Advocates warn Ontario's bail reform could harm mothers seeking recovery

Globe and Mail

13 hours ago

Alicia Gordon had battled addiction for more than 15 years before it brought her in direct conflict with the law.
The First Nations mother from Northern Ontario was released on bail twice; first in 2019 for charges related to drinking and driving, and again in 2020 for possession of stolen property, respectively.
After her second release, Ms. Gordon turned her life around. She got sober and had occasional visitation rights to her five and six-year-old children.
'I went to treatment, got accepted into university, things were really positive,' Ms. Gordon said.
Then an unexpected breakup triggered a relapse. A third arrest in 2021 saw her pleading guilty to 16 of more than 30 charges, including possession of stolen property, several break and enters and failure to appear in court.
After six weeks of incarceration, Ms. Gordon was granted a 'bail bed' through the John Howard Society of Thunder Bay, a supervised housing program that provides support for those needing to meet their bail conditions.
Ms. Gordon has been sober ever since. She said the program was the lifeline that allowed her to finally get her life back on track for good.
But Ms. Gordon worries others like her won't get the same chance if the Ontario government pushes through its package of bail reforms.
The reforms, proposed on April 30, include more restrictive bail measures, dedicated prosecution teams for violent crime and GPS monitoring fees, which individuals would have to pay to get out on bail. The province has also urged the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to keep repeat and violent offenders 'off the streets.'
Advocates warn that Ontario's proposed bail reforms could unintentionally harm women and mothers by removing the flexibility that has helped many, like Ms. Gordon, break the cycle of addiction and rebuild their lives.
In Ms. Gordon's case, the judge reduced her sentence, allowing her to serve one year of probation in her community instead of going to jail.
'I worry about the other me's that might get stuck there and can't be everything they could be because they weren't given the same chance that I was,' Ms. Gordon said. 'Recovery is not linear and it takes so much effort to stabilize. It's a journey.'
Today, she shares custody of her now 10- and 11-year-old children, who divide their time between her and the kinship caregivers who supported them during her legal troubles.
'All of that happened for me because I got bail,' Ms. Gordon said. 'And if I hadn't, I wouldn't be sitting at my job today. I wouldn't be enjoying my children. I would have been completely cut off.'
Women's rights advocates say a one-size-fits-all approach to bail risks punishing vulnerable individuals rather than supporting their rehabilitation.
According to a World Prison Brief report, in 2021 women made up seven per cent of the incarcerated population in Canada. In Ontario, mothers represented about 80 per cent of that subset, according to internal data from the council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario, which advocate for women in prison.
Senator Kim Pate, who was formerly the group's president and has been a long-time advocate for incarcerated women, said Ontario's proposed reforms are 'outrageous fear-mongering' and pandering to growing worry about public safety.
'To suggest that judges, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law should be set aside for political reasons?' Ms. Pate said. 'I think it's incredibly irresponsible of the premier of the province.'
Charlotte Carron, press secretary to the Attorney-General of Ontario, defended her government's proposed reforms, saying the changes do not remove a judge's discretion.
'Ultimately, the decision about whether to release or detain an accused person rests solely with the presiding judge or justice of the peace who hears the evidence and arguments made by the prosecutor,' she said in a statement.
'We continue calling on the federal government to do its part and make real changes.'
Lindsay Martin, executive director of the Council of Elizabeth Fry Society of Northwestern Ontario, described the addiction-to-crime cycle as a 'revolving door' for caregivers involved in the justice system.
Martin said mothers who end up in the criminal justice system because of substance use are often released on bail without housing and without their children. The risk of relapse is further perpetuated by prison transfers from one end of the province to the other, sometimes before trial.
'One thing the general public doesn't necessarily understand is that you can be incarcerated in Northern Ontario and transferred down to Southern Ontario,' Martin said.
'So the incarceration is going to further displace you from your family and your home. They're kind of just set up to fail.'
Ms. Gordon, who was initially detained at the Thunder Bay Correctional Center in her hometown, said she was transferred more than a thousand kilometers away to a Sudbury district jail two days after receiving her second sentence.
It wasn't until after that she was able to call to tell her family she had been moved to a Sudbury district jail. She said the communication while she was there was not easy: family members and friends had to put money aside to pay for calls, which Ms. Gordon said were expensive and would last 30 seconds.
'There's a real sense of hopelessness,' she said.
'Women become so defeated, it actually pushes them deeper into their addictions, and deeper into being in conflict with the law,' she said. 'They are at a loss because their children are so far removed from them.'
Martin said displacing Indigenous mothers such as Ms. Gordon from their communities echoes Canada's history of residential schools.
'You see that very clearly and when families are displaced children go into the child welfare system. Those families are, again, for another generation, being ripped apart.'
Ms. Gordon said its the children who often bear the weight of generational trauma that perpetuates a cycle of crime.
'You can imprison mothers, but you're imprisoning the children as well,' she said. 'They just don't have bars around them.'