Not having a great deal of experience standing before a judge, I always puzzle over the rationale of sentencing. Why for instance does a man who hits another, just once, get six years in federal prison, while a woman who admittedly drinks at least three glasses of wine before driving, kills a child, maims her aunt and injures her grandparents, receives only two and a half years? How too do drug smugglers, by offering up the apparently acceptable excuse that "I didn't know it was in my truck," get off scott-free? [continues 543 words]
Logic is a word that best describes the difference between business and government. For example, if you make widgets and last July you jacked the price from $4 a unit to $10, what usually happens is that sales fall off dramatically particularly when, with little effort, those 'units' can be had for free. To survive in business you'd be compelled to drop the price. In government, at least in the Metro Vancouver Regional District's waste disposal division, the mindset is just the opposite. [continues 551 words]
The federal government finally takes action on marijuana grow ops, proposing minimum jail and prison sentences, and what does the bureaucracy in the prison system do? It wrings its hands, and claims there isn't room for more prisoners, in either the federal or provincial system. Give me a break! Move out the wide-screen TVs, convert the gyms and pitch and putts into cell areas. These guys and gals are not at Club Med. They are supposed to be doing nasty time, just like the trauma they inflicted on their victims. And if it takes double or triple bunking, or an uncomfortable existence within the walls, so be it. [continues 443 words]
If we were making progress, if we were winning the war, then I'd be standing up for every move Canada makes in Afghanistan. But we're not, and every day the death toll grows higher, and the frequency of suicide bombings and landmine explosions keeps on increasing. Now to be very clear, I support our troops, respect their efforts and mourn their deaths. What I think is the problem is that from our side we are waging a battle by the rules, when the other side knows of none. [continues 439 words]
Five MAC 10s, six Bren guns, 31 Sten guns - automatics every one - plus a small truck load of handguns, many of them with silencers . . . not one registered like Uncle Fudd's duck gun . . . and most of them captured right here in Abbotsford. Sort of tells you something about our conservative little town, doesn't it? Tells you we have a rotten underbelly, and a large one at that. Forget chickens and milk and berries; our number-one crop is deep in the drug trade, and we're not only exporting pot and meth, but guns too. Very lethal guns. [continues 430 words]
