It is completely rational to be outraged by those tragedies, but using extreme anomalies to claim the entire system is a joke ignores both the data and the law.
For example, citing Dear Zachary ignores the fact that Parliament unanimously passed Zachary’s Bill in 2010 specifically to close the exact bail loophole that Shirley Turner exploited.
Bail is also not a free pass. Our jails aren’t empty. Over 50% of the provincial jail population consists of people on remand, meaning they are legally innocent but have been denied bail. 2023’s Bill C-48 enacted a “reverse onus” for repeat domestic violence offenders, making it significantly harder for them to secure bail.
It is also just not true that it is “insanely easy to get away with it”. National statistics show that over 60% of adult criminal court cases result in a guilty verdict, and Canadian police consistently clear roughly 70% of all homicides. First-degree murder is still a mandatory life sentence.
The system relies on judges trying to predict human behavior. Occasionally, those predictions fail with horrific, unacceptable results. But claiming everyone just gets a slap on the wrist or that cases are simply dismissed is an emotional reaction to a tragedy, not a factual assessment of how the legal system actually operates.
It is completely rational to be outraged by those tragedies, but using extreme anomalies to claim the entire system is a joke ignores both the data and the law.
For example, citing Dear Zachary ignores the fact that Parliament unanimously passed Zachary’s Bill in 2010 specifically to close the exact bail loophole that Shirley Turner exploited.
Bail is also not a free pass. Our jails aren’t empty. Over 50% of the provincial jail population consists of people on remand, meaning they are legally innocent but have been denied bail. 2023’s Bill C-48 enacted a “reverse onus” for repeat domestic violence offenders, making it significantly harder for them to secure bail.
It is also just not true that it is “insanely easy to get away with it”. National statistics show that over 60% of adult criminal court cases result in a guilty verdict, and Canadian police consistently clear roughly 70% of all homicides. First-degree murder is still a mandatory life sentence.
The system relies on judges trying to predict human behavior. Occasionally, those predictions fail with horrific, unacceptable results. But claiming everyone just gets a slap on the wrist or that cases are simply dismissed is an emotional reaction to a tragedy, not a factual assessment of how the legal system actually operates.