ONTARIO—In the charged aftermath of a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on mandatory minimum sentences for child pornography offences, Ontario Premier Doug Ford is signalling he’s ready to open the province’s sex offender registry to public view—and, if necessary, crack open the Constitution to do it.

The government is expected to table legislation next week that would launch consultations on making “certain” information from the Ontario Sex Offender and Sex Trafficker Registry public. The specifics, however, remain a mystery.

Premier Ford, true to form, put it bluntly: if a sex offender is “living next door or down the street,” he says parents have a right to know. “It’s a no brainer.”

The move comes after the Supreme Court struck down the one-year mandatory minimum jail sentence for accessing or possessing child pornography, finding it violated the Charter of Rights. The court’s reasoning cut through the haze of fear-driven policy: in the digital age, young people routinely send one another explicit images, and the law—as written—left no choice but to impose a punishment wildly out of step with reality.

In one hypothetical examined by the court, an 18-year-old receives an explicit photo from his 17-year-old friend’s girlfriend. He looks at it briefly and keeps it on his phone. The law categorizes that as child pornography. The mandatory minimum—no matter the context—would force a sentence the majority of the court deemed grossly disproportionate.

It wasn’t an abstract legal exercise. The ruling underscored that laws must apply not only to the worst offenders but also to reasonably foreseeable, everyday situations. In Justice Mary Moreau’s words, these digital-age scenarios are “not far-fetched.”

Premier Ford has rejected that reasoning outright. “These child pornography people? Throw them in jail. Throw away the key,” he said. “They make me sick.”

His government insists that the court’s decision “weakens vital protections for children,” and says the province must step in to “protect families.” The registry—created in 2001 under Christopher’s Law and named after 11-year-old Christopher Stephenson, murdered by a convicted sex offender—currently exists solely for police use.

Solicitor General Michael Kerzner argues that making some information public would deter wrongdoing: “If a community knows there’s an individual that could cause them harm, that gives a person who’s on the registry greater awareness that they must behave.”

But critics say opening the registry to the public is a far more combustible proposition. Civil rights advocates and former law enforcement officials warn it could trigger vigilante behaviour—public demonstrations outside homes, harassment of families, violence born from misinformation.

Mark Mendelson, a former Toronto homicide detective, notes police already have the authority to warn the public when someone on the registry poses a safety risk. Making the entire system partially public could unleash consequences the province is ill-prepared to manage. “Is somebody going to get hurt over this?” he asks.

There’s another sharp edge: the Premier has said, without hesitation, that he’d use the notwithstanding clause “in a heartbeat” to shield the policy from Charter challenges. The clause—Section 33 of the Charter—allows governments to override certain rights for up to five years before re-enacting the override again.

Premier Ford appears ready to test that power. “We’re probably going to get shot down from the courts again,” he said. “But I’ll use every single tool to make sure we protect the victims over the sex offenders.”

Meanwhile, the government has not said what specific information it might release, nor how it will navigate the civil liberties, safety risks, and basic questions of proportionality that accompany any expansion of a registry touching 14,000 Ontarians.

Consultations with law enforcement and legal experts are expected, with a public-facing component of the registry possibly emerging next spring.

For now, Ontario stands at one of those uneasy crossroads: a province balancing its grief-driven resolve against the Supreme Court’s warning that justice cannot be crafted for monsters alone—because the law also falls on teenagers navigating love and friendship through the static and glow of a screen.