Ford's crime-on-bail deflections an opportunity for Ontario NDP's

By Tom Parkin

November 12th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Doug Ford deflects responsibility for crime-on-bail onto judges and federal politicians, but it’s his own trial delays that are putting more people on bail.

Fewer charged with crimes receive decision within a year

Percentage of charges decided within one year:

After a disappointing leadership support vote in September, opposition NDP leader Marit Stiles has vowed to “take down” the Ford PC government with a strategy that aims at the legs of PC support and competes with Ford on the central concerns of votes.

The fist salvo in that plan has been a persistent line of attack on Doug Ford’s over his poor jobs record. Ontario unemployment has been persistently above the national average under the Ford PCs and while 800,000 Ontarians are jobless, the premier offers no jobs plan or even any Buy Canada policy.

Another line of attack serving the same strategy could be to actively redirect Ford’s “crime-on-bail” deflections. Certainly there is a clear path.

Ford has frequently picked up on crime-on-bail incidents, a problem he deflects onto judges and federal legislators. But it’s a problem Ford has caused and cynically seeks to benefit from.

Up to now, his deflections haven’t received much push-back. For both electoral and deeply principled reasons, they should.

Numbers out on bail up due to Ford’s trial delays

Longer trial delays mean longer time on bail for those charged. It means more people on bail awaiting trial. And Ontario’s trial delays are getting significantly longer, data shows.

For example, in 2010/11, over 75 per cent of robbery trials were decided in less than a year. But by 2024/25, only 52 per cent of robbery charges were decided in less than a year. The result of delayed trials is a lot more people on bail for robbery.

And while bail time of a year or less used to be the norm for those charged with sexual assault, attempted murder and murder, under the Ford PCs the norm is bail lasting longer than a year.

Percentage of cases decided within one year from first hearing

No evidence of a provincial bail-check program

And even as Ford’s trial delays increase the numbers on bail, it appears that once a judge sets bail conditions there is no provincial follow-up program to ensure bail compliance.

Despite research and requests to police forces and the Ministry of the Solicitor-General, Data Shows can find no evidence of any provincial strategy, or even data being provincially collected, on bail checks by police, who are responsible for enforcing bail orders.

Perhaps municipal speed cameras could free many officers from traffic duty, allowing them to be reassigned to enforcing bail conditions.

A public safety agenda is open to NDP

A public safety agenda that cuts trial delays and checks bail compliance is wide open for Ford’s political competitors. Adopting it may be strategically valuable both electorally and as an important counter-move against conservative anti-charter politics.

For Conservative politicians, it’s been open season to use crime-on-bail incidents to bolster their campaign against the Charter and to normalize notwithstanding clause use.

Feelings of fear, victimization and rage about crime-on-bail are being used by conservatives to build an emotional reservoir of antipathy against the Charter. That reservoir is then used to drown Charter rights for any reason, as is currently being done in Alberta, where Premier Smith justifies elimination of workers’ rights “because I can”

Those feelings need to be redirected and that reservoir needs to flood back as disgust against those who create a crisis by mismanaging public institutions then cynically attempt to political benefit from the crisis their mismanagement created.

Opposition counter-attacks — or better yet, pre-emptive attacks — on crime-on-bail incidents by citing Ford’s failure to manage public institutions can likely redirect at least some of the emotional flow, protecting democratic rights.

And those opposition attacks would be strengthened if backed by propositions, tested with stakeholders, to reverse court delays and implement a provincial bail-check program.

Such attacks and propositions could advance Stiles’ “take down” strategy, undermining strength of another leg of PC support, a perceived advantage on crime and public safety. But they would also serve a historic purpose: defending rights and freedoms from the conservative campaign against them.