OTTAWA — Alberta’s Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis said Friday that political paralysis in Ottawa is fuelling growing violence in communities in his province and beyond.

“There’s a leadership gap in the federal government we’re watching play out in real time,” said Ellis, also Alberta’s deputy premier, in a year-end interview with the National Post.

Ellis took aim at the Liberal minority government’s criminal justice policies, such as a 2019 law that made it easier for some suspects to be released from custody on bail. (Parts of the law were reversed in a late-2023 update.)