Bail reform provisions ‘critical,’ Gillingham tells Senate

Mayor Scott Gillingham continued his call for federal bail reform Thursday and argued recent Winnipeg crime data underlines the need for action.

“Our support for bail reform isn’t about blindly being tough on crime. It’s a rational public policy response to obvious threats, destructive patterns and repeated outcomes,” Gillingham told a federal senate committee in a remote presentation from Winnipeg.

The mayor has repeatedly pushed for federal bail reform since last summer and appeared at a House of Commons justice committee meeting in Ottawa on the topic in October 2025.

The Senate is now considering Bill C-14, which would impose stricter bail laws to address violent and repeat offences and organized crime, along with tougher sentencing laws for serious and violent crimes.

Gillingham said “reverse onus” provisions included in the bill, which would require an accused to prove why they should get bail, are greatly needed.

“Those are critical. We do have individuals who do breach court conditions consistently and go on to repeated offences … We need those individuals held for longer. We need public safety to be the priority,” he said.

Gillingham said just one repeat offender can have a considerable impact on public safety.

For example, he said one person police identified to be a “prolific property crime offender” was subject to two probation orders. A check from the Winnipeg Police Service bail compliance unit found the person to be in breach of “several” court-imposed conditions, he said.

“So another arrest warrant was issued. The offender (began) actively evading police, triggering further investigation. Our property crime unit worked with the bail compliance unit and found evidence linking the offender to an active retail theft ring, which involved assaults on multiple security guards. Numerous new charges were then laid against the offender,” said Gillingham. “And yet this same offender was successfully arrested by the bail compliance unit and then re-released on bail multiple times since the launch in December of 2025.”

As the province revealed in March, the bail compliance unit completed 922 compliance/warranted person checks in its first two months, of which 36 per cent led to another arrest or arrest warrant.

“Statistics don’t capture just how futile this can feel when police arrest the same individuals over and over and over,” said Gillingham.

The mayor noted the Manitoba integrated violent offender apprehension unit, which is jointly run by Winnipeg police and RCMP, continues to make arrests at a rate of roughly once a day. Eighty per cent of its arrests involving an offender on bail probation or parole in 2025.

“Twenty per cent of all arrestees were arrested more than once by the same unit,” he said.

A Manitoba-based member of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities also spoke in favour of the bail reform bill at the Senate committee meeting, stressing many municipalities are struggling to deal with repeat offenders.

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“There needs to be supportive measures in place for Bill C-14 because we do have to get to the root cause of repeat offending … Municipalities do need support, whether it be in mental health programming or supportive housing,” said Kathy Valentino, a City of Thompson councillor and second vice-president of the national federation.

Gillingham also stressed that crime prevention measures are needed, not just legal reforms.

“I look out my window every day at city hall and … I see a lot of drug activity, people struggling (with) addiction, in the throes of addiction, people struggling in poverty. We need to continue to address, collectively, the social issues that weigh people down,” he said.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

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Joyanne Pursaga
Reporter

Joyanne is city hall reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. A reporter since 2004, she began covering politics exclusively in 2012, writing on city hall and the Manitoba Legislature for the Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in early 2020. Read more about Joyanne.

Every piece of reporting Joyanne produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.