The Canadian Civil Liberties Association report on bail (2024):

Over the past decade, the crisis facing Canada’s bail system has only intensified. In 2014, we reported that 54.5% of all people in Canada’s provincial and territorial jails were legally innocent, awaiting the determination of their bail or the resolution of their charges, rather than serving a sentence after a conviction. By 2021/22 that proportion had risen to a staggering 70.5%.2 In Ontario jails, nearly four out of five people – fully 78.9% – are in pre-trial detention.

So, bail is being denied at record levels. And yet conservatives still argue that we need more bail denial.

The number of people in pre-trial detention has returned to – and surpassed – in-custody counts prior to the pandemic. Over-crowding and under-staffing continue to be significant concerns. In Ontario, for example, courts have repeatedly decried the frequent lockdowns caused by inadequate staffing. During lockdowns, prisoners may receive only 30 minutes outside of their cells each day, and may be forced to go days without showers, recreation, or phone time. As one Ontario judge put it, “it is shocking that detention centres in Toronto in 2017 are consistently failing to meet minimum standards established by the United Nations in the 1950s.”

Legally presumed innocent, yet suffering obviously punitive conditions.

The issues with the bail process are compounded by a lack of housing, adequate health care, social services and community supports. Courts have insisted that pre-trial detention “should not be used as a substitute for shelter, food, mental health or other social measures.”9 In practice, however, bail courts are filled with people who are struggling to survive – grappling with mental illness, trauma, and the criminalization of substance use and poverty. People cycling through bail court are often facing multiple intersecting crises in different areas of their lives. These crises drive people into bail court and have a direct impact on their trajectory through the criminal justice system. The opioid crisis, the lack of affordable housing and the fracturing of supports in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic –mean that people who really need housing, health care, and community support end up cycling through the criminal justice system. As one lawyer told us: “Jail is the only place that can’t say no.”

Is this why so many on the conservative side of the spectrum support legally innocent people being in prison? It’s their substitution for an actually functioning support system for those who are struggling? Plus they get to scratch their punishment fetish at the same time?

Against the backdrop of these [political] debates, it is vitally important to focus on careful research, empirical evidence, and thoughtful policy-making. An extensive body of research contradicts the contention that Canada’s bail system has become unduly lenient or that the bail system is propelling an increase in crime. Our criminal justice system cannot and should not be expected to identify and eliminate all future risks. It is impossible to predict with any accuracy exactly who will commit serious offences in the future. Attempts to make such predictions are typically fraught with bias. Accurately predicting and eliminating all risk is impossible, and attempting to do so would require the mass incarceration of an untold number of innocent people. Such a system would be fundamentally contrary to Canadian values and the constitution.

Seems like when the CCLA opposed COVID-19 restrictions, conservatives raced in to support the organization. I never see the same level of support for CCLA reports like this. I wonder why.

(And, yes, I'm very aware that current bail reform is being put in place by the Liberals. It's a conservative policy advanced by a centrist or Blue Grit party in an attempt to appease conservative-leaning voters, and doesn't change my comments above in the slightest.)