In the throne speech delivered by King Charles III in the Canadian Senate May 27, 2025, the Carney government pledged to “bring a renewed focus on car theft and home invasions by toughening the Criminal Code to make bail harder to get for repeat offenders charged with committing these crimes, along with human trafficking and drug smuggling.”
The reference to “repeat offenders” nuances the Carney Liberals’ election platform promise to “move aggressively to protect victims” by imposing a reverse onus in bail hearings on those “charged with violent car theft, car theft for a criminal organization, home invasion, and certain human trafficking and smuggling offences.”
(The planned bail reforms largely echo those proposed by the previous Trudeau government in the fall economic statement last December, i.e., “to make bail and sentencing laws stricter to respond to public safety concerns related to violent offending and to violent and organized crime offences involving auto theft, break and enter, extortion, and arson.”)
Justice Minister Sean Fraser
With respect to violent repeat offenders, Fraser said, “We want to make sure that we do everything we can, within our power, to ensure that we keep communities safe. Sometimes that’s going to include changes to the federal laws around bail within the Criminal Code. It’s going to require front-line investments as well to strengthen, whether it’s at the border with CBSA or RCMP officers.”
“But there’s also a role for provinces and territories to play,” Fraser continued. “I’ve had a number of conversations with my counterparts at the provincial level to discuss the role that the federal government can play, but also the investments that provincial governments are going to need to make to ensure that the administration of justice actually has the system in place that will prosecute people in a timely way, that will have the capacity to hold people who should ... not be given bail.”
“There’s an awful lot of work to do,” Fraser remarked. “But we’re willing to do everything that we can, within our own purview, to make sure we keep communities safe.”
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre
“They mentioned crime but refused to say that they would repeal the Liberal catch-and-release bail law C-75 or the house arrest law — laws that have allowed rampant chaos and crime to overtake our once tranquil streets,” Poilievre said in a statement. “Let’s repeal the catch-and-release laws so that we can restore safety to our streets.”
Fraser, a Nova Scotia lawyer who served as minister of housing and immigration under Carney’s predecessor as prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said he finds the Conservatives’ call to repeal the bail amendments in Bill C-75, which codify the Supreme Court of Canada’s 9-0 decision in R. v. Antic, 2017 SCC 27, “curious,” given the official Opposition’s professed desire to toughen bail.
(Bill C-75 updated, streamlined and clarified the Criminal Code’s antiquated interim release provisions. Per Antic, Parliament incorporated: a principle of restraint for police and courts to ensure that an accused’s release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention; that bail conditions are reasonable, relevant to the offence and necessary to ensure public safety; and that sureties are imposed only when less onerous forms of release are inadequate. Antic and C-75 also require courts to pay particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal accused and accused from vulnerable populations when making interim release decisions. Beyond Antic, Parliament also legislated more onerous interim release requirements for offences involving violence against an intimate partner. Antic affirmed the fundamental importance of bail and of not imposing unnecessary terms of release, and set out 11 principles and guidelines that should be adhered to when applying the Criminal Code’s bail provisions in a contested hearing.)
Bill C-75 “actually makes it more difficult for offenders of certain types of crime to actually achieve bail,” Fraser told reporters after he was sworn into the Carney cabinet May 14, 2025.
“So before we have conversations about repealing Acts that actually strengthened the bail system to ensure violent perpetrators face the ... incarceration that they ... rightly deserve, when the courts find it appropriate, ... I find it very weird, frankly, that the Conservatives would be championing the repeal of legislation that actually strengthened ... the bail system,” he said. “I think it’s easy for politicians of varying partisan stripe to throw out bill numbers, but I think it would be helpful if they have actually read the legislation and considered its impact before they start suggesting measures that actually achieve the outcome that they say they want, despite the fact that they voted against them.”
“So I think the details are important,” Fraser said. “We’re going to dig in and do the work, but in terms of the specific agenda that we’re looking at, it’s exactly what we’ve campaigned on in the recent federal election.”
Fraser said that “in addition to the concrete policies that we’re putting in place, we’re developing a system that’s designed to advance the work.”
Fraser said bail reform will be spearheaded by himself and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, along with Ruby Sahota, the new secretary of state who he said was given “unique responsibilities focused on combatting crime.”
“So from a systemic point of view, from a policy point of view and from a point of view that factors in the experience of Canadians, we’re committed to creating a culture where Canadians feel safe in their communities,” he added.
Fraser said the Carney government believes it should make people and communities “feel safe.”
“Look, you’ve got to ground yourself in the experience of Canadians if you’re going to have success in politics, and we want to make sure that we’re creating a culture where Canadians feel safe in their communities,” he said.
The Criminal Code’s bail regime was most recently amended by the Liberals via Bill C-48, which received royal assent Dec. 5, 2023. Ottawa moved to enact the legislation after all 13 provincial and territorial premiers requested in January 2023 that Parliament modify the Criminal Code’s bail provisions to impose a “reverse onus” on persons charged with certain gun crimes. The premiers’ letter followed the 2022 shooting death of an Ontario Provincial Police constable, which happened while the accused was out on bail for other violent charges.
Among other things, Bill C-48 created a reverse onus for any person charged with a serious offence involving violence and the use of a weapon, who has been convicted, within the previous five years, of a serious offence involving violence and the use of a weapon. The amendments in C-48 also added certain firearms offences to existing reverse onus provisions and expanded the reverse onus for offences involving intimate partner violence to ensure that it applies to an accused person who has been previously discharged for such an offence. As well, C-48 requires the court to consider if an accused person has any previous convictions involving violence and to include in the record a statement that the safety and security of the community was considered. The court is also required to include in the record a statement setting out how the court determined whether the accused is Aboriginal or belongs to a vulnerable population and, if so, how the particular circumstances of the accused were considered.
Last fall, the Doug Ford Conservative government in Ontario called on Ottawa to enhance public safety by making “meaningful bail reform now,” including by legislating a “three-strike” rule requiring pretrial detention for repeat offenders and requiring ankle monitors as a condition of bail for serious crimes.
On behalf of the province’s 46 county and district law associations, the Federation of Ontario Law Associations (FOLA) commented at the time that the suite of criminal justice reforms sought by the Ford government “attacks due process and undermines the express language of the Charter, which guarantees the right not to be denied reasonable bail.”
(Section 11(e) of the Charter guarantees the right “not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause,” and, per Antic, “entrenches the effect of the presumption of innocence at the pretrial stage of the criminal trial process and safeguards the liberty of accused persons.”)
FOLA has said it has serious concerns with any criminal justice reforms that presume the suitability and infallibility of law enforcement to serve as investigators, judge and jury over the liberty of accused persons who have not faced trial. “To suggest that bare and untested investigations by officers ought to be sufficient to incarcerate citizens without due process opens our justice system to abuse,” FOLA said.
Criminal Lawyers’ Association president Boris Bytensky described the province’s demands as “mostly meritless.”
There is a “false narrative that has been painted” to suggest that recent bail legislations, such as Bill C-75 and Bill C-48, have caused reduced public safety,” Bytensky told Law360 Canada at the time.
“Bill C-75 merely codified recent Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence about the constitutional requirements of bail,” he said. “The only sections in either piece of legislation that do not track the direct rulings of the Supreme Court restrict entitlement to bail for certain categories of accused persons, rather than increase it, by placing them into newly enacted reverse-onus positions.”
Last month, Premier Ford announced provincial plans to toughen the province’s bail system through measures that include the introduction of special teams of prosecutors dedicated to arguing for the continued incarceration of serious and violent offenders at bail hearings. He proposed publicly naming judges who repeatedly grant bail to offenders who then commit further crimes.
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