Two Stabbings, One Decade, Zero Accountability
FROM THE DESK OF ZACHARY | FIGHT FOR CANADA
Liberals have no plan to even consider beefing up security and remove the criminals either from society or the country depending on situation.
Two stabbings in Ottawa's core in as many days. Blocks from Parliament Hill, behind police tape, in the shadow of the Peace Tower. CTV calls it "renewed safety concerns." That phrasing does a lot of work. Concerns aren't renewed. They were never resolved - because the conditions producing them were built deliberately, one bill at a time.
Start with the numbers, because the numbers are not in dispute. According to Statistics Canada, violent firearm offences have risen 116 percent since 2015. Extortion - the crime of choice for organized networks now operating openly in Ontario and British Columbia - is up 357 percent over the same period. Overall violent crime sits roughly 30 percent above where it was a decade ago. These are not my figures. They come from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, the same dataset every newsroom in this country has access to and few bother to read.
The government's defenders will point to the 2024 release showing the Crime Severity Index dipped four percent. Read the fine print: three-quarters of that decline came from non-violent offences - property and drug crimes. The violent index barely moved, down one percent after three consecutive years of increases. A one-year wobble at the top of a decade-long climb is not a trend reversal. It's a rounding error on a mountain.
How did we get here? Policy. Bill C-75, passed in 2019, codified a "principle of restraint" instructing courts to release accused persons at the earliest opportunity under the least onerous conditions. The stated goal was reducing pretrial detention. The practical effect was a revolving door: repeat violent offenders released on bail, reoffending while awaiting trial, sometimes within days. Every provincial premier - all thirteen, across party lines - signed a letter in 2023 demanding Ottawa fix the bail regime C-75 created. That unanimity should have been a national scandal. It was a news cycle.
Then there's enforcement. Through the Deportation Accountability Project, I've been filing access-to-information requests with CBSA and IRCC, and the documents tell a consistent story: a removals backlog in the tens of thousands, including individuals with criminal inadmissibility findings who remain in the country years after removal orders were issued. When a foreign national is convicted of a violent offence, ordered deported, and still walking Canadian streets, that is not an immigration debate. That is an enforcement failure with a paper trail - and I'll be publishing those documents in the coming weeks.
None of this is complicated. A government chose leniency at the front end of the justice system and neglect at the back end, then spent a decade calling the predictable results a perception problem. The people paying for that choice aren't in Rockcliffe Park or the Laurentians. They're working downtown, riding transit, walking past the police tape on their lunch break.
Ottawa's two stabbings will fade from the headlines by Friday. The 116 percent won't. The 357 percent won't. The backlog won't. I will be LIVE on Youtube tonight at 7pm discussing next steps