Category: Semple Saturdays

Public Safety is not a Game

@noel.semple7

Ford’s New Pay-to-Walk Bail System: Public Safety is not a Game

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

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When I was a kid, I loved the game Monopoly. But the one thing about it that never made sense to me was the Monopoly criminal justice system. Okay, so if you get caught committing a crime and this guy blows the whistle on you, then you’re going to jail, which makes sense.
But then the rules say that if you’re in jail and you pay 50 bucks, you get out. And this made no sense to me at all, because if this guy did something bad enough that we had to put him in jail, then why are we letting him out just cause he has 50 bucks?
And conversely, if he doesn’t have 50 bucks and we were gonna let him out otherwise, why would we keep him in just cause he doesn’t have $50?
Fortunately, my dad was a lawyer and he explained to me that in real Canadian jails like this one behind me here, that’s not how bail works.
In Canadian bail law, for 50 years, the law has been that who has to stay in until their trial and who gets out is based on things like how likely are they to reoffend when they’re out, how likely are they to actually show up for their trial, and how serious was the crime of which they’re accused?
Money could be involved in the bail process. So if the judge, for example, is not quite sure whether you’re going to necessarily reappear for your trial, or re-offend, but they’re not convinced it’s serious enough
that you definitely have to stay in jail while you’re still presumed innocent, then they might set a cash penalty.
So for example, the most common crime in Canada is assault. Let’s say someone is involved in like a bar room brawl fight. They might be arrested but then let out on bail until their trial. And the conditions might be things like you can’t go back to the bar, you gotta stay away from the person you beat up and you can’t consume alcohol, things like that.
And another term might be that if you breach any of those conditions, you have to pay $2,000 So the person who’s been let out knows that if they do breach the conditions, there’s a very good chance they’ll be caught. And if they’re caught, then they are gonna have to pay that money. And if the person doesn’t have money, then a surety might be involved, which will be typically a friend or a family member
who will make that promise to pay the amount if the person breaches their terms.
So it’s just an extra disincentive to try to make sure the person respects the terms, shows up for trial and faces justice.
Until this week, because the Doug Ford government has introduced the Monopoly cash bail system to Ontario. The Bail Act now says that everyone who is let out on bail has to pay money within two business days. And that will be no problem at all for successful drug dealers and fraudsters and other criminals who have money. But for everyone else, whether they get out out depends on their affluence and whether they have wealthy relatives.
This is almost certainly unconstitutional. One judge has already refused to apply this new law in a bail decision they made on Wednesday. But a bigger problem perhaps is that this is likely to undermine public safety. Who stays in and who gets out of these doors should not depend on who has money.
It should depend on what risk does this person pose to the public. And if you want a public safety system that actually keeps the public safe instead of one that’s based on board game economics,
then you need to demand a better provincial government.

@noel.semple7 Great day knocking doors ✊ in Scarborough Southwerst for #onpoli #GoKnockDoors ♬ original sound – Noel Semple

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We’re here in Scarborough Southwest. The by-election is coming up on September 3rd, one of three province-wide that could be the big turning point where the people of Ontario finally show they’re ready for a change and they know who’s gonna give it to them.
And we’ve been knocking on the doors for the local candidate Ahsanul Hafiz and getting a great reaction. And here’s a few pictures from the day. Coming out to knock some doors is a great way to see some parts of the world you wouldn’t see.

I just talked to a family where there’s a 19 year old about to cast his first vote in any election ever.
An immigrant family. And it’s just great to see people excited about being part of our democracy.
And it’s really cool to be able to have democracy be a face-to-face thing we do at the door, not just something that’s like on the media or social media, but conversations between people and making choices together.

And, relatedly, should ads for hard liquor be allowed on this street corner?

@noel.semple7

Should hard liquor banner ads be allowed on this neighbourhood corner?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

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One of the biggest questions we face as a society is, how can we make capitalism work for all of us and not just for the capitalists? Some people honestly believe the answer to that question is “we can’t.” But I disagree, because if you look back through human history, all of the times and places where it’s been best to live as a human being are those in which capitalism has been combined with regulation, redistribution of income and social programs.
Capitalism is a goose that lays golden eggs, but government has got to make sure that that goose doesn’t bite people and has got to make sure that the golden eggs are enjoyed by all of us and not just by a privileged elite. This, incidentally, is a major theme of my new book, The State of happiness, which is coming out this fall.

I was thinking about this today when I was driving by this strip mall at the corner of Bloor and Kipling
here in beautiful central Etobicoke because the landlord has rented out space on the fence that goes around the strip mall to these advertisers.

So there’s eight advertising banners that have been attached to the fence here. And advertising and the regulation of it is a small but an interesting part of this bigger question of how we make capitalism work for all of us. Advertising has a healthy function in a free-market, capitalist economy because it lets consumers know what’s available and it promotes competition, which in turn leads to lower prices,
higher quality and more choice. And that’s why advertising or “commercial speech,” as it’s known to lawyers, is protected in many cases by our Constitution. But governments also have the legal right and the moral obligation to regulate advertising and in some cases to forbid it.
I’ve talked on this channel before about the need to ban ads for internet gambling, which is a dangerous, highly addictive product which targets young people. And I think our government is asleep at the switch
if it thinks we can just have unregulated, free-for-all advertising for that particular product.
I think these billboards at 3810 Bloor street west are an interesting case study for healthy and unhealthy advertising. Four of these banner ads advertise businesses which are actually in the plaza. And they let us consumers know what’s available and they help our local small business entrepreneurs thrive.
But two of these ads are very different. First of all, they’re for liquor, which like internet gambling, is a addictive product.

And more importantly, they are here right in the middle of the neighbourhood. And yet they do not promote or let us know about our local businesses. They are for selling things where the profits are going to be captured by large multinational corporations. And I think if we’re looking for a place to draw the line for what type of ads, we should be allowing on a street corner. We could start by saying that anything for local businesses is okay, but if you’re advertising some consumer product that’s is gonna be sold elsewhere where the profits are gonna go elsewhere and the only real value of it is adding a little bit of money for the landlord’s bottom line, especially when it’s for something dangerous and addictive like alcohol, then, that would be the type of banner that we should not necessarily allow.
And so I’m gonna look into this. I’m sure there’s laws and bylaws about this and I’ll keep you postedon my efforts to see why this is allowed and if perhaps it’s something that should be removed.

Like my kids this summer!

@noel.semple7

We need more Canadians making their own jobs and making jobs for others. Like my kids are doing this sunmer!

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

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Last week almost 50,000 people applied for 5,000 jobs at the CNE, and then thousands showed up in person for this in-person job fair.

And it’s a tough summer for young people looking for work. Ontario’s youth unemployment rate is 16.2% ,which is one of the highest in the country. To make that situation better, we need more hiring but we also need more entrepreneurship.

And this is where I take off my Ontario Policy guy hat and put on my proud father hat because both of my kids, who are teenagers, created their own jobs this summer.

My daughter who is 18 was walking around the neighbourhood and noticed that there are a lot of lawns that seem to need help, a lot of people who need to seem seem to need help with weeds in particular.

And so she started a weed pulling business. She just printed up a bunch of these signs. And within a week or two had all the clients she could handle and she just goes there and picks weeds for 20 or 25 bucks an hour, and it’s great.

Meanwhile, my son who is 13 is out right now selling soft drinks in parks. He’s also collected golf balls and sold them back to golf courses, and he’s cleaned people’s garbage bins for money, and he’s also working on selling a website development services to local small businesses.

So this type of thing, Entrepreneurship and business formation, is something where Canada lags behind some other countries and the United States in particular.

And I don’t know exactly how the government can help make people more willing to start businesses and create jobs for themselves and then go on to employ others. But if we could narrow that gap and create more of an entrepreneurial culture and mindset among Canadians of all ages, then we would go a long way towards building the economy that we need to create a great life for everyone here.

Dad of school shooter sentenced to 15 years. Fair, or no?

@noel.semple7

Dad of school shooter sentenced to 15 years. Fair, or no?

♬ original sound – Noel Semple

Transcription:

Yesterday, in the US state of Georgia, Colin Gray was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment after a 2024 school shooting that left 4 people dead, which seems about right until you read that Colin Gray did not shoot anyone. He didn’t tell anyone to shoot anyone, and he had no idea that there was going to be a shooting at all.
It was his son, 14-year-old Colt Gray, who committed this atrocity, and Colt Gray was sentenced earlier this week to life imprisonment. Colin, the dad, was sentenced yesterday because he had failed to recognize and respond appropriately to some red flag behaviors from his son, and because he had given his son a hunting rifle at Christmas and failed to take it away like he really should have after some of those red flag behaviors from Colt.
Was this bad parenting?
Absolutely.
Should it be punished?
Absolutely.

But I just can’t see how 15 years could possibly be a proportionate penalty when people who commit actual murders, both in Georgia and in Canada, are often sentenced to 15 years or less. And if the system is not going to be proportionate, then it’s not going to impose time that suits the crime.
But what about deterrence?
Do these stiff penalties cause all parents to pay more attention and reduce the chance that they’ll ignore red flags the way Colin Gray did?
It doesn’t seem like it will.
Deterrence is real. People actually do avoid breaking the law because they don’t want to get punished. But if something is already illegal and it already has a serious penalty attached to it, all of the studies
suggest that ramping the penalty up further is not going to increase deterrence. If you want to increase deterrence, you’ve got to increase people’s perceived risk of getting caught. You’ve got to make sure that The punishment follows quickly and certainly after you are caught, and often you’ve just
got to help people avoid the illegal behavior in the first place when they don’t want to be breaking the
law either, but they may be careless or they may just not be focused on what’s necessary to stay on
the right side of the law.
I think that sentences like 15 years for careless parenting come from the gut. And they come from a deep, real human sense of fear and anger and desire for revenge after a horrible crime takes place.
And those are natural and virtuous human emotions. But everything the government does needs to come from the head and from the heart, not so much from the gut. We need to be taking steps that are actually going to minimize as much as humanly possible the chance of these things happening going forward.
And that means getting smart about deterring crime.
It means helping people stay on the right side of the law, and it means investing in a social safety
net and in our schools so that when kids fall through the cracks because their parents have screwed up, we’re not all put at risk because there’s other caring professionals who are there to catch that person before they fall through the cracks and become a threat to the rest of us.
Everything the government does needs to be evidence-based and rational, and these human emotions and responses need to be honoured and taken seriously, but they can’t drive policy because we’ll end up not only with punishments which are frankly grossly disproportionate and cruel and unusual, but we’ll end up with criminal justice policy that does not keep us safe in the long run.