As the stock market swings wildly and a U.S.-induced trade war carries on, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is forging ahead with a campaign focused on the other issues he wants voters to think about on election day — and on Wednesday, it was a new tough-on-crime policy proposal.
Poilievre is pushing for a crime crackdown now because he says the last Liberal government let violent crime rates spike by pursuing a lighter touch for some offenders. Academics who study these issues say Poilievre is proposing American-style policies that are both cruel and ineffective.
Poilievre pitched what he’s calling a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out law,” which would stop criminals convicted of three “serious” offences from ever getting bail, probation, parole or house arrest, keeping more people behind bars for longer.
As part of this proposed policy, a Poilievre-led government would designate three-time serious, violent criminals as “dangerous offenders” under the law to make their release into the community less likely.
Repeat offenders will also be required to serve a minimum sentence of 10 years to life behind bars for their third offence, with release only possible if they demonstrate “spotless behaviour,” produce “clean drug tests,” learn a trade or get some education while in prison, Poilievre said.
“Hug-a-thug, catch-and-release policies have destroyed our once safe towns and cities. Only Conservatives will take violent crime seriously and do what it takes to get it under control,” Poilievre said.
WATCH: Poilievre says Conservatives will create ‘three strikes you’re out’ law:
Poilievre says Conservatives will create ‘three strikes you’re out’ law
Poilievre pointed to the 2022 murders by Myles Sanderson as one reason why tougher policies like this are needed now. Sanderson was out of prison on statutory release at the time of his brutal crime spree, even though he had a long criminal record with 59 convictions.
It’s not just the Conservative leader — some law enforcement associations have also been raising the alarm about Liberal crime policies.
A frequent target is Bill C-5, which expanded the availability of conditional sentences, allowing some convicted criminals to serve time under house arrest.
Another piece of legislation, Bill C-75, which required judges to release some people charged with a crime on bail at the “earliest reasonable opportunity” and with the “least onerous conditions,” has also been a source of concern — although the Liberals did subsequently tighten some aspects of the bail regime.
On Tuesday, the Toronto Police Association, the organization that represents that city’s officers, said cops seized two guns from a man who was out on bail while facing 14 criminal charges including forcible confinement and assault with a weapon.
“Maybe with another 19 charges laid, someone will keep him in custody,” the association said in a social media post.
Hugh Stevenson, Poilievre’s Conservative candidate in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and until recently the city’s chief of police, said Wednesday the country needs a fundamental rethink of its crime policies, which he said are putting the lives of law enforcement personnel at risk.
Stevenson said police are dealing with the same criminals “day after day after day” because of the “ridiculous” bail release provisions of C-75. He called for “the biggest crackdown on crime and criminals that Canada has ever seen.”
Despite some police support, Poilievre’s proposed policies are likely to face a slew of legal challenges if enacted.
“Mr. Poilievre’s proposed three-strikes law with indeterminate sentences is patently unconstitutional. This is a failed, draconian American policy,” said Benjamin Perrin, a law professor at the University of British Columbia and a past legal adviser to former prime minister Stephen Harper.
California was the first U.S. state to enact a three-strike rule, and dozens of other states have since copied the policy in some form.
“I was a Reform Party intern with Mr. Poilievre in the 1990s,” Perrin said in an interview with CBC News. “These three-strike laws were very popular back then, we would talk about them on the campaign bus and dream of implementing them. But Mr. Poilievre is stuck in the 1990s timeframe — he hasn’t learned that they don’t work. He’s holding fast to these Reform Party and Republican tough-on-crime policies despite the research, the evidence. They’re snake oil and they are ultimately costly, cruel and ineffective.”
Perrin pointed to American research about similar three-strike laws that shows such a policy can actually lead to a crime increase, especially murders.
He said criminals facing a third offence, and the possibility of life behind bars, can have victims and witnesses killed to try to stymie another conviction.
“People who are about to face their third strike don’t just sit there and wait for the police to arrest them,” Perrin said.
It’s also unclear that sending more people to prison for longer will drive down crime over time, Perrin said. “Our prisons are cruel, they’re harsh, they’re costly and don’t work. They increase reoffending,” he said.
Still, Poilievre said it’s worth trying.
“It’s time to lock up the very small group of rampant career criminals who are causing all the chaos,” he said. “Enough. We need a change to bring safety back to our streets.”
Liberal Leader Mark Carney dismissed Poilievre’s three-strike pitch as a gimmick.
“For serious or habitual criminals, the full force of the law should be applied and appropriately severe punishment put in place,” Carney said. “But for me it’s not as simple as developing a baseball rule to deal with that type of situation.”
Harper’s government introduced a slew of new mandatory minimum sentences for some crimes. The Supreme Court did away with some of them, most notably for some firearms and drug offences, but it also upheld others including the five-year minimum penalty for committing a robbery with a prohibited weapon.
The last Liberal government has used this uneven legal track record as justification for scrapping some mandatory minimum penalties, which require a judge to impose a certain amount of time in incarceration for some crimes.
Poilievre has suggested he’s open to using the notwithstanding clause to stop courts from overturning some of the more stringent measures he’s pitching, saying Canadians’ Section 7 right to life, liberty and security of person should come before the rights of convicted criminals.
The overall police-reported crime rate is well off the rates seen in the early 1990s when crime in Canada was at its highest point in decades.
According to Statistics Canada data, there were 10,342 crimes per 100,000 people reported to law enforcement in 1991, compared to 5,843 in 2023.
But that decline, largely driven by a huge dip in property-related crimes, obscures a substantial increase in violent crime over the last several years when the Liberal government was in power.
The number of violent Criminal Code violations was 1,070 per 100,000 people in 2015 — the first year former prime minister Justin Trudeau took office — and over time it rose to 1,427 per 100,000 in 2023, according to Statistics Canada data.
“Violent” crime includes homicide, attempted murder, sexual and non-sexual assault, robbery and abduction, among some other crimes.
The data shows there hasn’t been much of an increase in some violent crimes over this time period: The number of first-degree murders was essentially the same in 2015 and 2023, although like in the U.S., there was a substantial spike in murders during the COVID-19 health crisis that quickly receded.
The same can be said for manslaughter: The rates are roughly the same over the eight-year period between Trudeau’s election and 2023.
But there’s one area where violent crime has notably increased: sexual assault.
