On the Deteriorating Rule of Law in Canada

Some updates to recent posts on The Audit

I’ve got a couple of updates to some recent crime-related posts here at The Audit. In just a bit, I’ll cast some more gloom on the state of public safety in Canada - even beyond the already-dark What if Canada’s Police Can’t Keep Us Safe? But first up is a different perspective on last week’s car theft post.

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied

Subsequent feedback added to my confidence that most - if not all - of the 50,000 used cars that Statistics Canada reported as “exported” from Ontario were actually stolen. The numbers, destinations, and state of the domestic used car market all tell a pretty clear story about what’s going on.

But I thought I’d take a quick look at how law enforcement - at least in Ontario - has been responding to the crisis. In fact, many millions of dollars have been allocated to law enforcement agencies to disrupt the work of those gangs. Here’s a list of publicly-announced anti-car theft operations in Ontario since 2015:

For clarity, “OPP” stands for Ontario Provincial Police, “TPS” is Toronto Police Services, and “CBSA” is the Canada Border Services Agency.

The vehicle recoveries are certainly better than nothing, but they probably represent less than 2% of the total losses over those years. However, I was curious about all those arrests: would the removal of 212 accused car thieves from the streets have a positive impact on ongoing crime rates?

Oh please. Do you have to laugh at me quite so loudly?

Of course those 212 people weren’t removed from any streets. The best of them are out on bail. I assume that the others (described by court documents as “TO BE SPOKEN TO”) have already vanished from the system.

I did try to track their progress within either the Ontario Court of Justice or Superior Court of Justice. I took it as obvious that the cases of anyone arrested in 2023 wouldn’t have reached trial yet. But I was a little surprised that I couldn’t find a single “graduate” of the OPP’s Project MYRA - from back in 2020 - who’d been brought to trial. Some of them were still “pre-trial”, others were at the preliminary hearing stage, and a few were still “TO BE SPOKEN TO”. None I saw had dates set for actual trials.

Ok. So what about the ancient Project CBG from all the way back in 2015? Perhaps it’s just my research skills, but I couldn’t find a single defendant even referenced in the system.

That’s not good. I could find no evidence that all that money and effort had brought a single criminal to any kind of justice.

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A Gun Control Compromise?

Comments to that What if Canada’s Police Can’t Keep Us Safe? post articulated a suspicion that had been quietly gnawing away at the back of my mind: lawfully stored and secured guns and ammunition aren’t going to be very useful for most fast-developing threat scenarios.

Let’s assume - for argument’s sake - that Canadians’ tacit agreement with our governments to keep us safe in exchange for limiting public access to weapons is indeed breaking down. Shifting the balance towards self defense would probably require far more fundamental changes to the current gun laws than is realistic. And if doing nothing leads to thousands of scared citizens going full Dirty Harry, we’re probably not going to end up in a happy place. (“Do you feel lucky today?”)

But there might be a compromise approach. Not unlike the gradual shift away from government monopolies over education and healthcare delivery, some variant of privatized policing may be the best step forward. Why, after all, should individual communities not be able to provide for their own trained and qualified security?

I’m sure today’s security guards are all great people, but as long as they’re not allowed to carry weapons, their only real value is the ability to call 9-1-1, wait 22 minutes for the cops to show up, and then hopefully live long enough to testify in court. I don’t see how that solves any of the problems we’re talking about.

But modest adjustments to the Firearms Act and Criminal Code could allow for properly training, licensing, and arming teams of professional security guards.

Taking Toronto as an example, there are currently less than two uniformed officers for every 1,000 city residents. Since those officers are stretched across multiple shifts and never all available at one time, there probably isn’t even a single officer actually protecting 1,000 residents.

However, a community of 1,000 residents - which might represent 250 homes - could possibly buy themselves full 24-hour protection consisting of six armed security professionals at an annual cost per home of around $5,000. Not cheap. But compare that with what it would cost for a gun, gun club membership, regular sessions at the club firing range, and ammunition (all necessary elements of responsible gun ownership). I would be surprised if it came to less than $3,000/year.

Any thoughts?