At any given time in the province of Manitoba there are 10,000- 12,000 outstanding arrest warrants. In many cases, these warrants are for individuals who have very serious crimes, such as sexual offences against children and other violent offences.

Sadly, in Manitoba, there is more being done to crack down on people who fail to pay a speeding ticket than for these violent offenders who are refusing to show up in court to face the charges against them. That is why this week, I introduced at the Manitoba Legislature legislation that would make it a little harder for serious offenders refusing to deal with their arrest warrants to live carefree easy lives in the community.

The first piece of legislation would result in those criminals with warrants for serious offences not being able to renew their drivers licenses. Currently in Manitoba, you can be restricted from renewing your drivers license if you have an unpaid speeding ticket or a photo radar ticket. Yet, nothing stops someone who has an arrest warrant for a violent or sexual offence from renewing their license which not only provides them with a legal way to get around but also a valid government issued identification which can be used to gain access to certain establishments and to, in some cases, travel across borders.

The second piece of legislation that I brought forward would prevent those individuals who have arrest warrants for serious offences from collecting welfare payments. Currently, there is nothing that prevents people with arrest warrants from getting a taxpayer funded government assistance cheque at the same time that they are ignoring their warrants.

In essence, the taxpayer is helping fund criminals with very serious offences that are on the lam from the law. This simply cannot be allowed to continue.

Most people assume that individuals who have arrest warrants are on the run constantly trying not to be caught. Unfortunately, with 10,000-12,000 outstanding warrants and police officers who are overworked and constantly responding to calls for service, that simply isn’t the case. For many of these offenders, they can go for a long time before they are ever caught.

Since being elected into government in 1999, the NDP government has done very little to reduce the number of people who are free in our communities with outstanding serious warrants. The NDP have instead concentrated on clamping down on people with parking tickets and photo radar tickets as a way to get more money into the government’s coffers so that they could spend it.

It’s time they started to pay some attention to the most serious offenders on our streets who are not only ignoring their warrants and re-offending in our community, but who are given government sanction and taxpayers dollars to do it.