FIRST READING: The shockingly small number of men causing all the crime

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

Amidst B.C.’s election campaign, B.C. Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson issued a statement over the Thanksgiving weekend denouncing the latest release of an individual he called “Nanaimo’s most prolific offender.”

Aiden Tye, 41, has accumulated 274 criminal convictions — an average of one criminal conviction per month since his 18th birthday.

Tye’s crimes include throwing a brick at a four-year-old girl. The brick instead struck the girl’s pregnant mother, who dove in the way to protect her daughter.

More recently, he defecated on his hands and smeared feces on the windows of a coffee shop that had thrown him out.

The feces incident was only in January, but Tye’s 271-day sentence is already up, thanks in part to a stretch of pre-sentencing detention, as every one day Tye spent in jail prior to a criminal sentence was counted as 1.5 days of a post-sentence jail term.

As Doerkson wrote, Tye’s release is emblematic of a system where “repeat violent offenders (are) released again and again, only to create more victims.”

And indeed, every B.C. city has at least one offender like Aiden Tye.

In Kelowna it’s Justin Collins, 49, who has racked up more than 400 police files and 66 convictions since 2012. Collins’ most recent sentencing was in July, for charges including indecent exposure at a hotel. At the hearing, prosecutor Nick Lerfold said that every time Collins is released from jail, he never goes longer than 40 days before committing a new crime.

In Penticton, it’s Levi Jo Kamps, who has accumulated 600 police interactions and is believed to have overdosed more than 100 times.

Last year, Kamps even received a shout-out in a Penticton rally hosted by federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. “He’s more famous than I am,” joked Poilievre.

In some corners of B.C., authorities have begun to openly acknowledge that they are in the grip of crime waves committed by very small groups of people.

In Kelowna, Collins is likely among the 15 “chronic property offenders” highlighted in a city report as the prime consumers of the city’s law enforcement resources. In just 2024, those 15 accounted for 1,335 police files.

“The pattern of persistent criminality by this select group is staggering and relentless,” the report read.

In a 2022 letter sent to then attorney general David Eby (who now serves as premier), the B.C. capital of Victoria identified 10 chronic offenders responsible for 1,385 police interactions over two years.

In Chilliwack, up to 60 per cent of the crime can be attributed to about a dozen offenders. That’s according to an estimate given to B.C. crime journalist Paul Henderson by Irwin Cohen, a criminologist at the University of the Fraser Valley.

The simple reason for all this is a system that is wholly unable to keep dangerous individuals out of society.

A judge acknowledged this rather explicitly in one of the many, many sentencing hearings for Aiden Tye.

At the 2023 hearing where Tye was sentenced for his brick attack on a pregnant mother, B.C. provincial court Judge Ronald Lamperson said it “highly likely after being released Tye will commit further offences.”

Nevertheless, according to CHEK News, Lamperson declared that offenders can’t be imprisoned indefinitely and handed Tye a sentence of 215 days.

When counted against the time Tye had already spent in pre-trial custody, it meant that Tye was released immediately.

Much the same can be heard at sentencing hearings for Levi Kamps. “We can’t keep him in jail forever. He’s going to be released,” Kamps’ defence counsel, James Pennington, said at a 2023 hearing where Kamps was sentenced for a bear spray attack.

On the frequent occasion that Justin Collins is released back into Kelowna, the RCMP have taken to issuing statements denouncing the fact that he’s free at all.

“The Kelowna RCMP continue to make arrests and bring Justin Collins to court, however without adequate consequences or compulsory pathways to mental-health and substance-use programs, our public is at risk,” police spokeswoman Supt. Kara Triance said after one such release in 2022.

Particularly in recent years, it has become a decidedly non-partisan position in B.C. that the justice system operates via a “revolving door,” or that chronic offenders are subjected to “catch and release” justice.

Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog, who used to be a B.C. NDP MLA, has publicly stated several times that the only way to rein in the behaviour of criminals like Aiden Tye is “secure involuntary care.”

The BC Urban Mayors Caucus will often include some of the most left-leaning elected officials in Canada. And yet, in 2022, the caucus issued a detailed letter to the province tallying up how just 204 offenders were responsible for 11,600 police interactions over the course of a single year.

“Our police agencies … flagged a significant increase in the number of offenders routinely breaching conditions without consequence while on bail and failing to appear in court without consequences,” it read.

In that particular case, the B.C. government responded with a 170-page report on “chronic offending” with 28 recommendations, none of which included tougher bail conditions or longer sentences for chronic offenders.

It also recommended against using the term “prolific offenders,” as it “not only perpetuates harm and stigma but also fails to address that these individuals lack security and safety.”

More recently, the B.C. NDP government has unveiled the Repeat Violent Offending Intervention Initiative and the Chronic Property Offending Intervention Initiative, both of which are described as programs to provide “enhanced supervision and co-ordinated supports” for chronic offenders.

There’s also the Special Investigation and Targeted Enforcement program to top up police budgets “to address repeat violent offending.”

Earlier this year, for instance, the Abbotsford Police Department credited its Special Investigation and Targeted Enforcement funding with helping to track down the latest crime spree attributed to local chronic offender Cody Ashton.

Caught with an estimated $500,000 in stolen property, Ashton was sentenced in June to six months of house arrest.

According to an exclusive by Global News, the Canada Border Services Agency has just initiated deportation proceedings against “Tiger” Yuan, a Chinese national accused of crimes against humanity.

This would normally be good news for the federal Liberals, who are often trying to claim they’ve gotten immigration “under control” — particularly in the realm of removing dodgy foreign nationals, such as Iranians with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Where it becomes bad news is that Yuan, owner of a Port Coquitlam gun store and head of the Canada-China Association for Promoting Friendly Relations, has been a donor to the Liberal Party and has been photographed next to prominent Liberals.

One of the first scandals faced by Trudeau was revelations in 2016 that he had attended multiple private fundraisers in the homes of Chinese-Canadians, which brought him into contact with several figures holding close ties to the Beijing regime.

Around that time, Yuan was one of several donors of Chinese origin from the Vancouver area who sent more than $60,000 to Trudeau’s Papineau riding association in Montreal. In 2023, amid concerns over Chinese foreign interference in Canadian politics, these donations would be cited in the House of Commons by Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-François Blanchet.

The allegations against Yuan stem from his time in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, when he participated in the 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam — an incursion mounted by Beijing in defence of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia.

CBSA sources quoted by Global News accuse Yuan of misrepresenting his military service in order to gain entry to Canada in 2008.  

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.