Transcript of audio:
It’s what’s happening right now.
This is the Jazz Johal Show on 980 CKNW.
Rob Fai for Jazz until 6 before we get you to the global news that’ll get you home.
You know, we’ve been talking about John Rustad’s plans on tackling crime.
Wants to change the province’s perception of public safety.
To talk a little bit more about this is Rob Dhanu.
He’s a former federal crown prosecutor, criminal defense lawyer and also the co-founder of Dhanu Dhaliwal Law Group and Case Counsel.
Nice to meet you.
Good to see you again, Rob.
It’s a pleasure to be here, Rob.
All right, let’s get into this in a very polarizing start to the show.
We had Nikki Sharma come on, the attorney general of this province, and was going against a lot of what John Rustad said.
What do you make of John’s comments today?
Well, look, it’s that delicious time of year that is election season, Rob.
And if there’s one thing that the left and right can agree on, is that being tough on crime gets you votes.
So.
You know, one of the main themes that John Rustad has is that the NDP had this catch and release policy, which is really a bit of a political ploy here because the NDP never went soft on crime.
And the best way to look at this in terms of timing is pre COVID and post COVID.
And we can all agree that post COVID things seem a lot worse on the streets than they were pre COVID.
And even though the stats show that crime is actually down, it doesn’t look that way in our urban centers, but I can say from the trenches.
The bail laws have not changed.
Our judges are doing the same work.
The Crown is doing the same work.
The police are doing the same work.
The one thing that the NDP did do was drug decriminalization, and that is what we saw in terms of how the streets were looking more disorderly.
And the NDP’s had to eat crow on that issue because it became a political loser in what turned out to be, surprise, surprise, a very tight election.
So the NDP’s already walked that policy back.
So as many other left-leaning urban centers have, such as Portland or in California, decriminalization is now off the table.
You know, one of the things that Nikki brought up, and she brought it up three different times and I had to eventually ask her about it.
She was really in on John Restad’s thoughts on guns.
Our calls in the very next segment went completely bananas on that.
What were your thoughts on?
Nikki wanting to really talk about the guns because to me that was not why we brought her on, but she wanted to talk about it.
So we did.
Well, look, guns have become a complete political issue and they’re really misunderstood, I think, in Canadian society as opposed to what we see in America.
So guns are the vast majority of guns that are used in crime.
We know this statistically.
The CBSA knows this, the feds know this, the province knows this.
They are smuggled from South of the border.
People who own guns lawfully, they have to go through a a very rigorous criminal record check.
They have to do courses, they have to get training.
And very, very few guns that are found on the streets in the hands of criminals come from law-abiding Canadians.
So when we see, you know, obviously the orange talk in this and the blue talk in this and the green talk in that, if you’re a voter, how do you sift through all that from your perspective
You know, it’s really tough to sift through it.
Then John Rustad has put forward what I would describe as a very ambitious agenda.
He’s essentially mimicking, and it makes sense in this political season, what Pierre Polivier is saying with this whole catch and release policy.
So if you really want to dumb it down, I hate to use this type of analogy, but when you are running a society and especially when you’re dealing with a criminal justice system, it’s kind of like raising a child.
You need a combination of discipline and enforcement.
And love and compassion.
And John Rust’s policies where he compliant combines increased enforcement with some level of compassion actually makes sense.
However, there’s other aspects of it that simply don’t make sense.
OK, Rob Dinu is a former federal crown prosecutor, criminal defense lawyer and co-founder of Dinu Dhaliwal Law Group joining me here on the Jazz Johal show.
Rob, I want to get right back into something that I think was a hot button issue when Stephen Harper was a Prime Minister of this country and that was mandatory minimum sentences for violent offenders.
That eventually got chipped away at, you know, when after he left office.
And I sit back and I say to myself, OK, this is the perfect time to talk tough about it, but it never stood the test of time the last time around.
Why would it this time?
No, it wasn’t just chipped away at.
It was blown completely out of the water.
And you know, the one thing that taxpayers should demand is that their tax dollars and the time that our politicians are using be put to good effect.
So actually work on policies.
That we know work and don’t put your resources and time on policies that we know have failed in the past.
And we know with mandatory minimums.
But let’s take the extreme outlier.
Let’s take a look at California.
They had a whole 3 strikes and you’re out policy where after your third felony, you are sent to jail for the rest of your life.
You’re serving a life sentence.
Mandatory minimum sentences are proven scientifically, simply not to work.
People don’t think about the sentence they’re going to be serving before they commit a crime, and they’re not less likely to commit a crime after they’ve served a mandatory minimum sentence.
And our Supreme Court has struck these all down as unconstitutional, almost all of them.
They’re also federal in jurisdiction.
So the the province doesn’t have a say in terms of what sentences are going to be a mandatory minimum or what the clients are going to have mandatory minimum sentences or not.
Rob, correct me if I’m wrong.
I just want to make sure I heard you right.
You don’t think that a criminal is worried about the.
The length of time that he or she would be in jail, I mean, before they commit the offense.
Because to me, I think that’s what I hear from a lot of different people is these criminals don’t fear what’s on the other side of the backhand.
So my question to you is, is that not something that some politician at some point, be it federal or provincial, has to get tough on?
No, when the vast majority of criminals that we see in our criminal justice system have either mental health issues, addiction issues or some combination thereof.
And those individuals are not thinking and looking up at the criminal code in terms of what their sentence is going to be if they commit a crime.
But wouldn’t it be from, like, you know, the John Q taxpayer perspective?
I mean, OK, if they don’t care about it, shouldn’t we at least feel safe on our streets for a year or two knowing that, hey, you know what, maybe they didn’t have their senses and now they’re in jail for a year, but at least we’re a little bit safer knowing that they’re incarcerated.
Well, you’re actually not safer.
That’s the that’s the interesting part.
We’re spending more money institutionalizing these people, making more prisons, and we’re actually not safer because it’s not.
Reducing crime in any way, shape or form.
We’re actually more at risk because we’re not dealing with the root cause of the issues.
That’s the irony of it.
I’m trying to wrap my head around this is really interesting conversation to me because I look at it like this.
OK, that person steals from me or that person hurt somebody in my family in some way, shape or form.
I at least have the Peace of Mind knowing that that one particular individual is behind bars.
Like that to me doesn’t solve the problem as a whole, but it at least doesn’t it work towards the betterment of our society.
No, it doesn’t.
Because what we have to do is we have to look at the root cause of the problem.
So why did that person actually come into my house and robbed me?
So if we know that the issue is, I wouldn’t care about that.
I’m not to cut you off, but the root cause is great for 1/2 of the equation.
But for me and my personal safety, I is the guy that’s doing things right.
All of a sudden I find this guy’s behind bars.
I can at least sleep at night.
I don’t care about his root problems.
I care about my family.
And I think that’s a part of the problem here is a lot of people are tired of all this, you know, oh, let’s coddle these people.
Let’s make sure that they get better.
What about the person that’s not doing anything wrong, but is affected by these people?
Well, the question is, would you rather feel safer or actually be safer?
So you may feel better, but you’ve actually not…
You could have both if you address the root cause of the problem.
So you can have both.
This is the combination.
You need some compassion and you need enforcement.
You need both.
And this is where John Rushdad’s policies actually make sense.
When you actually give police more money, hire more sheriffs, Hire more judges, which is what John Ross did as talking about.
Then ironically, for someone who’s right of center, also talking about programs involving rehabilitation.
That’s when the justice system works.
Rob, I’m going to open up the calls and I feel like I’m opening up the lion’s cage to this one.
But I appreciate your calls.
No, you know what?
That’s what makes good radio.
Thank you for the opinion.
I love our spirited conversations and hopefully we get to do another one soon.
My pleasure.
Awesome.
Rob Denu.
Boy, 604-280-9898.
I can’t even wait to get to the other side.
Look at that.
One, two, three, here we go.
Okay, we’re going to take a really quick break.
When we come back, your calls.
I mean, that was a, even I got opinions on this one, but I’ll defer to you.
604-280-9898.
Your thoughts on John Rusted talking tough and a lot of people saying, yeah, there’s good there, but there’s also another plan.
604-280-9898.
Back with more after this.
You’re listening to the Jazz Johal Show on 980 CKNW.
What we need is real policies that tackle the problems and the public safety issues that we’re seeing, and we’ve been stepping up consistently, responding to to having the toughest roles for repeat violent offenders in the country and the most serious responses to that, and even though one incident is too many,You know, there is progress.
Crime is going down.
I’m Rob Fay in for Jazz.
That was the attorney general of this province, Nikki Sharma, defending the ND PS policies when it comes to crime.
John Rustad coming forward today saying, uh, we got to be a lot tougher on that.
By the way, we did offer the opportunity for John Rustad to come on.
He was a little bit busy today, so that’s fine.
We’re going to have the conversation.
Just moments ago, Rob Tanu stopped by as well.
And Rob had a lot of things to say about how we can better our society.
He’s a former federal Crown prosecutor, a criminal defense lawyer.
So yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of different opinion, but I want yours at 604-280-9898.
Let’s open up the board, Suki in Surrey.
Suki, good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Yeah, my name is Suki Sandhu.
I’m part of a group, a founding member of a group called Wake Up Surrey that started in June 2018 after the death of a targeted shooting of a 15 and 17-year-old that we held a massive rally outside ofSurrey City Hall we are non-political we have had over 150 meetings with various levels of government on the increasing gang violence and targeted shootings as you may know over the last 25 years no other community has suffered from this social disease we’ve had over 400 of our youth uh that has been killed due to gang violence or been lured into thisinto this what did you make of the announcement today from John Rustad?
Well I think if I look at John Rustad where’s he been before on this gang violence he’s never had a roundtable with us he’s never offered to meet with us we’ve met with Minister Farnworth we’ve met with the Minister the Attorney General several times on on this issue because it is a massive it’s a multifaceted issue it’s not we just can’t arrest our way out of this we need to work with youth and their parentsWe need to have ownership within the community on that we’ve got increasing gang violence problem regionally that is not um not in line with other gang violence across North America.
It’s not due to poverty, it’s not due, these are kids from middle-class families.
John Rusted is just, I think looking a lot of hot air, a lot of talking points and just seeing what sticks.
I don’t, I I take offense to his comments becauseTo play your politics elsewhere, don’t, John Rusted.
Don’t play it on the ashes of our children.
That’s all right.
Thank you for the call, Suki.
I do appreciate your time.
Let’s go to Langley.
Adam, thank you for waiting.
Adam, what are your thoughts today?
Yeah, I kind of agree with what you were saying earlier.
You can have them both.
You can absolutely start working at the building, you know, reaching those root causes while at the same time locking the guys up for longer periods of time.
Listen, I had a guy try to break.
I’m on the ground.
level of condo and I had someone try to break into my house in the middle of the night one summer.
I have a wife sleeping next to me.
I don’t care at all about his root cause.
Zero empathy towards that and I think those guys need to be dealt with swiftly and severely.
Yeah, thank you for the call Adam and and here’s and and I just want full disclosure here.
I come from a family of defense lawyers and police officers.
I mean Christmas at our house isInspiring to say the least.
But the one thing that I will say is I have been on this station long enough to hear plenty of people that have come on and said, hey, we’re trying to help these people that are, you know, struggling with their mental health and their mental well-being.
And I’m all for that.
But I think at the other, at the same time, you have to think of the other side of the coin, that young lady who had her house invaded, that senior citizen that was pushed aside while they got robbed.
I mean, those people need to sleep at night as well.
So, so often we have people that come onto the station, they’re talking about all the things that need to be done for those who are committing the crimes.
And it’s one thing to talk tough, but the simplest recipe is can you make the taxpaying, law-abiding citizen feel safe in their neighborhood as well?
And and again, I don’t know if that skews me right, left, down the middle, whatever.
But I’m all for having the conversation of how we can help these people get better so that they don’t re-offend.
I’m on that ship, but I am also a big believer in making sure that the person who had the crime committed against them, whether it’s a business or an individual or a group or a family, get the opportunity to feel safe in their community as well.
So this is the problem that I have is you have a lot of people that come on.
It’s like, well, you know how we can fix it.
We got to make sure that they’re better mentally.
Cool.
Then take them off on the side and go and fix them.
But at the same time, and I know it’s going to cost a lot of money and it’s going to utilize a lot of resources.
That’s fine.
But you have to give assurance to the community of law-abiding taxpaying citizens that they are going to be able to be safe in their own home, that they’re going to be safe in the park, that they’re going to be safe on the road.
So this is the problem.
If you’re going to talk tough, I’m all for it, but you better be able to back it up.
And I have heard all three parties that have all talked tough on crime or how they can solve this problem, but none of them get to the real root of it.
And that is making sure that you can deal with both sides of the equation at the same time.
I’ve never heard both sides of those acknowledged in one sentence or in one conversation.
It’s always so heavy skewed one way or heavy skewed the other.
And to me, you’ve got to be able to do both or you’re not going to get either accomplished.
All right, finish up with Rob in Chilliwack.
Rob, I’ve got about 30 seconds.
Hit me.
I’ll try and be quick.
Your first caller there said about John Ross said don’t play politics.
Well, sorry, but I got news for him.
David Eby and the NDP play play politics, Rob.
They imposed a police department in SurreyThat the citizens didn’t want.
And I’m I’ll get to the root of this here in a second.
A city force there in Surrey.
We all know that.
But your police departments, regardless whether they’re RCMP or City Rob, can only do the job as good, you know, and as well as what the justice system will allow them to.
David EB Rob has walked hand in hand with Justin Trudeau on catch and release the revolving door of justice here.
So you know.
We won’t get anywhere until we allow police officers to arrest these people in the justice system, allow them or make them stay in jail.
And by the way, you can have both.
We need mandatory minimum sentences.
I I never thought I’d agree with Stephen Harper, but I do.
And we need involuntary care, Rob.
All right.
Thanks for the call, Rob.
I wish I had more time to let you go. I will say this, the involuntary is going to be a problem.Â
The mandatory minimums, if you pull the lens back a bit, that’s going to be a problem as well.
