It was on this telephone call that we discussed the so-called “Guns and Gangs Centre.”
What’s a Guns and Gangs Centre? At some point in December, prior to Boxing Day but amid the rising homicide toll, I flopped into the chair across from Linda Shin in her office on the top floor of the McMurtry-Scott Building, where we worked.
“So what the hell are we going to do?” I said with a sigh.
Plenty of micro solutions were being kicked around but I wanted to hear—perhaps not for the first time—the macro solution. Linda said: “It’s the Guns and Gangs Centre. That’s it.”
The concept of such a centre had originated with efforts, before my time, by Deputy Attorney General Murray Segal and his Chief Prosecutor John McMahon, to better coordinate police and prosecutorial efforts. A lot more could be done, they thought, if the traditional obstacles to collaboration were removed.
Keep in mind how it normally works: a municipal police force enforces the provincially prosecuted Criminal Code provisions, plus the federally prosecuted drug crime provisions. The provincial police stand in for the municipal police in the smaller towns that basically outsource a local police force through the provincial police. The RCMP have still separate jurisdiction themselves. Each of these police and prosecution divisions is then further divided by time and space. Each city with its own police force (or provincial police), each province with its separate prosecutors, and so on. Sound confusing? It’s confusing for the justice system and wonderful for organized crime. Sometimes a single operation involving organized crime can involve over a dozen different jurisdictions in Canada. This is not organized justice. Therefore, the Guns and Gangs Centre’s innovation was putting them all together, physically and otherwise, into one space, to focus on large-scale investigations and prosecutions.
My Crime Policy Chief Linda Shin, together with Deputy A.-G. Murray Segal, took that concept and put meat on the bones. About $100 million worth of meat, in the form of more prosecutors, more police, and a state-of-the-art CSI-esque building that housed all the officials who traditionally were, literally, miles and miles apart. Toronto Police Services, the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, and Interpol were put on the same floor as provincial and federal prosecutors, and all their databases were combined into one.
This unprecedented coordination amounted to the “Organized Justice” that I later trumpeted in speeches. It allowed a hundred people to be arrested in a couple hours and prosecuted simultaneously, which meant that entire gangs could be excised from a neighbourhood by the time most of its residents were having breakfast.
Overnight, communities could be transformed. By 2011, gun crime in Toronto was down to 26 out of 45 homicides, the lowest in 25 years, despite the continued population growth in Toronto. In 1995, it was 52 out of 80 homicides.
(But wait a minute! Now that I’ve been on the other end of being arrested, am I not bothered by the idea of arresting a hundred people at a time? You’ll have to wait for a later Chapter for that answer.)
BY THE FALL OF 2005, the Sharia law issue was boiling over. A 1991 provincial law on arbitration had inadvertently given statutory authority to Ontario family disputes being governed by Sharia law, if the parties consented. This development angered many people, and they wanted their government to fix it—yesterday. There were protests on the Queen’s Park lawn. Protesters were burning the Premier in effigy. Sandra Pupatello was the minister responsible for women’s issues; she and I were tasked with settling the issue, which boiled down to whether gender equality trumped religious freedom. That I failed to recognize the obvious answer was “yes” might be attributable to my frustration with those who failed to see how racist the issue had become. This was an example of me personally imagining that I could will a result different from its destined conclusions. Obviously, the politically expedient thing to do was to nod approvingly at those who would vilify Sharia law. But this too required looking the other way. For shoulder-to-shoulder with women’s groups protesting Sharia law were bigots who yelled “go home” to Muslims who protested the anti-Sharia protesters. To this day, I believe that this issue would never have seen the light of day but for post–9/11 Islamophobia.
This is obviously not to lump together the gender equality champions with the bigots. Some women made it clear to me that they were uncomfortable with their allies in the fight to rid Ontario family law of Sharia law arbitration. The compromise solution that Pupatello and I had put together had the support of some women’s groups but not all. All that was left was for Cabinet to approve the package.
But on the weekend preceding that cabinet meeting, Margaret Atwood was one of the signatories to an open letter to the Premier that ran in The Globe and Mail demanding that he defend women’s rights against the possible imposition of Sharia law. It was not the first or last time that Margaret Atwood had got the attention of a political leader. I find Atwood to be discriminating and usually devastating in her public political missives. (Not always successful, mind you; her support of the Stéphane Dion Liberals against Conservative cuts to the arts didn’t stop a Conservative minority re-election in 2008.) But the very fact of her weighing in on an issue means it’s serious to Canadians. Really serious.
On September 11, 2005, I was at a Sunday Liberal Association event, munching on a hot dog while chewing on the impact of Atwood’s letter. Somebody stuck a BlackBerry in front of me showing me a Canadian Press news story. The Premier had announced a ban on Sharia law in Ontario.
I had no idea he was going to do it. I also knew that we couldn’t do it. There was no constitutional way to ban Sharia law in Ontario. So I told the Premier’s Office what I could and couldn’t do, as the cabinet minister who would be introducing legislation on Shariabased arbitrations. A meeting was convened with McGuinty and his staff from the Premier’s Office. “Tell me why I can’t do this, because that’s what I said I’d do,” Dalton demanded. “You’ve got to make this happen.” It was as heated as he ever gets. Civil by anybody else’s measure, but heated for him.
We found a way to allow the Premier to stick with his announcement and yet not introduce blatantly unconstitutional legislation. We also got lucky because the Catholic Bishops of Ontario, through their lawyer, worked with our office to endorse the new legislation. The bishops, of course, were worried that the bill might do something to affect Catholic annulments. They just wanted the government to get out of the business of regulating anything to do with the church and marriage and divorce.
Ontario’s second-ever Catholic premier, Dalton McGuinty, loved the idea that the bishops were supporting our bill. I thanked God for the bishops. The bill passed without any fanfare.
IN THE SUMMER OF 2005, Karla Homolka, the former wife of Paul Bernardo and the woman who was convicted with him in the horrible kidnap, rape, and murder of two teenage schoolgirls, was due to be released from prison in Montreal after serving her 12-year sentence. Nobody reported it at the time, but my deputy minister, Murray Segal, had led the team that prosecuted Homolka. He was the prosecutor who made the “deal with the devil,” as it was known in the media. The deal was necessary because investigators didn’t know at the time of the existence of videotapes chronicling the abuse. The prosecution needed Homolka’s testimony, they thought, to convict Bernardo. So a plea bargain was struck.
Notwithstanding the public outrage at the plea bargain, a public inquiry held to scrutinize the plea bargain thought otherwise. Segal and his colleagues’ conduct was found by Justice Patrick Galligan to be “professional and responsible.” The deal itself? “Unassailable” under the Criminal Code of Canada, the judge concluded: “the Crown had no alternative but to … [negotiate with the accomplice] in this case” as “the ‘lesser of two evils’ to deal with an accomplice rather than to be left in a situation where a violent and dangerous offender cannot be prosecuted.”
When Homolka’s release was approaching, Segal, the man who made the deal as a prosecutor and who was now the Deputy Attorney General, knew what to do.
We created a set of proposed restrictions on her freedom, for the purposes of protecting people from the potential dangers that she posed.
A number of issues arose for public debate. Hadn’t she done her time in prison? If so, how could we pile on more restrictions? Was she really still dangerous? Were we (the Crown), motivated by a bad deal—a “deal with the devil”—trying to, in essence, re-write history? Indeed, Karla Homolka had served her sentence in its entirety. The National Parole Board had ruled that she remained a risk to commit another violent crime, and therefore had to complete her sentence without possibility of parole (or early supervised release). Why a risk? In prison, she had developed a relationship with a convicted murderer—exactly the behaviour that had led to the carnage and sex crimes with Bernardo.
Our efforts in court regarding Homolka’s release were not to amend her sentence, but to deal with the here and now. It was intensely practical. She was going to be at large. If she were a risk, as we believed her to be, was there nothing the justice system could do? In fact, there was something to be done. The restrictions we sought in Quebec Provincial Court, pursuant to a “recognizance order” (a peace bond, but that sounded too soft to me), were not an extension of a sentence completed. Rather, these restrictions were preventative, and required evidence that she posed a danger to society. Under the Criminal Code, a prosecutor could get such an order. Most orders of this nature are based on consent, as the person posing the risk agrees to not engage in the risky behaviour, more often than not in a domestic context (until they get drunk or high or angry, and then violate the order at their peril).
We provided evidence of the risk Homolka posed to society. Her criminal conduct resulting in the rape and murder of two teenage girls, and the rape-death of Homolka’s sister (it was never established in court that the sister was murdered by Homolka, albeit she likely would have been so convicted had it gone to trial). That was pretty damn dangerous. The National Parole Board findings supported the argument that she remained a risk.
In a dramatic flourish, we sent our best Crown attorney, James Ramsay, who was fluently bilingual, to appear at the hearing. Ramsay was the Crown attorney for the very region where Homolka had committed the horrendous crimes. She had been incarcerated in Quebec for her safety, which meant that she was released onto Quebec streets. The Quebec Attorney General agreed to let an Ontario Crown attorney, Ramsay, argue the case.
A two-day hearing was held before Judge Jean R. Beaulieu in June 2005. He ruled that Homolka, upon her release on July 4, 2005, would still pose a risk to the public. As a result, using section 810.2 of the Criminal Code, certain restrictions were placed on Homolka as a condition of her release: she was to tell police her home address, her work address, and with whom she was living; and she was to notify police if any name change was attempted or if she planned to leave home for more than 48 hours. Homolka was forbidden from contacting Paul Bernardo, or any other violent criminals, or the families of her victims, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Homolka was forbidden from being with people under the age of 16 and from consuming drugs other than prescription medicine. She was required to continue therapy and counselling, and required to provide police with a DNA sample. It was the most restrictive set of conditions imaginable under Canadian law.
Essentially, we got everything we asked for and more. The media reaction was very positive. One Toronto Star reporter wrote the following description of me: “When Karla Homolka shuffled into a Quebec courtroom in leg irons this week … [s]he never saw the rosy, puckish countenance of the man who pulled the strings. That was Michael Bryant, Attorney General of Ontario and the victor in the battle to rein her in when she’s released from prison next month. Bryant is Karla Homolka’s worst enemy, and maybe her best friend. She may not like it, but he sees himself as the buffer between her and mob justice.”
A Quebec Superior Court later overturned the initial ruling, but we were seen politically to be playing hardball with her, instead of defending the deal with the devil.
But that kind of positive media wasn’t just bad for my rapidly inflating ego—it was bad for relations with the Premier’s Office. At one point, I was basically hauled in after something that my communications head Greg Crone leaked to the Star had, in effect, overshadowed an announcement by the Premier. I apologized immediately and then told Crone to be more careful with any leaks, to stop leaving our fingerprints behind. It felt like a power play to me, un grand jeu.
THEN CAME THE Christmas tree debacle of 2006, furthering the estrangement between myself and the Premier, at least in the media. The presiding judge at the Jarvis Street courthouse had ordered the court staff to take down the Christmas tree. This decision hit the news. My response was an attempt to defuse the issue through humour: “We don’t see the need to bring a habeas corpus application to free the tree just yet. Amnesty International has not called to date.” I went on to joke that a Christmas tree “protocol” would be the subject of my next discussion with the chief justice of Ontario. I’d hoped to demonstrate the absurdity of the issue being in the media.
That day McGuinty contradicted me, publicly urging the judge to put the Christmas tree back. So I got kneecapped, and that was the media story. This action was unusual for the Premier. He was certainly entitled to have the last word on government policy, but he didn’t like contradicting ministers because it made the government look incompetent. Maybe he wanted to put me in my place. Or maybe he just had strong views about Christmas trees. Either way, I joked my way through the scrum. That’s how I got out of it. I made fun of myself. But it was so theatrical that John McGrath from CBC Radio ran the whole scrum on air.
When the cameras and microphones were turned off, some reporters expressed astonishment with the fir fight. Such was the puerility of Queen’s Park politics. Only through this fatuous lens was there a rift between McGuinty and myself. But that was the impression left to this day.
FROM THE COMIC to the tragic: During the winter of 2006 and into 2007, it became apparent to me that the Ontario Human Rights Commission had failed to live up to its lofty mandate. If you brought a human-rights complaint in Ontario, it typically took up to seven years to get it resolved. I was determined to fix that.
So we created a new system where complainants bypassed the commission and went straight to a human rights tribunal and got a result within a year. The new system works well now, by all accounts.
The political problem with all this was that we were shrinking the role of the Human Rights Commission. And the biggest objector was David Lepofsky, one of my Crown attorneys, a blind man who is in the media regularly for his tireless fight for rights on behalf of those with disabilities. He was castigating me for the changes to the Human Rights Commission.
Most agreed the new system was very good policy, but very bad politics. The Premier’s Office was determined to kill my bill amending the system, if only because we were getting too close to a provincial election to be in a fight against people with disabilities. However, I became convinced that his office was not reflecting the Premier’s wishes. I held the perhaps naïve hope that McGuinty would choose good policy over messy politics.
At that point, it was all flying just below the media radar. So I leaked some background to Ian Urquhart, the Queen’s Park columnist at the Toronto Star, who wrote a column that, in effect, dared the Premier to do the right thing.
He did. At the cabinet meeting on the human rights bill, we had a big long debate. And, once again, the Premier backed his Attorney General.
McGuinty drew upon his experience as an MPP. When people came in to see him in his constituency office with a human rights complaint, he would wearily tell them to go to the Human Rights Commission, knowing that nothing would happen. He hated that. He thought it was stupid and that we should have a human rights system that actually worked.
When it counted, Dalton McGuinty had my back. In fact, he supported me on almost every justice initiative I brought forward: on the Guns and Gangs task force, on pit
bulls, on paralegal regulation, on electoral changes, on the Law Commission being revived, on human rights reform. I was grateful for his support, but never so grateful that I was willing to let my ego take a back seat to my talent for garnering headlines.
I was starting to think that this run I was having as Attorney General couldn’t continue. It was too good. The bar was happy with me. The judges were happy with me. The police and prosecutors were happy with me. Stakeholders were relatively happy. I just knew it couldn’t last. So I thought, “Maybe I should do something different anyway after the election. Maybe I’ll go and do energy, or infrastructure, or health, or something like that.”
Then, near the end of the 2007 campaign, when my riding association was flush with cash, somebody suggested that I send some money to help other candidates in a few key ridings. I called up Greg Sorbara and asked what he thought of the idea. He welcomed the extra help. He was doing it himself. So that’s what I did. I sent money to a handful of candidates. They all won. It seemed like a good investment.
This was taken by the Premier’s Office, however, as akin to Paul Martin’s machinations as he sought Jean Chrétien’s job. They thought I’d stepped over a line, that I was overtly campaigning for the leadership. Really, I was just naïve. I thought, “Well, Sorbara’s doing it so it’s probably fine.” In hindsight, it was a mistake.
David Caplan called me up. He said, “I’m worried about you, buddy. I’m hearing things … bad things … like maybe you’re going to get punted from Cabinet or demoted. I’m hearing that they’ve gone nuts over you spreading money around.” I shrugged off his worries, convinced of my invincibility.
Then, the week before McGuinty made his final decisions on his new Cabinet, former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s memoirs were published—with media reports of his “regret” that he hadn’t quickly fired Paul Martin and his “self-serving goons” for undermining his leadership. This rather paranoid attack on Martin, I’m convinced, might have had an impact on McGuinty, who had an opportunity to send a message to any pretenders to his throne.
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