Monday April 24, 2023 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
The federal government needs to step up and do it quickly, says BC Attorney General Niki Sharma. She was addressing the way that bail happens, in ways that very often allow prolific violent offenders back onto the streets.
In BC “we have the strictest bail policy in all of Canada right now”, said Sharma to media in a media scrum today.
“Through our directive our bail policy is very strong in its wording when it comes to when Crown Counsel should seek and must seek detention when it comes to repeat offenders,” she said.
But she added that “judges are releasing the majority of the time”.
“We asked for the broadest definition of any kind of violation in their history of offence,” the Attorney General said about how judges should assess the bail eligibility of an offender.
Sharma and her AG colleagues from other provinces wrote to David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, last week, articulating some “preliminary resolutions”, as a way to “keep the pressure on” about this being “about repeat violent offenders and public safety”, said Sharma.
She says BC would like to see “somebody is held until there is a good reason to release them”. This seems to challenge the basic premise that people are ‘innocent until proven guilty’, which contributes to the prominence of this issue in the news.
As well, all of this comes as the Official Opposition (BC United) MLAs seek stricter bail restrictions in BC, as part of working against the recent prominent wave of violent crime and property-theft crime in BC.