TVO - Friday, May 24, 2024 - 11:00 p.m. (ET) - Segment #2

>> Steve: doug ford's government is nothing if not tough on crime. The premier lets it be known whenever possible that he is pro- police and prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent criminals from getting away with stuff. So it was with interest that we notice this week that the province is offering some people charged with drunk driving offences a deal. The details if you would. >> So when you are pulled over by a police officer for drunk driving in ontario, you could be charged with a criminal code violation. That's a federal law. Or you could be charged with a breach of the ontario highway traffic act. That generally carries a milder penalty. Because ontario's courts are so busy and clogged up at the moment, there are probably good odds you could say that a full criminal case might not be heard in a timely fashion. And so the province has, during covid and since, has started taking to offering alleged drunk drivers a deal. They will downgrade the charges from a criminal charge to a provincial a fence and that means no lengthy criminal trial, no criminal record for the accused, but a speedier resolution. >> Steve: let's put this on the record right away. Obviously this is not for people who drive drunk and injure somebody or god for bid kill somebody. These are lesser offences. But the problem is, because of a supreme court decision some time ago called the jordan case, if you don't get your case attended to by the justice system, as they say, in a timely fashion, judges have simply, in order to sent a message to politicians, thrown cases out altogether. They say you are not adhering to people's rights to justice in a timely fashion if people and up waiting two, three, four years to get their cases held. So the thinking here is at least we will be able to meet out some kind of penalty and unclog the courts if we get people to accept this deal and go for lesser penalties. But I'm interesting -- interested in the story because I think it's an interesting choice the government has made. This is one of those stories where the ford governments brand as a tough on crime government runs headlong into the realities of a justice system that is overworked, does not have enough judges, it is overextended and interestingly enough, the ford government has opted for a rather practical rather than ideological solution. >> Right. And this news comes not long after the government announced that it was toughening the penalties for drunk driving among other highway offences. We just talked about that last week. >> Steve: car theft. >> Car theft but also drunk driving and others. As you say it's an interesting moment for the government to choose, pragmatism as opposed to what they might be more comfortable doing from a partisan lens. And there's some substance here to the government's explanation. They are not inventing the problem in the courts, the government did not write to the decision, they would love to see if you tossed because of these delays but they have the reality that they have. But I think we would be remiss if we did not mention that this is something government critics have pointed out that even with measures like this, you know, even if we view it charitably as an attempt to streamline the administration of justice, there are still many, hundreds of cases certainly, that get tossed because of lengthy delays so while this might be a good faith effort to address backlog in the courts, it is on it's own clearly not doing enough. >> Steve: right on. With that we are off to issue three. [ ]

>>> Another story for you out of the justice system, this time involving all three orders of government. Let's start with the city of toronto which had applied for the right to decriminalize drug possession for personal use. When premier ford found out about it, he wrote to the prime minister saying, this is the wrong way to go, please do not give the capital city permission to do this. Now the feds have responded saying the project of the cities is a no go. Once again, jmm, a fascinating example where expert testimony runs headlong into political reality. This time political reality won out. >> Absolutely. If we go over the political reality more explicitly, you know, this subject makes a lot of people, a lot of voters uncomfortable. The idea of decriminalizing personal drug use. I mean some people just have a genuine objection to the idea of decriminalization and in particular how it has played out in other jurisdictions. Even people who might be sympathetic to the idea have had reservations. We have just seen in british columbia there was an effort -- there was, in fact, decriminalization a personal drug use in bc and the government of their has walked that back. That is an ndp government in bc. Notably an ndp government that is now running for reelection. >> Steve: correct. >> There might be I think in a perfect world a better argument for decriminalization if we had, you know, robust wraparound social services for people who are using drugs and people who are addicted. I'm not going to scandalize anybody by saying those wraparound services do not currently exist in ontario. So even if the prime minister had been inclined to grant this request, even if the mayor and premier and prime minister could have all gotten on the same page, the politics have made it functionally impossible. >> Steve: the politics is tough on this one and we have seen doug ford uses political currency this past week very effectively. He is the head of a party that is in 40% in the polls right now, on like prime minister trudeau who is leading the party with close to 20% of the polls. Premier ford was prepared to use some of his political capital on this issue in this way. The office of the premier of ontario writes the office of the prime minister 15 times a day, 20 times a day on all sorts of different topics. They don't normally or very rarely I should say make those letters public. But this one they did. Premier ford put the letter out there saying to the prime minister, do not let this happen, and the pmo clearly made a political decision along the lines of, we are getting hammered on too many fronts right now, we just cannot take on yet another fight, particularly against a premier of a big province where we need votes and he's more popular than we are right now. Ideologically, I think it's fair to say that the prime minister's office would have been inclined to side with the city of toronto in this application for decriminalization. But right now it is just too hot a political potato to handle. >> I think you are right. And it's a shame because the problem that decriminalization was supposed to solve is still there. We have an absolutely devastating opioid crisis in ontario. No less then ontario's police chiefs have been the loudest voices saying criminal law is not really the proper way to deal with this. Right now decriminalization is clearly not going to happen politically but I don't know what solution anybody is offering instead. In particular I don't see what solution the city, the province and the feds at all agree on and implement. >> Steve: at the moment it seems impossible that all three levels will be on the same page on this one. And there we go. Okay, up next, your column, my column. [ ] [ ]

>>> Time now for our regular feature which we like to call your column my column in which we reminisce about the columns we wrote for the tvo website this past week. Get us started, what have you got? >> I wrote about the dismal state of toronto's infrastructure, particularly it's transportation infrastructure. >> Steve: is this something you've ever written about before? [ Laughter ] >> John: that and housing policy, right? The city has published a report recently looking at all of it's capital assets, all of the big structures that the city owns and there is some relative good news, some parks are reasonably well kept. Other areas are doing all right. But the city is literally billions of dollars short of what it needs just to keep things in a state of good repair. We are not talking about actually improving service levels, we are just the bare minimum to keep things running. And the point I wanted to make with this column is that I really don't believe we are actually saving ourselves any money here. When the subway breaks down during morning rush hour, something that happens more and more frequently days, it forces everyone to either use more expensive alternatives or simply be late for work. All of that has a real economic impact. I think that is an important part of the conversation about why the city of toronto historically has had very low property tax rates. It needs to fund its capital responsibilities. But I think there's also a broader issue. A lot of the time when we hear people, politicians talking about saving taxpayer money, some of that is undoubtedly true but I do think some of it is also shoveling costs around and taking costs that are normally borne by the government and saddling them on the backs of individuals. >> Steve: can I jump in with a question? Presumably the lard -- longer-range solution is to find new and different sources of money for the city so that it can keep it's infrastructure in a good state of repair. But where those resources come from, I mean there has to be a list of 50 different options on it, everything from a municipal sales tax to an extra hotel tax to getting more money from the feds, the provinces, I don't know, take your pick. >> John: and mayor olivia chow has been using the example of the upcoming taylor swift eras tour concert in toronto, saying this will generate, you know, millions if not tens of millions of dollars in economic activity that ontario will benefit from, canada will benefit from. But the city of toronto will benefit. They don't have sales tax or income tax but it will have to pay police over time. >> Steve: the city will. >> John: yeah, for the taylor swift concert. So we need to have a broader discussion about how we equip cities to handle these kinds of costs. That has been ongoing for certainly more than one decade, frankly it goes back to the 1970s in some ways. I don't think there's any sign of that being resolved. >> Steve: speaking of which, are you taking your kid to taylor swift concert? >> John: no. We saw the movie though. >> Steve: oh, you did. I still have to do that. I want to watch it. I don't know any of her music but she is such a phenomenon. I have to watch it. >> John: the movie is good, I enjoyed it. >> Steve: and I have seen her in a kansas city chiefs uniform so. >> John: there you go. >> Steve: that much about her I know. >> John: how about you? >> Steve: I don't want to plug one of my own columns this week. I want to plug two others. The first one is by our pal nam kiwanuka and she asks whether government priorities at all levels are aligning with the actual needs of constituents. She makes the argument at all levels of government seem to be missing the mark these days in their priorities, and I think she plucked a couple of examples. A lot of effort and expenditure on for example renaming yonge dundas square of which there is not a massive hue and cry out there to do. And yet at the expense of other things that may need more of our attention. She writes, in the country as a whole while the gdp make be growing, people's immediate needs are not being met. The demand for food banks has broken records, including for first-time users and individuals working full time. Some have nowhere to live but encampments. Many can't afford to buy a house, let alone rent. This issue of encampment is something we have been paying attention to, particularly a few weeks ago I wrote a piece when I was walking around downtown hamilton, my hometown, and I saw this tent city sort of spring up in the square right outside city hall. And I think the punchline of the peace I wrote was, we are going to have to have decision-makers exhibit a heckuva lot more imagination if we are going to figure out how to solve this problem. The encampment, that tent city

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