Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Nick Milinovich. I am the deputy chief of Peel Regional Police emergency services command at our police service. I'd like to start by thanking the chair and members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women for inviting us to participate in this important discussion.

The police-reported crime statistics released by Statistics Canada are nothing short of concerning. We are seeing similar trends across our country. The Peel region is one of the most diverse and vibrant communities in Canada. It also contains one of North America's busiest airports.

In 2023 our officers responded to over 9,500 incidents of family and intimate partner violence, resulting in approximately 26 incidents every single day. We laid over 9,050 charges.

The top five charges are uttering threats, failure to comply with a release order, assault with a weapon and choking or suffocating. Our data shows that a woman is strangled every single day in the region of Peel. Of the 14 homicides we've had in Peel region, almost 20% have been femicides. These are just the incidents that are reported and the statistics that make them up. I would also like to share the stories behind those statistics.

I would talk about Darian Henderson-Bellman. She was a 25-year-old woman with a bright future ahead of her who was shot and killed in Brampton by somebody she had been in a romantic relationship with. That individual was on release at the time of her murder and had been charged with multiple firearms-related offences, along with a failure to comply and a variety of other breach of release orders. He was also charged with two previous IPV-related incidents prior to killing Henderson-Bellman.

Pawanpreet Kaur, a 21-year-old woman, was shot and killed while at her job. Prior to her murder, she was in a relationship with an individual who had been charged with multiple intimate partner violence-related offences in relation to her. He had been released on bail. He had threatened her, her family and her friends in order to have her drop those charges. We are alleging that he's responsible for her homicide.

As early as two weeks ago, we arrested Jagmohanjit Jheety in connection with a variety of intimate partner violence-related offences. This investigation started in May 2024, when the accused was charged with criminal harassment and failed to comply with a release order. Along with a variety of conditions that were placed on him, he was released on bail. In July 2024 the accused is alleged to have followed the victim and fled upon our arrival. At the time, firearms were located in his vehicle along with a variety of other weapons. We identified that he had placed GPS tracking devices on the victim's vehicle. Again, the accused was on a form of release at the time of the offences. Ultimately we located, arrested and charged the accused with attempted murder and with firearm and a variety of other related offences.

The reason I wanted to highlight these three scenarios is that, one, they are the anecdotal, the real stories behind the statistics, but they also demonstrate some of the issues that we are experiencing as a police service in protecting our community and that our community is experiencing in terms of some of the anxiety they feel about feeling safe within their communities. It's representative of the vulnerabilities we are seeing in our current system and its lack of prioritization for our victims and our survivors. There's also a variety of other factors, such as access to illegal firearms and the release of repeat violent offenders.

On concerns and considerations to victims and survivors, while the bail system and access to illegal firearms create barriers to addressing IPV, they also affect us in other spaces. They create barriers in our ability to respond to community needs, to such things as carjackings, home invasions, extortions, shootings—all things that are incredibly important to our community here in Peel.

I would offer that last week we arrested 18 men for carjackings and home invasions in Peel. Of those 18 people, we held 15 of them for bail hearings. Of the 15 that we held for bail hearings, by the time we made the press conference announcement, nine of them had already been released.

From January until July 18 of this year we have had 87 carjackings, which is a 58% increase from 2023. We've had 54 violent home invasions. That is a 350% increase from last year, and very similar to some of the issues we're experiencing with our ability to prevent intimate partner violence, and I will say, gender violence, is we continue to see some of these issues as barriers to our ability to address that.

We know through the public record that in 2022 there were 256 people charged with homicide while on some form of release, including those who were on house arrest or parole. In total, there were 874 homicides in Canada in 2022. The 256 people charged while on release would equate to 29% of all the homicides across our country. This is, again, a trend that we are seeing here locally. Too often we are seeing violent and tragic incidents that are being committed by high-risk repeat offenders who have a blatant disregard for their release conditions and, more importantly, the safety of others or the preservation of life.

The prevalence of firearms in our region is a huge concern, and we are allocating every possible resource to seize illegal firearms within our community. In fact, this past weekend, we laid numerous firearms related charges against a variety of people. We are seeing kids as young as 14 and 15 years old possessing these firearms. In Peel alone, we are seizing an illegal firearm every 24 hours. These are the firearms that are used to commit a variety of offences, inclusive of offences against some of our more vulnerable or priority populations specific to intimate partner violence.

We continue to advocate for Criminal Code changes that would expand reverse onus offences towards violent and repeat offenders, especially those charged with our most violent offences and firearms related offences. It includes intimate partner violence and prior offences committed to intimidate, threaten or cause fear to an intimate partner regardless of the use of violence.

Violent offenders pose a risk to community safety. We are consistently advocating for stronger measures to protect women, children and everyone in our community from all types of violence, including gender-based violence, and access to illegal firearms and a higher threshold for bail and other release for violent offenders are important parts of that equation.

With that, I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you.

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