The Ontario government is proposing to suspend the driver’s licences of convicted auto thieves in a bid to look like it’s taking crime seriously. The proposed penalties are no joke. A first offence will earn offenders a 10-year licence suspension. A second offence escalates to 15 years. A third offence will result in a lifetime driving ban. The suspensions will apply when the thefts are accompanied by aggravating factors such as violence or stealing for organized crime.
Politicians love to get “tough on crime.” It’s cheap and easy policy. Never mind that it rarely works and, indeed, often makes things worse. The phrase, the approach, the spirit of punishment for the sake of punishment resonates with a good chunk of the population. It’s folksy, in a macabre sort of way. In other words, it’s very much in keeping with Doug Ford’s approach to governance — lots of showmanship, lots of faux-populism, and few results.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria couched the proposed penalties in terms of privileges versus rights, perhaps preparing for the inevitable court challenge.
“Driving is a privilege, not a right,” he said. As if there were any doubt that stealing cars is bad or that carjacking someone is unacceptable, he added, “If you're shameful enough to prey on other members of the community for your own reckless gain, you'll lose that privilege.”
Ontario is also planning to suspend the licences of stunt drivers — those who go faster than 40 kilometre/hour above the speed limit in a zone marked below 80 kilometres. The new penalties for stunt drivers will be leaner than those for car thieves: one offence will mean a one-year licence suspension, a second will lead to a two-year ban, and a third will net a lifetime ban, which could be reduced.
Speaking to Mike Crawley of the CBC, Stephen Hebscher, a lawyer with the Criminal Law Team in North York, suggested the penalties may violate the Constitution by creeping into criminal-law territory, which is a federal responsibility. He noted that thefts would need to be linked to highway safety for the bill to be constitutional. He’s probably right. Hebscher, like many others, also notes that the penalties may not work — that is, they won’t reduce thefts. He’s right again.
Auto theft is a serious problem. The government would like to remind us of that as it repeats the line that a vehicle is stolen every 14 minutes or so in Ontario. That is a problem, as are the violence and organized crime inextricably linked to growing theft. But Ford’s approach isn’t going to solve the problem, since the deterrent won’t work, and when it comes to organized crime, there’s always going to be a new thief to replace one who gets pinched.
Suspending the licence of a stunt driver makes more sense, since driving is inherent to the act of driving irresponsibly and dangerously fast, so getting stunt drivers off the road will be effective even if the deterrent isn’t. But that logic doesn’t apply to car thieves.
As we often see with the Ford government, it’s not quite clear what its plan is here beyond trying to look like it’s tough on crime and treading on federal territory to do so. In February, the government shared its intent to appoint partisan judges who’d be tougher on crime, a violation of democratic norms and a perversion of the justice system. It was decried as a cynical, trust-eroding, and useless move if the goal was the reduce crime. Now Ford is going back to that well.
Once again, the province is enjoying an expensive piece of tough-on-crime theatre. But Ford may win either way. When the inevitable court challenge does arrive, if the law is ruled unconstitutional in whole or in part, the government will simply denounce soft, out-of-touch judges who don’t give a damn about suburban parents getting violently carjacked while taking the kids to soccer practice.
If he loses in court, it’s unlikely Ford would be able to rely on the notwithstanding clause, as he has before, since the provision can’t be used to override the Constitution’s division of powers. But he could at least claim he was trying to do something to stop these yahoos!
The problem, of course, is that what Ford is doing, even if it’s popular, even if it’s in response to a real problem, won’t solve anything — or at least it won’t address the structural problem, even if it will make it look, for a time, like the government is taking the matter seriously. As I’ve written before, we’d be far better served by a long-term strategy that addresses the determinants of crime, social and economic factors, and presses car manufacturers to make cars harder to steal in the first place. That’s not to say we should let criminals off the hook, but the reality is that, if the goal is to prevent crime in the first place, threatening to suspend a driver’s licence isn’t going to get the job done. Governments, particularly the Ford government, ought to be more concerned with results than adopting show policies that won’t do anybody any good.
Donate