Pubdate: Wed, 15 Feb 2012
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/letters.html
Website: http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Michael Den Tandt

TORIES HEW TO COMMON SENSE SAVE CRIME FIXATION

Bob Rae can gripe about "evidence-based decision-making" all he 
likes. The truth is, on the big economic files, the Conservative 
party is most consistently hewing to reason and common sense. It's 
why they keep getting elected.

All of which makes their bizarrely irrational, ham-handed, 
counterproductive handling of justice and security all the more odd. 
What do Rob Nicholson and Vic Toews think they're achieving, beyond 
throwing occasional hunks of dripping meat to a social-conservative 
base that, truth be told, is secure without it?

Are they afraid the Charles Bronsons across the aisle will accuse 
them of being soft on crime?

Here's a thought: Perhaps Tories should rather begin to worry that 
fair-minded Canadians from all regions may come to view them as 
demagogues. Consider the record. First, prison farms: not a kitchen 
table issue for most voters, admittedly. But in their insistence on 
shutting the six farms down (in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, 
Ontario and New Brunswick), despite negligible savings and plentiful 
evidence they were functioning well, Harper & Co. displayed a dogged 
irrationality: Prisoners are bad.

Why should they be allowed to work outdoors, whatever the merits, 
when they can be locked away instead? There was the Tackling Violent 
Crime Act - its centrepiece, mandatory minimums for people convicted 
of "serious gun crimes."

Tuesday, the National Post reported that Ontario Superior Court Judge 
Anne Molloy has gutted that law, finding that a minimum three 
year-sentence for a young man guilty of being ridiculous (Leroy 
Smickle was collared, thank God, while pretending to be a gangsta, 
waving a pistol while striking poses for a webcam), violates 
constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.

There's Bill C-10 itself - a grab bag of nine pieces of legislation 
the Tories tried, but failed, to land pre majority. Nicholson, the 
justice minister, insists it's all about cracking down on pedophiles 
and organized crime. The bill says different: Possession of as few as 
six marijuana plants can confer a six-month stay in jail. We're asked 
to assume the small fry needn't worry, as police and prosecutors will 
apply common sense. Hmm. As they did in the Smickle case? I've smoked 
pot, like most adult Canadians, and have friends who smoke it 
therapeutically. I'm not a big fan. In my experience marijuana 
induces only ravenous hunger and sleep. I don't think it should be 
legal. But neither do I see cause for further criminalization. What's 
the rationale? Apply the logic of the gun-registry debate. Is a 
criminal biker gang likely to be driven out of the trade by C-10? 
Criminals don't register their grow ops. If anything, further 
criminalization is likely to drive their profits hi! gher.

More to the point, there is no crime wave. It bears repeating: Rates 
of violent crime have fallen steadily since the early 1990s.

But all that has been a mere preamble to two astonishing recent 
forays by Public Safety Minister Toews. First it emerged that in 2010 
he told the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that where human 
life is at risk, Canadian spies can use information obtained by 
torture, overturning years of Canadian policy, including Conservative 
policy, and the findings of the 2005 Arar Inquiry. No answer yet, to 
this question: When, where the security agencies are involved, is 
human life not at risk? Then this week, not to be outdone by himself, 
Toews blurted that opposition critics of his new online surveillance 
bill, tabled Tuesday, which gives police unprecedented power to 
obtain private data without a warrant, are siding with "child pornographers."

The Conservatives won a majority last May, rather than another 
minority, because thousands of centrist voters decided that Harper 
wasn't as scary as previously billed. Do they really want to tip that 
apple cart? Toews should give his head a shake. If he can't or won't, 
the PM should
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom