The Barrie Police Services Board discussed the court system’s bail process during Thursday's meeting.
Lynne Saunders, Crown attorney for Simcoe County, was on hand to speak about the overall process, and how police and the Crown work together.
The presentation was an effort to explain the factors that are taken into account in relation to the issue of pretrial release of an accused person.
“I was invited to provide a brief overview of the bail process to the board, specifically the ‘ladder principle’ that was drawn from the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Antic,” she told BarrieToday after the meeting.
In the case of R. v. Antic in 2017, the judgment impacted bail courts by upholding the accused’s constitutionally guaranteed right to a reasonable bail.
“The ladder principle is just a series of increasingly onerous forms of release rungs that starts with an appearance notice without conditions and then progresses to a detention order,” she said.
After the presentation, Saunders took questions from the board, with member Arif Khan saying, “There are concerns in this community … somebody who took out three people on the way to a hockey game, and who has a history. So, that ladder principle — did it work?
The specific case Khan referenced is that of Cassie Korzenko, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for a pedestrian crash that seriously injured three people on Mapleview Drive East in Barrie in 2022. Korzenko has a history of drug abuse, and a criminal record.
“It’s very frustrating, and I can tell you that folks of my vintage, this is not the bail system we grew up with,” answered Saunders.
“You didn’t get continuous kicks at the can. Let’s put one more layer of restriction on and see if you can behave.”
Saunders said the courts are often saying impaired driving is a scourge in the community, and it is a privilege to operate a vehicle.
“That’s what the Crowns are saying in these bail hearings, with the view to trying to seek detention,” she noted. “But the judges and the justices of the peace, primarily the JPs that are presiding over bail hearings, their direction flows directly from Antic, that people are presumed to be released without conditions, and it’s only if you, the Crown, show me the additional restrictions that are going to be required that I can impose them. So, it’s a challenging system to work within.”
Saunders described the bail court in Barrie as “running all day, every day.”
“That’s how many people are coming to our bail court, and we are running hearings because we don’t think they can safely be released.”
In terms of who can make a difference, she said there are public interest groups such as Mother Against Drunk Driving and various community groups that are upset about a prevalent type of crime in their community.
“I think if they approached their members of Parliament, their members of provincial legislature, and let them know that this is a concern, that’s the sort of traction I think that we need to try to make change in respect to these principles,” she said.
Holding someone for a bail hearing, and gathering the extra documentation required, is additional work, she said.
“I think if the police are of the view that this person is only going to be released in bail court anyway, there are probably some officers that will decide just to release them from the station,” she added.
Saunders stressed the police partners they have in Simcoe County, including Barrie police, are diligent about when they can be released and when somebody should be held for bail, and said they are good about articulating what the concerns are.
“The police work with our bail vettors each morning. They start at about 7 a.m., going through the incoming arrests, identifying the risk factors … in order to be able to make a case for detention at a bail hearing,” she said.
She described a new initiative called the Intensive Serious Violent Crime Bail Team.
“What we are doing is putting extra time, extra resources, extra eyes on cases involving offenders who have alleged to have committed very serious violent offences where there is some indication in their past they have behaved similarly,” she said.
It’s an initiative that has come up through the Ministry of the Attorney General, and partnered with law enforcement agencies.
“We’ve got dedicated officers, and so people are flagged at the time they are arrested,” she said.
“It’s a much more intensive look at their background, and they tend to result in much longer bail hearings. They might take a whole day instead of an hour, like the garden variety one might take.”
In cases where they have time to take a “very deep dive” into that person’s background, around just how provable the charges are, they find those people don’t even want to have a bail hearing, she said.
“It’s almost like they see the writing on the wall.”
According to Saunders, there are currently about 80 cases flagged in Simcoe County.
“I think about 15 of them had had a bail hearing and had been detained, 12 of them had had a bail hearing and been released, and the rest of them didn’t even have a bail hearing, so they are still sitting in custody. They’re not even going to take the chance at bail, because we’ve been able to invest that much effort into making sure that we are as absolutely well prepared as we can be, because we recognize that that person poses a safety risk to the members of the community,” she said.
Barrie police Chief Rich Johnston added to the discussion by saying, “There is a lot of officer discretion, and the reality is there is an expectation on our officers who are aware of the ladder principle, so that there is no need to reach out to the Crown … We realize there is a great deal of expectation in our community.
“We are part of the justice system, and we recognize the limitations of it, but that is the system we have.”
