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www.canadianlawyermag.com 5 Courts also have considerations under ss. 493.1 and 493.2 of the Criminal Code, which call for a "principle of restraint," particularly for Indigenous and other vulnerable accused, including racialized, Black, street-involved, and addicted accused, he says. Despite the common view that bail courts have a "catch and release" policy toward violent offenders, some of the numbers indi- cate an adverse trend. According to research by Queen's sociologist Dr. Nicole Myers, the percentage of Canada's provincial-jail popu- lation in pre-trial custody has grown from 52.9 percent in 2013/2014 to 70 percent, where it currently stands. "Whoever says that our bail system is lenient hasn't really sat in a bail court to under- stand how things actually go," says Tonya Kent, a criminal defence lawyer in Toronto. "Our remand centres are actually full of people who did not receive bail and who are sitting there waiting for trial." It is more difficult than many in the public realize to get bail, especially on firearms charges, and once the accused is bailed, their movement is often under strict control, she says. All it takes to be accused of a crime is reasonable suspicion and sometimes reason- able and probable grounds, a standard often tainted by bias, says Jones. "How a police officer develops reasonable probable grounds oftentimes falls apart during the prosecu- tion. You find out that the reasonable prob- able grounds was grounded in – let's just say – race-based investigation." Canadians rely on elected officials to make evidence-based policy rather than using fear of the criminally accused for polit- ical leverage, he says. "Our criminal justice system is profoundly unequal. This is not my language. This is something the courts have said over and over again. We would all be served best if we worked together to make the system more equal, more fair, not more punitive. "The bail stage is the very beginning of the process," he says. "If it's not done fairly from the very beginning, it is unreasonable – to put it lightly – for us to suggest that, at the back end, somehow justice has been done. No, it has not." CRIME ON BAIL Increase in "incidents where someone has allegedly failed to follow bail or peace-bond conditions and committed a violent crime," 2017–2021 "Whoever says that our bail system is lenient hasn't really sat in a bail court to understand how things actually go" Tonya Kent, Tonya Kent Criminal Defence Ontario GTA Source: CBC 27% 16%