QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Justice
Crime Prevention
November 19, 2025
Minister, welcome to the Senate.
Earlier this week, Canadians were stunned by reports out of the Greater Toronto Area describing a police operation to disrupt a duo responsible for robbing graves and mausoleums. Police have counted more than 300 thefts so far, including jewellery pieces containing human remains.
Minister, it’s unimaginable that after a decade of Liberal governments, Canada has reached a point where not even the dead are safe from criminal activity. Families already grieving their losses must now fear that their loved ones’ resting places will be desecrated. It’s really heart-wrenching. Minister, let’s call this what it is: It’s a complete failure of the public safety and criminal justice system.
Why can’t the government take the safety of Canadians seriously and finally step up to address the crime crisis unfolding in communities from coast to coast to coast?
Thank you sincerely, senator, for the question, and thank you all for the kind invitation to have an important conversation with you today.
Obviously, public safety is a pressing priority for the Government of Canada. It’s a pressing priority, frankly, for Canadians in every part of the country. The circumstances that you described are clearly heinous examples of criminal misbehaviour that need to be addressed with serious penalties but, ideally, with prevention that actually stops crime from happening before it takes place.
The strategy we’re moving forward with has several pillars. The first is to have stronger laws to ensure that people who commit serious crimes face serious penalties. The second is to ensure, senator, that we properly resource the front line. For our part, 1,000 new RCMP officers and 1,000 new border officers will help make a meaningful difference.
Finally, we have to engage in upstream investments, whether it’s mental health and addiction support or affordable and supportive housing, which are important programs that target at-risk youth to prevent people from engaging in criminal lifestyles to begin with.
These are not easy solutions, but I have all the faith in the world that if we give law enforcement the tools they need to do their job and if we work across levels of government and political party affiliations, we can advance meaningful reforms that will not only punish wrongdoers for these kinds of heinous acts but prevent crime from happening in the first place.
Minister, when criminals feel emboldened enough to desecrate graves hundreds of times without fear of consequences, that tells us everything that we need to know about the state of law and order under our government. This is what a decade of weakened sentencing, lax enforcement and catch-and-release justice has produced.
Minister, you must admit that your approach over the last decade is not working. We need to commit to restoring real consequences for crimes and criminals before Canadians lose all confidence in our judicial system.
Senator, you may be surprised by our points of agreement: We believe when serious crimes take place, the perpetrator should face serious penalties. These are not just words on my part but also backed by actions, including the introduction of Bill C-14 which adopts stronger bail measures targeting repeat violent offenders, stronger sentences for those who would commit serious crimes as well as aggravating factors for people who target certain harms that would reverberate throughout the entirety of a community.
I completely agree that serious penalties can act as a deterrent to help stop crime from taking place in the future. But that is only a part of the equation. We need to ensure that the front line is properly supported and we make those upstream investments if we want to effect change not just over the next year or two — though we are seeing crime rates come down in the past year — but we also solve these kinds of challenges over the course of a generation.
