Like ‘completing a marathon’: lead staffer on C-14 talks legislative process, Hill journey
Keith Torrie was watching on CPAC from Toronto when Bill C-14, the federal government’s Bail and Sentencing Reform Act, cleared its final parliamentary hurdle on June 15. After more than a year spent shepherding the bill through the drafting and legislative processes as the lead cabinet staffer, he says watching it cross the finish line felt a lot like “completing a marathon.”
“I used to be a big runner, and whenever you cross the finish line, this sort of pride and relief washes over you, and I think it’s the same with the passage of the law,” Torrie told The Hill Times.
C-14 passed the Senate with amendments on May 28, three of which—related to the granting of sureties, contents of the minister’s annual report on the state of the bail system, and timing for the coming into force of certain sections of the bill—were accepted by the House of Commons on June 12. Senators agreed to not insist on two others on June 15, sending C-14 off for royal assent the same day, and making it one of 11 government bills to get passed in the final weeks of the spring sitting.
Torrie noted the unique anxiety that exists among staffers on the eve of Parliament’s summer recess.
“One of the things that gives anybody anxiety who works on the Hill is if you’re working on a piece of legislation and you’re close to the end, but you’re also close to the end of session,” he said. "You're thinking about that, too, like, 'what happens if this takes until the fall? How do we ... avoid that? [Are] there any conversations we can have?'"
But passage by Parliament isn’t the end of the road. “You’re always thinking about what’s next,” said Torrie. “Even though we’ve got the royal assent now, we’re thinking about, OK, now how do we communicate this to make sure that Canadians know these changes are happening?”
Tabled by Justice Minister Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.) last October, C-14 fulfilled a 2025 Liberal platform promise to introduce stricter bail and sentencing laws. Its changes include requiring courts to consider whether an offence involved “random and unprovoked violence,” or whether an accused has outstanding charges when making a bail order; adding seven new reverse onus provisions (requiring the accused to demonstrate why they should get bail) for offences including human trafficking, extortion involving violence, and breaking and entering; and expanding circumstances by which a release order can be cancelled, among other things.
Torrie said work got underway on C-14 almost right away post election.
“We knew that that’s what we were going to be working on, and the outreach [to experts and relevant stakeholders] began, I’d say, almost the same week” Fraser was sworn in to cabinet on May 13, 2025, said Torrie.
Torrie had already been working for the federal justice minister since 2023—starting as a senior policy adviser to then-minister Arif Virani—and was kept on by Fraser as a senior adviser.
While he’s had a hand in multiple pieces of legislation over the years, for the first time since becoming a staffer in 2022, Torrie was tapped as the minister’s lead on the effort that became Bill C-14.
“All the previous experience I had at Public Safety, in the previous Justice office, it sort of prepared me for exactly this opportunity, and so I was thrilled to be asked to join Minister Fraser’s team and to help,” he said.
Given the party’s numerous justice reform commitments, Torrie said early conversations included weighing how big of a bill to introduce, and whether to “parse it out” to make it “a bit easier to digest for parliamentarians.” The latter approach was ultimately taken, with further reforms tabled through Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, and Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, both of which passed third reading in June.
“It was quite a remarkable journey … you help craft what the best policy positions are, you consult with the stakeholders to see whether or not they would think the government’s going in the right direction with some of the potential ideas, and then you sort of keep whittling that down until you feel like you have what it is that you think is going to be the most effective piece of legislation,” he explained. “It’s a hard slog just to get to that point.”
Throughout that process, Torrie filled the role of sherpa, ushering feedback back and forth between Justice department officials doing the actual drafting, relevant stakeholders, and the minister’s team.
“We will kick the tires back and forth with them [Justice staff] about, ‘is this the right way to put it? Is there an unintended consequence if we do it this way?’”
As the minister’s lead, Torrie also helped shape consultations, determining who were the key stakeholders, and how best to engage with them.
“We had a couple of roundtables the minister did with stakeholders where he was able to get direct feedback … and that again informs the internal office deliberation about ‘are we headed in the right direction?’” said Torrie. For C-14, that list included law enforcement, civil society, businesses, and municipal leaders, among others.
Once a draft bill is ready to be presented, a memorandum goes to cabinet, giving ministers a chance to weigh in with feedback. From there, you either get the “thumbs up or thumbs down to proceed to introduction.”
“To get to that point is an incredibly difficult lift,” he said.
First-hand experience
Torrie grew up in Scarborough, Ont. Coming from a politically engaged family—his maternal grandfather, Norm MacLeod, was federal Liberal Party president in the early 1980s—Torrie first “caught the bug” himself in the early 2000s after door-knocking for his then-local Liberal MPP Gerry Phillips.
“The energy of a campaign office, the thrill of identifying a supporter at the door” hooked him in, he said.
Torrie went on to intern at Queen’s Park, and served as national director of the Young Liberals of Canada from 2009 to 2012—a tenure that overlapped the party’s devastating 2011 campaign, which saw the Liberals reduced to just 34 MPs and demoted to third-party status in the House.
Then, in 2015, fresh from graduating with a law degree from Australia's Bond University, and in the midst of completing equivalency exams before he could sit the bar, Torrie connected with a friend about getting involved in the election.
But, rather than a local campaign, Torrie got an even more exciting opportunity: to be then-Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s tour aide.
Torrie spent the election on the road with Trudeau, and recalls it as a “thrilling campaign for many reasons.”
“Going from stop to stop, and just sort of seeing the crowds getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and to feel the seriousness of the moment and what it meant, and the discipline of everyone who worked on the campaign and seeing what a winning team looks like was truly remarkable,” especially after experiencing “the dead silence in the ballroom” after the Liberals’ 2011 defeat.
The Trudeau Liberals were, of course, ultimately vaulted into a majority in Parliament.
Torrie went on to work as a consultant for Global Resolutions through much of 2016 before starting 2017 as an articling student with Rotenberg Shidlowski Jesin, a criminal law firm in Toronto where he later became a criminal defence associate.
At the firm, Torrie got a first-hand look at bail and sentencing laws in practice, tackling bail hearings and minor cases as a new lawyer, before graduating on to cases involving more serious crimes, including murder and sexual assault.
“It gives you an incredible perspective about the human condition, about some of the cracks in our society, where they are and how they happen.”
It also gave him a close look at the actual administration of justice—interacting daily with Crown attorneys, judges, court staff, police, and jails—and a better “understanding of where exactly the provinces might be falling short on their responsibility,” said Torrie, stressing that, while the prevailing public narrative has focused on what the federal government is or isn’t doing about crime and bail, “that argument doesn’t tell the full picture.”
By the time he was in Fraser’s office, he said that practical experience helped him better “parse through” the critiques of the system to determine “what is legitimate, what is maybe just a bit more political of a talking point.”
Torrie landed his first Hill job in 2022 when he was hired as a policy and legal affairs adviser to then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino, for whom Torrie had campaigned the year prior. In that office, Torrie tackled files touching on law enforcement and criminal justice, often engaging with the RCMP, including related to the then-ongoing Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission. There, he also played a role in responding to the Public Order Emergency Commission, and working on the firearms bill, C-21.
Among other things, that period taught him about an “interesting challenge” in the drafting process, said Torrie: how “competing interests within different departments" are “negotiated or finessed.”
‘It made it stronger’
Looking back on C-14’s legislative journey, Torrie said among what he’s most proud of is “the surgical approach” taken to address challenges in the bail system, as well as the “incredible buy-in” the bill received, including from premiers across the political spectrum, crediting his minister for doing “an incredible job at helping to explain the need for the reform, canvas ideas, and then come back with something that could be supported.”
While the bill indeed got support from premiers—including Ontario’s Doug Ford and British Columbia’s David Eby—as well as police associations, it also elicited criticism from some corners, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), which in particular raised deep concern about new reverse onus provisions that would apply to first-time, non-violent offenders. The reverse onus provisions were also highlighted as a concern by the Canadian Bar Association’s criminal justice and child and youth law sections, among other things.
“Bill C-14 makes it easier to detain people presumed innocent before trial, and it will hit Indigenous, racialized, and low-income communities hardest,” said Shakir Rahim, the CCLA’s criminal justice program director, in a press release.
Along with the Liberal platform, bail and sentencing reform had also been a plank of the 2025 Conservative campaign—touting “jail, not bail” as a slogan—with Leader Pierre Poilievre (Battle River–Crowfoot, Alta.) indicating he’d use the notwithstanding clause to ensure multiple murderers could be sentenced to consecutive, 25-year blocks of parole ineligibility (rather than just one).
“We often forget that people who are seeking bail are legally innocent, they’ve been accused of something, but they haven’t been convicted,” said Torrie.
“I think it was really important for the government to demonstrate” that use of the clause wasn’t required, and that, “if there are shortcomings in the system, we can fix them through very targeted Criminal Code reforms.”
Torrie noted that, while it passed in a majority Parliament, the C-14 was tabled during a minority, which put more emphasis on the need to “work with the other parties to help get this bill done.”
“It made it stronger,” he said.
Ultimately amended by both the House and the Senate, C-14 was passed on division (no recorded vote was taken) by both Chambers.
Torrie, who has worked remotely from Toronto since 2022, highlighted the better appreciation the process gave him of his colleagues’ work, beyond the policy team bubble.
“You get to see how the parliamentary affairs people work, you get to see how the communications people work,” he said, recalling the bill’s tabling in October and the work his colleagues put into briefing people, answering questions, and encouraging statements of support.
C-14’s passage also offered a high note for Torrie to exit the Hill—at least for now. July 3 was his last day in Fraser’s office, and he’s set to take the summer off before moving on to his next adventure.
The Hill Times