 individuals in custody on an average day in 2024, but only 473 of them were serving a sentence. The rest were in remand.
At Prince George Regional Correctional Centre, one of 10 provincial jails, the average daily count was 210: 174 in remand and 36 serving a sentence.
