Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here before you today. My name is Rob Davis and I am the chief of police for the Brantford Police Service. I'm proud to be a Mohawk from the Six Nations of Grand River Territory on which the city of Brantford sits. We are located on the western edge of the Greater Toronto Golden Horseshoe area. I'm proud to be the only indigenous leader of a municipal police service in Ontario, and I've been in policing since 1990. I have served over half of my career in indigenous communities, with the majority of that time being with my home community of Six Nations, where I served with the Six Nations Police Service as well as with the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service in Ontario's far north. I've been the chief of police for over a decade, having led a small municipal service in Ontario's northwest—Dryden—prior to leading Alberta's third-largest municipal police service in Lethbridge, and now serving in the city of Brantford, a mid-size city with approximately 100,000 people.
I have witnessed first-hand throughout my career and especially over the last five years the lack of deterrence bail reform has created, specifically since 2019 when we saw bail reform implemented, and it will only be amplified if Bill C-5 is passed and allows for even weaker sentences. Victims of communities will live in fear of gun violence and fearful of retaliation by armed criminals, and people will continue to overdose, many of whom will die from fentanyl and other drugs laced with fentanyl that continue to be trafficked with impunity.
Certain crimes must result in the removal of the perpetrators from society so that the masses, the law-abiding masses, have a reprieve. Specifically for crimes committed using firearms; trafficking, production and importation of drugs, and many of the offences listed in paragraph 742.1(f), they're calling for conditional sentences.
My observation has been that crimes committed using firearms are prolific and ever-increasing. The victims of crime live in fear. We are seeing the scourge of trafficking, importation and production of drugs in our cities. Conditional sentences as suggested clearly will not work.
With that, I will take any questions.