Is Ontario’s Cash Bail Actually Making Communities Safer?

September 1, 2026

This summer, I spent three months sitting in Toronto’s bail court every day. I was there as a legal researcher with Legal Aid Ontario, and my job is to watch, take notes, and report back to assess whether the bail system is fair and fast?

The TV Version Was Wrong

For most people, the idea of bail probably comes from American courtroom dramas, where someone pays a bondsman, puts up some cash, and walks out of jail. That has never really been how bail works in Canada.

Instead, judges can release an accused person on a promise to pay a specified amount, meaning no money changes hands at the time of release. The amount only becomes payable if the person breaches their bail conditions or fails to appear in court.

That changed on August 17, when Ontario’s new bail measures came into force through Bill 75.

What Bill 75 Actually Does

Ontario’s new measures introduce a requirement for an upfront cash deposit in certain circumstances. Where a judge orders security, the accused must now pay the full amount within two business days of release, thereby turning what was previously a promise to pay into an actual financial obligation at the outset.

The rules also place new obligations on sureties, who must provide current contact and identification information and could face a provincial offence charge if they fail to do so. The government says these changes will make it easier to collect money when bail is forfeited and, ultimately, help support public safety.

Police organizations supported the changes. The Ontario Provincial Police, the Police Association of Ontario and York Regional Police all raised concerns about people being repeatedly released, breaching their conditions, and returning to the criminal justice system without facing what they see as real consequences.

Is it Ultra Vires?

The Criminal Lawyers’ Association and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have challenged the legislation and are seeking an interlocutory injunction to temporarily halt the new cash-bail rules while the court challenge is being heard.

There are really two major questions at the heart of their argument.

The first question is whether Ontario was even allowed to make this change. Criminal procedure is a federal responsibility, and section 515(2)(e) of the Criminal Code already gives judges the discretion to require a cash deposit in certain cases. The constitutional challenge is that Ontario may be stepping into federal territory by changing how that discretion operates.

That is where “pith and substance” comes in. Courts look at what a law actually does, as opposed to simply what the government says it does. If Ontario says it is only regulating its courts, but the law is actually changing how criminal bail works, that could be a problem. In R. v. Morgentaler (1993), the Supreme Court struck down a Nova Scotia law that was framed as a health regulation but, in substance, concerned with criminal law. The same question could now be asked of Ontario’s cash-bail rules.

Ontario’s likely response is that it is not rewriting criminal law at all, but simply regulating the administration of its own courts. The difficult question will be where that distinction lies. At what point does regulating the administration of provincial courts become legislating in an area reserved for Parliament?

The second issue is the Charter. Section 11(e) protects the right not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause. Cases such as R. v. Antic and R. v. Zora also emphasized that bail conditions should be individualized and no more onerous than necessary.

Mandatory cash security creates an obvious tension with that framework. Two people could present similar risks to the public and to the court, yet one could be released because they can afford the required deposit while the other remains in custody because they cannot. The legal question is whether someone’s ability to pay can legitimately determine whether they get their freedom.

What I Actually Saw in Court

This is the part that gets lost in government announcements and police statements. For three months, I watched bail proceedings in Toronto, and once the necessary conditions were worked out, accused people were released without cash necessarily being part of the equation.

If the existing system is already capable of moving cases through court and releasing people with conditions, what problem is mandatory cash actually solving, and who is it going to affect most?

And even more crucially: how often will it be applied?

My read is that the politics are fairly straightforward. The Ford government gets to present itself as taking a tougher approach to crime, though blaming repeat offending on a bail system it says is too lenient. If the legislation is eventually struck down, there is also a convenient political explanation that the courts got in the way.

However, judges still have discretion over the amount of security they require, which means we could see very small deposits attached to bail orders. And based on what I’m witnessing, I think, in the meantime, we’ll be seeing lots of $1 bails.