We are in trouble when it comes to respect for the law.
As a society we increasingly find it inconvenient, politically incorrect, or too expensive to respect and bolster the law and its supremacy. Instead we look the other way while it is broken, avoided, not enforced or in many cases effectively mocked.
Whether we are talking about the criminal courts, regulation of our capital markets, provincial offences courts or aboriginal occupations, we are allowing respect for the law to be eroded.
This was the gist of a message conveyed recently by John Tory to the Lawyers Club of Toronto.
In my 12 years as a Legislator, for example, I have seen tougher and tougher laws created to fight drunk driving. And yet, we have a parade of people passing through the courts who have their drunk- driving charges downgraded to careless driving or less. The same is true of sentencing in this area. Jail is supposed to be mandatory on a second conviction, but in what percentage of cases is it actually happening? We put a jail sentence on a second drunk driving conviction to punish people and to deter them. If we don’t enforce it, then the law is disrespected.
Governments must provide the resources to process charges and deal with offenders. This means adequate numbers of Judges, Justices of the Peace and Crown Attorneys, and enough resources to deal with those convicted and sentenced. This is true in criminal courts, civil courts and in the regulation of our capital markets.
Toronto police report that one in six arrests they make is an arrest on a bail violation. This is a huge allocation of their time and resources away from more serious crime and away from valuable work they could be doing in neighbourhoods and on the street. Many people on bail have no respect for the law, and one of the reasons for that is that they know there are rarely any consequences for violating bail conditions. Bail violation charges must be prosecuted and bargaining those charges away must be the exception. Proper sentences should be applied and if necessary change the law to say those who repeatedly violate bail conditions just don’t qualify for bail. And collect 100 cents on the dollar from guarantors as the rule rather than the exception.
This is no different than the matter of plea bargaining and sentencing deals and the impact they have on confidence in our justice system.
Think of Caledonia. There are unaddressed grievances on Six Nations. But we can’t allow any group of people to decide that when they have grievances, they can take the law into their own hands. While it is not widely publicized, the unending standoff at Caledonia has made it possible for other less celebrated events to occur where the rights of other citizens are impaired by people who have simply decided to establish their own laws.
If the rule of law breaks down, and it is something which happens slowly and not suddenly, we will lose that one thing which most separates us from other less fortunate places in the world.
We can’t afford to let that happen. We must maintain respect for the law. |
