Latest / Political Capital with Rob Shaw / #94 - All Surrey, all the time. Debates rage over police and portables.

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#94 - All Surrey, all the time. Debates rage over police and portables. · Political Capital with Rob Shaw

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Check Podcasts. Hey everyone, and welcome to Political Capital, your source for
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all the latest in BC politics. Excited to announce a new sponsor of the
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show, Uber Canada. Thank you for being on board, and thank you
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for being here with Political Capital. Thank you to everyone else for watching him
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for subscribing. I am your host, rob Shaw has always sequestered here in
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the Check News World headquarters in Victoria. A lot going on this week.
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We have the long awaited decision by the government on Surrey policing, new data
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on violent repeat offenders and the criminal justice system, private healthcare disputes, double
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decker portables and Surrey and so much more so. Thank goodness, we have
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the pod squad here to walk us through it all with their insight. Jeff
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Ali and Jillian here as always ready to jump into the BC government's decision on
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the future of Surrey policing. We've been waiting for it and it is something
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around a recommendation that the city continue with a municipal police force, but not
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blocking them from staying with the RCMP. But they'll offer money if they go
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this way, but no money on the other way. But it's up to
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you, Surrey. Not what some people were expecting it is not a legal
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order. There are conditions that have to be met if the city wants to
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go one way or another on HR and that type of thing. Is it
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a decision is it not? What are the ramifications of this going to be?
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Jeff, why don't we start with you on that? Well, first
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of all, I want to say that I'm uber excited to be here with
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everyone today. I should have thought of that one. Okay, that's good,
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low hanging fruit. Look at intrigue in Surrey on the political hot mess
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that is the transition or not transition on policing. Let's consider where we're at,
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two elections, two different mayors, completely opposite positions on a major issue.
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This isn't beer in parks, right, it's police governance chaos during a
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public safety crisis. And so what I'm seeing from the Solicitor General today and
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the recommendation that he's made, which is encouraging Surrey to move forward with the
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transition to a Surrey Police service, is I think a grown up decision.
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I think it's a clear direction from the province that is respectful that in our
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constitutional legal framework, cities decide about policing decisions and local wishes are part of
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that. But I think Farnworth has looked at the Police Act. It says
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that he has a responsibility to ensure an adequate and effective level of policing and
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law enforcement throughout British Columbia. Has said, yeah, do what you want
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to do Surrey, but over my dead body, if you're going to take
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police officers from other communities in the province to fill the ranks of the RCMP,
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which is what will happen at a time when there are fifteen hundred vacancies
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with RCMP in British Columbia. So some say he's waffling. I think Farnworth
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has pancaked efforts to keep the RCMP in Surrey. The direction is clear and
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it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out in Surrey. I guess it
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comes down to whether you believe that the government had the legal authority to make
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a decision here, and it sounds like from the government's point of view that
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they feel like they didn't, that they went up all the way to the
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end. But I was under the impression, I think a lot of people
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were, that the Solister General, his ministry has to sign off and approve
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or disapprove of a plan, reject or accept. Yes, there are no
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binary of decision on the name of public safety and you know, the order
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and safety and policing in a community. So that's a little surprising, Alley
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that we didn't quite get that. What do you make of this with the
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proviso here that you do in your private work work with some police unions.
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But taking that hat off, what do you think of this? And where
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you surprised it wasn't it wasn't a bit more definitive. I think yes,
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people were looking for a more definitive response to your preamble there. I do
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think that ultimately the province will have ultimate say in this in the end,
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but they've essentially given the opportunity too Surrey to make the right decision, and
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that the opportunity piece is important to highlight here because I think ultimately what could
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happen is the city event goes one way, the province on another side,
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and then it turns into chaos. Even more so had he just come in
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and said like, this is what's going to be, um, this is
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how we're going to do it, and this is where we're going to do
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it. By it's going to come across as if the province is bulldozing the
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whole decision making process. But this opportunity piece is, well, we'll let
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the city make lead them to the right decision and hopefully they do and then
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that way there won't be that like political chaos that'll just turn into a bigger
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problem, because it could, it very well could just turn into a bigger
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problem with further delays and then more money wasted and with people having uncertainty and
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their job. So I think that like in the end, if this really
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blows up, yeah the province can come in and fix it. But it's
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smart's it was a really smart play by the NDP to allow them to make
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the decision locally and really in a bowling our local decision makers to get to
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that point too. And the offer being to Surrey will help pay as a
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province to cover the cost here so that taxpayers aren't hit with a massive transition
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cost if you go the municipal police route to try and tilt the decision making
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a little bit more along that recommendation. Jillian Surrey is so politically important to
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the NDP, to the BC United, to the Greens, to whoever wants
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to form government that that must have played a factor in here. This this
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weird sort of provincial NDP trying to guess the mood of the electorate after two
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elections where different mayors got elected with different police plans and now they're balancing that
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out at a provincial level when they don't really want to get dragged into it
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at all. But that must have formed part of this, I would think,
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certainly. I think it's made it much more of a delicate situation compared
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to you know, other local governments that have been rejected for changing and policing
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like a squimalt before, because it is such a highly politicized issue in Surrey.
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I think at the end of the day, you know, we had
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a process where Merit Doug McCallum, who started the transition to Surrey PD,
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was not super transparent with the process, underestimated the costs, and then we
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had new mayor Locke come in threatening all kinds of crazy tax increases, and
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I think the province sort of just decided that the best way to fix this,
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given the fact that this has become a debate about money, is to
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come to the table with a whole bunch of money for the preferred option,
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and so that's what they're doing. I do think it is still a risk
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on the other side to go this route too, because Mayor Locke has really
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tied her municipal career to this issue. She really campaigned on this issue.
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She's been extremely firm in her position and her statements. So, you know,
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I think it's it's a risk for there to be a confrontation either way,
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and at the end of the day, I do think that it could
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have. There was a lot of people in Surry that we're hoping for the
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province to come down a little bit more clearly, the Minister being quite adamant
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that this basically does amount to him being decisive. I'm not sure why,
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you know, if the province didn't have the ability to make this decision decisively,
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why they didn't kind of give us an indication about that before when this
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has been an issue we've been talking about for for quite some time. But
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this is this is where we're at there hoping that the money talks and that
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we can move forward, and that's really what's needed because Suray needs to get
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out of the sort of endless struggle and get on with having a stable solution
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to its public safety. Does anyone think like there was an all party committee
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that studied policing a year or two ago ANDBC everyone got together and a review
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of the Police Act and the recommendation being maybe we should we should get our
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own provincial police force and we don't have to go around on this. I
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just wondered if anyone wants to jump in, like any political party ever going
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to touch that? Here we have one community's policing issue being so politically difficult
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to navigate, two municipal elections, months of you know, hair splitting at
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a provincial level strategies and fall out like are we ever going to get to
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one provincial police force in BC? Or is that just like unimaginable for any
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political party to tackle, no matter the stripe, given what we're seeing in
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Syria. I don't know if anyone wants to jump in on that. We
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don't I'll do all that around, but I'll jump in because I think it's
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a really good question, and I'm not sure it's about politicians making the case
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for it. I think there's a lot of stuff happening in the background with
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the RCMP, whether it's the challenges they're having federally around the reputation and conduct
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of officers and and you know, controversies around that. There's interesting report on
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mass shooting in Nova Scotia which spoke to should our CMP be a contracted local
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police force in bigger communities. There's some folks in Ottawa who are thinking,
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is policing really something that the federal government should be doing. Maybe the RCMP
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should be more like an FBI rather than a provider of day to day police
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services. So I think we're going to reach a point at some point,
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probably in the not too distant future, where decisions about our CMP and its
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governance as a federal body are going to force provinces and force local governments to
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have these kinds of fantastic clean, not dragged out for a long time,
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not controversial at all, debates about policing in communities. And I think the
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politics then as now will be about money, and it will be about safety
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in the community and not about I think people are in Syria are going to
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get beyond the lack versus McCallum and all that, and they're going to ask
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what's going to cost me money on my property tax, what's going to make
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sure I've got boots on the ground and the community and everywhere else in PC
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does too, and that's that's where the decisions will be made. Yeah,
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anyone else want to jump in on that idea? Like, are we ever
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Danny parties ever want to push regional policing or provisual policing or is it just
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is it just like a ball of monkeys to make metaphors that no one wants
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to open. I don't think that metaphor makes any sense, but that you
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know what I mean? I want to add, Oh go ahead, Jillian,
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Okay, sorry, you do see. The Greens actually have been pushing
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this already. Adam Wilson's been the MLA on the committee and I think he's
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been calling for the full full adoption of the committee's recommendations. UM. There's
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a lot of specific reasons why UM local policing is better, better hiring and
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retention, more efficient procurement, better accountability, Olson raised in the House this
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week. UM and Farnworth said that there's going to be legislation coming in the
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fall. I doubt it'll be full shift, but probably we're going to see
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a bit of a gradual shift of those recommendations be adopted. And yeah,
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I think I think for the reasons that Jeff laid out, BC is,
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you know, a particular province politically, I think growing um maybe even consensus
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or at least agreement from a lot of parties that it's better to have a
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little bit more localized control of policing UM because it's just a better fit for
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our communities and the unique sort of dynamics that we have here, m Ali.
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Jeff just said something that I just had to write down because I just
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needed to be reminded of it. But we are in a public safety crisis,
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and so just as any other crisis that we've had and endured in this
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country, than sure enough changes come from that. And so we potentially could
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see this as a solution to this crisis, major change and overhaul of the
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system, you know what, And I hope so it will be a grind,
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and it will take forever, and it will take a lot of money,
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and it'll take a lot of taxpayer dollars, but in the end will
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affix the crisis. That's really ultimately all we want. And then we're seeing
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we're seeing something happen across the country too. Though when it comes to recruitment
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of police officers as well. So doug Ford has even gone as far as
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saying that in order to get more police officers out and about in the community,
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that he would even change the educational requirements and removing the university degree aspect
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of it and you can just just go straight into training. And so I
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mean, that's completely different, and let's see if it actually want passes and
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then works. But these are the potential ideas that would get us to a
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better place for community safety. And I'd just be remissed if I didn't say
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that, like in my brain, how a local system potentially would just be
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more beneficial is Ultimately, I just don't want Ottawa in my business. I
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don't want Ottawa doing anything in VC when they just don't understand what works best
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for us here. So local is always better. Yeah, But that recruitment
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policing recruitment part is a huge underpinning of this. The difficulty in convincing people
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to become police officers, whether there're RCMP or municipal and the threat that existed
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here of if you let Surrey go back to the RCMP, it pulls people
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from the you tumbler Ridge detachment and the port Alice attachment to try to backfill
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Surrey to meet its contract, and suddenly you get this kind of chaotic spillover
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effect in small communities that the province didn't want to happen, and the RCMP
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can't guarantee they got enough officers coming through to make this work. So you're
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right to Ali that recruitment problem is huge. It's the nub of the issue,
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right. I think that's the nub of the issue and why the province
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is, even though they're not being as direct as some might like, our
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saying stay on with the Surrey piece, because if you go back to OURCMP,
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then you're under you're beholden to the RCMP to provide those officers and they're
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having real struggles recruiting people to those roles. Fifteen hundred vacancies in BC and
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local police services in the Solicitor General's mind and Ali spoke to this about what
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Ontario is doing is you can have different recruitment approaches, different qualifications, different
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streams that you can bring people in to fill those roles. So at the
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end of the day, what it can mean if it's done well, more
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police in communities at a time when we need them. Sorry to inflame Twitter,
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but need them more than ever. Just moving on to another SuRie issue
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on what looks like it's going to be the All Suries Show this week and
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we talk about it because Sirie is that NDP powerbase. Any party it wants
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to win or hold government needs to control those nine ridings in Surrey as many
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as they can. The school district came out this week and the board writing
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a letter to the Education Minister, who Rushna Singh, who also has her
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writing in Surrey, saying, you know what, the government has given us
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enough money to fund our rising enrollment. The situation's dire. We may have
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to start stacking portables on top of each other pretty soon because double decker portables,
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because there's not enough land at some portable at some schools to accommodate the
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new portables that are needed. I think the risk here politically is an embarrassment
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for an NDP government that's promised in a couple elections now to get rid of
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those portables and now instead they're going to stack them on top of each other.
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Maybe or there's a lot of posturing there too. I think, Jillian,
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how risky a situation is this for the NDP government and what do we
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make of what's happening on the school side after two elections in which that was
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a major issue for the parties to contend with. Yeah, well, actually,
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I think even though Surrey is the latest flashpoint when it comes to school
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funding, this is really a provincial issue. Um. Lots of Island schools
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um facing budget shortfalls, schools up in the Kutneys where I live as well.
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Um, And the core of this problem is that the money for the
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portables has to come out of the schools operating budget. Normally, Um,
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you know, if you need more classroom space, if the schools are building
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bigger schools or new schools, that comes out of a capital budget. But
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um, the portables have to come out of the schools regular operating expenses,
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which means that they have less money for other things like extracurriculars and counselors and
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all of this other stuff that that suit its need to kind of get the
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best education and support. So it's really putting a squeeze on these students and
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on the teachers. And I think, you know, it was a huge
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promise to make in twenty seventeen, they promised I think the full elimination.
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In four years, it's gotten worse UM and I think, you know,
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this has sort of been um in a lot of ways, kind of like
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a like a sleeping giant of an issue because UM schools were already underfunded in
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twenty seventeen UM under the the BC Liberals, they were fighting the teachers all
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the way to the Supreme Court. They lost. NDP came in and the
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minority government and had to was mandated to increase those funds. But it hasn't
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kept up with inflation, and it certainly hasn't kept up with the growth that
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districts have been seeing, especially in communities like Surrey. So I think it
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is a huge issue because you know, it really starts to affect everybody in
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the community when there's thousands and thousands of kids that are getting UM sort of
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substandard environments for learning. So I think it's it's surprising that we haven't seen
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more planning from the from the government, given that they knew this was an
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issue when they first came into government. And I think that it could very
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well end up being a big, big issue in the next election for sure.
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The government arguing that it does have a Surrey Project Office for Schools there
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and they put a lot effort in and they were making progress, they say,
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before covid uh, and it's got worse since then in trying to meet
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those needs. But you're right, there's lots of other districts that are saying
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basically the same thing. Ali, is this, What does the ANDP do
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in the face of kind of this like tough letter and pressure from the Surrey
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School Board when it has so many political sensitivities there. Yeah, I think
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let me start off by saying and just fully supporting teachers throughout this process,
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right, So I just want a bit shout out to any teacher who's listening
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and watching. They create these beautiful environments no matter what four walls are around
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them, if it's in theatual school building and or a portable. These students
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have no idea what's happening to them because they end up creating these beautiful spaces
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and so that's a big, big challenge to do and they do it just
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so wonderfully year after year after year, despite no changes coming their way.
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And so that's all I kept thinking about as as we keep hearing these announcements.
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But the NDP and any elected representative on this file should just be embarrassed,
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like you can promise everything under the sun, but this is massively important.
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If I see a ribbon cunning ceremony to these all of these like record
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portables, I am going to lose my mind because this is not this isn't
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something that we should be celebrating whatsoever. What. I understand that the NDP
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are kind of stuck in this, but more emphasis just needs to happen.
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Here's the thing. Every campaign cycle we hear that data driven decisions from everyone.
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Well, the data was there. Surrey is one of the fastest growing
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cities in this province. The data is there, the data continues to be
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there. They need to build, and you need to build quickly because these
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students are coming. And so if they were, if they aren't going to
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do it this election cycle or this cycle that they're serving, they really need
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to figure out for the next cycle because they cannot claim data driven decisions anymore.
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And that's that's the DPN any elected representative. The complicating factor being also
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that the Suriy skytrain is going to be built through Fleetwood and the board pointing
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out that nowhere in their five year capital plan or discussions, but the government
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has the enormous density boom that's going to happen from that is factored into the
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enrollment projections and the school capital plan as well. Jeff, there's in government's
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defense, they have built a lot of schools there. But right now it
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seems like that district is pretty displeased with where everything stands. And how does
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the government respond to that? Do you think? Well and fair play to
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the district. I'm going to start off my response by a green on a
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couple of things here with with things people said, Ali said, it's all
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about the teachers, and I want to give a shout out to the teachers
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too, and hooray there are so many of you because you stuck it out
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and fought Christy Clark and the BC Liberals all the way to the Supreme Court
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to reverse decisions that unconstitutional decisions made when a certain former leader present leader of
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the opposition was was in cabinet. I think, actually, you know,
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parents and school officials in sy you're right, kids shouldn't be school im portables.
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BCNDP promise to get rid of them, and they should be held to
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their promises, and you know, so good on them and If you want
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to see the long term impacts of kids and portables, look no further than
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me. I was four years in the portable So this is what you get
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unless you fix that problem. I think that the challenge for the opposition who
22:56
raised these issues is that we have the receipts from the last time the other
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folks were in government, and so the last budget of the BC Liberals they
23:03
had one point seven billion dollars over three years for K to twelve, no
23:07
new K to seven schools planned for Surrey. Keeping that pace, we would
23:11
have CN tower sized stacks of portables and all across the Fraser Valley. Certainly
23:18
in Surrey, NDP hasn't done it done enough. They need to pull up
23:22
their socks. But they've doubled the capital investment in K to twelve last budget
23:26
three point four billion dollars over three years, including a new K seven school
23:32
in Surrey. That's cool comfort to parents who have kids going to portables,
23:37
and those parents and those school leaders should continue raising their voices and demand the
23:42
NDP to boost the funding higher and get more stuff built faster. But you
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know the question is for election. It's it's not There are no perfect politicians,
23:56
and it's a question of who do you trust the the party that's double
24:00
investment or the party of finger pointy and half measures. And we'll see who
24:06
sucks less on the ballot. That's the pretty much that's politics. Who sucks
24:11
less? That's what we should call the show who Sucks Less Show. You
24:15
know what needs to happen, though, are what needs to happen is that
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we just need to elect and find more candidates than our parents because they if
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you want to hold anyone to account, ask a parent to then fight for
24:27
their children and give them the platform of the legislature to do it. Then
24:33
we'll actually start fixing things. I agree with that, Okay, all right.
24:37
In other news, and there was other news this week that didn't involve
24:41
surreal though I guess this also kind of involves three but BC's Independent Prosecution Service
24:45
released its first statistics on how violent repeat offenders are dealt with in the justice
24:51
system. They revealed two interesting things. One, prosecutors are only asking or
24:56
applying to judges to hold these prolific violent offenders in custody when they're arrested in
25:00
around half the cases, and then out of that judges are only ruling to
25:04
keep those repeat violent offenders behind bars for their trial and half of the applications,
25:11
so a quarter of the total cases. We see at best violent repeat
25:15
offenders awaiting their trial in custody, which is contributing to what some say is
25:22
that revolving door catch and release system. Somebody does some sort of vandalism,
25:26
gets arrested in their back out in the streets, rate away. But it
25:30
is messy. It's messy because the judges can only be influenced by the federal
25:33
government. Prosecutors can be influenced by provincial government directives. The INDP did one
25:40
of those in November. Doesn't really look like change MutS in the numbers,
25:44
but anyone, everyone was fighting about this all week at the legislature. Does
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it mean anything? Does it should anymore light onto what we've been talking about
25:52
now for weeks on crime? Jeff, why don't we start with you on
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that. I don't think it changes a whole lot other than it for me,
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it reinforces the silliness of the entire political push for we got to tell
26:15
those prosecutors to prosecute harder, right, which was the you know, a
26:19
push for weeks and everyone was saying, oh, we have to send out
26:22
this directive to prosecutors to hold people and bail or apply for that, and
26:27
that'll solve everything. And as it turns out, judges pay attention to the
26:36
Charter of Rights and Freedoms and federal criminal law and court rules in addition to
26:41
what prosecutors say when deciding whether people should get bail or not. So fundamentally,
26:51
what can the province do to influence court system and prosecutions and people bail
26:59
and sentencing. Well, the Charter of Right says the promises can't do a
27:03
whole heck of a lot other than go to Ottawa and say change the rules,
27:07
which BC is doing. I guess we can. We can change the
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Highway Traffic Act. So if we want to get you know, people who
27:21
are speeding to be denied bail, that maybe that's something that we could look
27:26
at. But I'm not going to suggest that, and I don't have any
27:27
personal interest involved there that I want to disclose either. One thing I saw
27:33
that was interesting though, is that John rustad Conservative leader want to be leader
27:40
of the BC Conservatives. You see what he did the other week where he
27:44
said we can't trust Ottawa with our criminal laws. We need to take control
27:49
of those laws for ourselves. So I would use the notwithstanding clause so that
27:56
BC, so that BC could be responsible for the criminal law. It's at
28:00
least got a at least he's getting at what I think. It's a silly,
28:04
ridiculous thing I would never do. There should be one law for all
28:07
Canadians. But at least he's acknowledging that, you know, we got to
28:12
get Ottawa to do things to reform bail and sentencing, because all that's it's
28:22
left is what BC is already doing, which is more police, more resourcing
28:26
for police, advocacy to strengthen laws, investment in addressing root causes. I
28:33
haven't seen where Kevin Falcon stands on this at all. I hope he would
28:38
say no because it's it's dangerous and silly, but it at least acknowledges that
28:45
those who are saying that BC can unilaterally make decisions that will fix the problems
28:52
in our courts and sentencing and bail are not correct. Yeah, but like
29:00
I don't know, I mean, that's a difficult argument for the provincial government
29:04
to keep caring. Like it may be technically true that the real influence here
29:08
is Ottawa changing the criminal code. And this is the show of This is
29:12
the technical show, this nerd politics show, this is god But this none
29:18
of this. If I were to go door to door talking about any of
29:21
this with a voter, they would punch me in the face and then get
29:25
out on bail us. But yeah, but so this is like, so
29:30
I can see the point. I can see your point there, Yeah,
29:33
Jillian, Like, does it work to hold that line for the province though?
29:37
I mean, this is technically true that you got to change the criminal
29:40
code, and Ottawa's going to now embark in its own little process. It's
29:44
got to bring in legislation as to weigh the impact on Indigenous peoples and marginalized
29:51
peoples who are unhoused and have mental health and addictions issues, which was the
29:53
whole reason they brought in the bail reform in twenty nineteen. That's led to
29:56
this. So Ottawa's going to get tied up in a not trying to figure
30:00
out how to fix it, and then BC is going to be blaming Ottawa,
30:03
and then the mayors are blaming BC, and then everybody's just kind of
30:07
blaming each other and then nothing, nothing gets fixed or am, I am.
30:11
I is that a cynical take on where these numbers are taking us?
30:17
Um? Well, I do. I may perhaps like an optimistic take is
30:21
that it does put a little bit more onus on Ottawa. They were already
30:23
sort of, you know, um starting to move and make promises saying that
30:29
they were going to move forward with reform, and I think, you know,
30:33
it may be in that sense acts as a little bit of a political
30:37
relief valve, relief valve for the province because to me, like I largely
30:42
agree with Jeff, I think this shows that there's a lot of this that
30:47
is out of the province's hands, and it kind of I think, you
30:49
know, we've talked about this issue a lot recently, and I think about
30:55
how, you know, the kind of the core emotions sort of driving the
30:56
politics behind this is fear. But I think for me it was a good
31:00
reminder that there's good reasons why our justice system is set up the way that
31:07
it is, Why judges have discretion, why prosecutors also have discretion, because
31:12
every case is unique, and we're hearing that over and over again, including
31:18
from the Prolific Offender's report, that shows that what we really need is more
31:22
nuanced options for treatment and places for people to go rather than um, you
31:29
know, simple blanket, blunt tools because they just simply don't work. And
31:36
so I mean, yeah, I think you guys are also right that,
31:38
like most of the public, especially people who are really concerned about this issue,
31:44
are not gonna be like it took me quite a while to sort of
31:47
sort through all of this stuff and and learn about the nuances, because most
31:51
people, unless you're a lawyer, are not, you know, super intimately
31:53
familiar with how all of this stuff works. But I do think that,
31:57
you know it, maybe it gets us a little bit closer to looking at
32:01
this issue sort of more from a policy perspective, less from an issue of
32:07
emotion, and hopefully, maybe longer term, getting more of a cross party
32:14
consensus on addressing the root causes. And you actually saw the PC United critic
32:20
eleanor Sterco last week start pivoting to talking about those root causes. I think
32:24
it's you know, a bit rich considering how little her government invested in addressing
32:30
those root causes when they were in office. However, at least, you
32:35
know, maybe it gets us a little bit further down the line to having
32:38
a more substantive policy discussion so that we can actually move these things forward,
32:43
although they will take time to do that because of the nature of them.
32:49
Ali, but fear is such powerful politics, right, like the fear that
32:53
you stoke up on the ground. There were protests this week from people who
33:00
allied in different communities saying they're fed up telling their stories of being assaulted or
33:04
businesses. There's one cafe in Nanaimo that came out and said they have been
33:07
vandalized seven times in seven weeks, which led the opposition to call for a
33:14
bill to give financial aid to small businesses. And like, there's so much
33:17
anger and fear, it's hard to not apply a kind of political lens to
33:22
how parties can use that, capitalize it, or harness that anger that's already
33:28
out there and direct it for their own purposes. Whether it is at Ottawa
33:30
where we're talking about they need to make real change, or whether it's at
33:35
your opponents in the legislature for not doing enough with that fear and place.
33:39
Is this just going to remain a football? Do you think? Oh?
33:43
Absolutely? I think a lot of times on major issues we hear a lot
33:49
of political rhetoric. In this case, it's very much backed up by the
33:52
facts. I mean, all of the things that you just listed, it's
33:55
happening all across the province. It's happening in our major cities. Everything's on
34:01
the rise as far as crime and an increase awareness of safety. And so
34:08
this isn't just political rhetoric, and people are legitimately concerned. You know,
34:15
I think that politics attracts a certain type of person. Is so we have
34:20
a lot of lawyers that end up becoming politicians. But this isn't one of
34:24
those cases where I would trust government to create the rules as to how prosecutors
34:34
or anyone within the legal system should do their job. That is not how
34:38
this should work. So I get what I'm trying to say here is the
34:43
government's responsibility is to support the system to do their job better. So if
34:47
it's more funding for prosecutors, if it's more funding for treatments and services,
34:55
that's what they're advocating. That's what they should advocate for. But it beca
35:00
the slippery slope of was it three strikes, You're out because you shoplifted three
35:05
times? But is it like you, are you shoplifting because you're also hungry
35:10
and need this like if there's there's so much more beyond this, And so
35:15
any politician who's going to say, you know, three strikes, you're out,
35:20
Um, we're going to lock you up. That's not your job,
35:23
ma'am sir. And you're right. But but everyone says kitchen like even even
35:34
you know, it's just become a ubiquitous thing to to describe it that way.
35:37
I'm not sure, but yeah, it's such a complicated issue. Every
35:42
week we talk about it. Every week we add a layer to it,
35:45
and I'll note one more layer just if you want more complexity. Two cases
35:47
brought up in Question Period this week. One was a person arrested after randomly
35:52
stabbing someone in the stomach on a skytrain, and the other case was three
35:57
men arrested Nanaimo in a truck with weapons and drugs. Both cases highlighted in
36:01
Question Period by BC United as the catch and release prosecution failures. The Prosecution
36:07
Service came out and said, actually it was police who use their discretionary power
36:12
to release those release those people after they arrested them. So now you have
36:15
the extra layer of police discretion, you've got you've got crown discretion, you
36:20
have judicial discretion. You have federal discretion, you have like directives at a
36:24
provincial level. You have homelessness, you have addictions, you have mental health,
36:28
you have of safe use, you have d KRIM, you have just
36:32
on it, Like, the whole thing becomes this untiable knot that seems overwhelming
36:38
the more we talk about it. To the ordinary person, it's a broken
36:44
windshield in their cafe, in their cafe that costs them thousands of dollars,
36:47
or walking downtown to a show and getting accosted by someone having a psychotic episode.
36:53
But to the governments, it is a massively complicated, intertwined file that
36:59
is like part of the reason why we don't seem easy solutions on this anyways.
37:05
That so ends my rant to close the show. Thank you to the
37:09
pod squad for being here. Thank you to for everyone for listening. Make
37:13
sure you subscribe to the podcast, and we will be back next week for
37:16
all the latest here on political capital.