Four years ago, to great fanfare, the federal Conservatives opened an ombudsman’s office to help victims of crime. Now, the agency’s first boss says it was just a $6 million public relations stunt to score political points.
To date, the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime has released only one annual report. Two others were filed to the federal justice minister but, for more than a year, they have remained secret. Because the ombudsman’s office has no legislative powers, the reports — which include spending summaries and recommendations for improving the rights of crime victims — cannot be made public until Justice Minister Rob Nicholson tables them in Parliament.
The Honourable Brian W. Abrams, a partner at Templeman Menninga LLP in Kingston, is appointed a Judge of the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario, Family Division (Kingston) to replace Mr. Justice G.A. Campbell, who elected to become a supernumerary judge as of August 1, 2010.
Was this a payoff to get him out of the race? Abrams was floundering, taking a lot of hits in the local media for refusing to get involved in the Prison Farm issue. But he's ex RCMP and was a lawyer for the cops, so will never be on the side of the people.
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
"Nothing is inevitable." - John Ralston Saul, Canadian Essayist
When Michael Ignatieff was in Kingston at the start of his summer tour, he was asked about one of the bills presented by the Harper government, and the egregious nature of some of it's elements. Ignatieff said that standard for this government was to present a bill, then tell the opposition to pass it, or they would call an election. "That" he said, "is what passes for democracy in the Harper government".
In the book I've been reading and sharing: Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, one of the contributors, Gary Levy, also noted the pattern. In a section Playing Fast and Loose with the Confidence Convention, he says:
... there is no hard-and-fast rule about what is a question of confidence. It is widely accepted that certain traditional motions —namely, the motion to adopt the Throne Speech, the motion to adopt the budget, and the Appropriation Bill (government estimates) — are automatic votes of confidence.
There is less agreement on other areas related to confidence. What would happen if a government refused to resign when it had lost confidence? Does defeat of an important government bill always constitute a vote of confidence? Can procedural motions be considered matters of confidence? Can a government claim to have lost confidence without being defeated in the House? The failure of successive minority parliaments, starting with Paul Martin's, to find the right answers to these questions led to the December 2008 crisis. (1)
All governments have manipulated the process, but none to the extent of the Harper government. But they misjudged their power. They challenged the opposition to bring them down, and then were shocked when they called their bluff, resulting in the Coalition proposal.
What happened next was a horrible attack on our democracy, by a man who knew that the proposal was legitimate in a Westminster Parliamentary system, but intentionally misled the public into believing that this was some kind of coup. Former insider Tom Flanagan, after admitting that Harper's 2004 coalition attempt included the full support of the Bloc (2), justified Harper's actions by saying that he was fighting for his political life. His. Not ours.
But focusing on the nature of "confidence" issues, Levy also reminds us of Rob Nicholson's attempt to threaten the Senate into passing a bill. He should have known as Justice Minister that the Senate is not a confidence chamber.
But that was not the first time they tried to manipulate this body. Besides stacking it with fundraisers and party faithfuls, they also devised a clever scheme to make sure that senate bills they didn't like, never saw the light of day.
Bills that require a sponsor, were grabbed up by the Harperites, and then they never followed through, knowing that a bill automatically dies if its sponsor fails to show up twice for debate on it. This was noted with a bill aimed at ending pre-election partisan advertising binges. If passed this could have saved us over 100 million dollars on the Harper advertising extravaganza. (3)
And that's what passes for democracy in Harper's World.
Elected MPs can't talk, the media is banned, he prorogues when things get too hot to handle, he adds lobbyists to his staff, he squashes dissent, he sets fixed elections then ignores his own law, he bans books, closes our borders to "undesirables", launches witch hunts on anyone who might challenge him and attacks anyone who does.
This is democracy?
In his book The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen, Murray Dobbin reminds us of how we accomplished our democracy, that is under attack by the corporate world. And he is blunt in his claim that the only ones who can reverse democracy's decay is us.
We have forgotten how we first achieved the things we are now losing. None of these community institutions was simply given to us by benign governments and good corporate citizens. The struggles of hundreds of thousands of men and women — citizens — in labour movements, farm movements, and social organizations made democracy real at a time when many of them did not know where their next meal was coming from. For them democracy was a process to be engaged in. (4)
This is how Stephen Harper is getting away with the things he is getting away with. Canadians are no longer engaged. They have thrown their hands in the air and their butts on the couch.
The social and psychological distance between citizen and government has become so great that the notion of government as an expression of community is weaker now than at any time in the post-war period. For far too many people political citizenship is an afterthought or, at best is reduced to brief and alienated participation in electoral rituals.
Maybe we got into this habit because we believed medicare, public education, a full-time job, and a future for our children would always be secure. These things are our right. But as corporations prove every day, rights, like democracy, are a process, not an institution. As community, as citizens, we haven't caught up with the new reality. (4)
We haven't started fighting back. If Olga Hudson can do it. If Betty Krawczyk can do it. What's the matter with the rest of us?
The assault on democracy and equality by corporations and those who benefit from their power is couched in such terms as globalization for good reason. It creates an atmosphere of inevitability. We can, by this definition of reality, do nothing but attempt to adapt to the predetermined course of history. (4)
But remember John Sauls three little words: "Nothing is inevitable."
1. Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, By Peter H. Russell and Lorne Sossin, University of Toronto Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-4426-1014-9- 2, Pg. 20
4. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 5-6
Remember the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Thing Two?
Well either the Conservatives are engaged in a reenactment or they're dumber than we think.
Warbling their own indecipherable language and literally leaping from one catastrophic fun-making adventure to another, the Things end up making Conrad's messy attempts at fun look like child's play.
Though Rob Nicholson and Stockwell Day aren't exactly making Harper's messy attempts at governing look like child's play, but they sure put into question their own political futures.
I played the video yesterday of Stockwell Day suggesting that we needed to spend another 9 billion dollars in new prisons for "unreported" crimes. How he expects to get convictions for crimes no one knows about boggles the mind, but the Hallelujah chorus is singing his praises today. OK, not exactly a chorus, just a single warbler.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson backs a cabinet colleague's controversial claim that unreported crimes are too high and he urges Canadians to step up and call the police more often. But Nicholson stopped short Wednesday from fully endorsing the view of Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, who a day earlier raised eyebrows when he claimed Canada needs more prisons in part because so many crimes go unreported.
"If you ask, is there unreported crime in Canada, there's unreported crime, there's no question about it," Nicholson told The Canadian Press in an interview. "We treat all crime as serious in this country and we encourage all people to report crime to the appropriate authorities," he added. "I get anecdotal evidence and there are certainly some studies on that."
Let me guess. The studies were conducted at the Fraser Institute, right?
No doubt many crimes do go unreported. But let's think this through. Many of the unreported incidents mentioned to the pollster may not have been crimes at all. Many property crimes, such as auto theft, are routinely reported, if only for insurance purposes. Society's attitudes toward offences rooted in racism, and toward sexual assault, have been growing steadily sterner, we believe, making reporting more likely, not less. And federal prisons are for offenders sentenced to two years or more; that is, perpetrators of serious crime. Do you believe that the worst crimes are the least reported?
For all these reasons it's hard to accept Day's claim. We're also puzzled that the Conservatives waited until now to uncork this argument; there's a whiff of intellectual desperation, and a just-discovered old survey, in this. The solution to a genuine national problem of unreported crime, if there were such a problem, would not begin with more prisons. It would begin with encouraging supposed victims to speak up, and continue with more resources for the provinces for police and prosecutors. More prisons would be the last step, not the first. We're not buying, Mr. Day.
While everyone who knows about things like constitutional law and Parliamentary privilege, are stating that Parliament is the highest court in the land and that all Members of Parliament have the right to see all government documents, the Reformers have gone into full spin mode, believing they only have to win in the court of public opinion.
Not this time.
And while justice Iaccobucci has no legal authority to change our constitution, Neil Morrison at MacLeans suggests that he may not even try. He's been down that road before.
Interesting point about former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Frank Iacobucci, who as just been named by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to review the documents on the Afghan detainee controversy that Parliament ordered released last December. He was on the bench when the top court decided one of the most important cases dealing with the question of parliamentary privilege.
" In summary, it seems clear that, from an historical perspective, Canadian legislative bodies possess such inherent privileges as may be necessary to their proper functioning. These privileges are part of the fundamental law of our land, and hence are constitutional. The courts may determine if the privilege claimed is necessary to the capacity of the legislature to function, but have no power to review the rightness or wrongness of a particular decision made pursuant to the privilege."
Maybe the Reformers chose the wrong judge, though this is probably just to buy time. Perhaps they tried to appeal to a sitting judge, but were given answers they didn't want to hear.
According to constitutional law professor Amir Attaran, who saw the memos before they were run over by a magic marker:
"If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees," he said. "There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That's what's in these documents, and that's why the government is covering up as hard as it can."
The gentleman in this video raises some very important issues about the draconian Bill C-15, currently before the Senate.
As a professor he states that under this bill 80% of his students, university students; would be criminals. 10% could possibly get two years in prison.
The War on drugs cannot be won. There is just too much money, and the tougher the laws, the more potential there is for profit.
This is not who we are. There are so many places where these billions of dollars promised for super prisons and more policing, could be going. Homelessness, poverty, seniors, health care. Those are the issues important to Canadians, and not tackling them is the real crime.
With so many other things going on, Bill C-15 is one thing that we cannot allow to be trivialized. And we certainly can't allow it to be passed.
With the economic crisis and this government's horrendous handling of our finances, this is something we should look at. Putting more people in jail is not going to solve the drug problem. And this is not a government who wants to put money into rehabilitation or the health issues of drug addiction.
They just want to pander to their base and charge us for it. Besides, Stockwell Day used to be a regular pot user, though I suppose he's not the best example for the cause.
So instead of throwing billions of dollars into building American style super prisons, it's time to call a truce on this damn war against drugs, where the only enemies become the police and a government that wants to marginalize it's citizens.
There is a group in the United States made up of police officers and clergy who agree.
I don't smoke pot, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that doing so should be a crime. Legalize it and decriminalize it. It's a no-brainer.
There was an interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen today about Rob Nicholson's ridiculous crime bills.
The author, Susan Riley, reminded us that back in the day when Mr. Nicholson was with the Progressive Conservative party he wasn't nuts.
An irritated Nicholson has vowed to reintroduce the bill in March, when Parliament resumes -- but here's another curiosity. The Hill Times reported recently that, in 1988, Nicholson, then a Progressive Conservative MP,was vice-chair of a Commons committee that recommended against mandatory minimums, except for repeat violent sex offenders.
Asked about this apparent change of heart, the minister's spokes-person noted the drug world and values have changed. But the facts haven't. As New Democrat Libby Davies noted: "What they are doing is not based on evidence, whatsoever. It's a political stance."
And there in lies the problem with this party. No decisions they make have anything to do with what's best for Canada or the Canadian people. Everything, but everything, is about the fortunes of the Conservative Party of Canada.
In November, John Geddes wrote a piece for MacLeans; 'Are we really soft on crime', revealing that criminal and law enforcement experts claimed that these horrible crime bills are not the way to go:
Ian Brodie, the former university political science professor who served as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, explained why in an unusually candid talk on Conservative strategy last spring at McGill University in Montreal. “Every time we proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, sociologists, criminologists, defence lawyers and Liberals attacked us for proposing measures that the evidence apparently showed did not work,” Brodie said. “That was a good thing for us politically, in that sociologists, criminologists and defence lawyers were and are all held in lower repute than Conservative politicians by the voting public. Politically it helped us tremendously to be attacked by this coalition of university types.”
'University types'?
Rob Nicholson himself knows that these bill are the absolute wrong way to go for this country, but will sacrifice his credibility for votes. Why did he get into Canadian politics? Is this really the level that our government has stooped?
And they use this same kind of controlled ignorance when dealing with the safe injection site in Vancouver, as Riley continues:
It doesn't bother providing facts, or even arguments; it appeals, as usual, to resentment, ignorance and frightening headlines that obscure the fact that crime rates have been declining. And, with the brave exception of Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe, most of Harper's political opponents, including those who know better, are afraid to object. If Conservatives were as concerned with victims as they claim to be, the effectiveness of crime-fighting measures would be paramount -- not their political appeal. And they'd be counselling wisdom in this complex issue, not revenge.
Academics are 'elitists' and experts are 'university types'. People are afraid to speak up to this government because they know a smear campaign will immediately follow. From Richard Colvin to the latest victim, TD Bank CEO Ed Clark. Everyone now lives in a culture of fear.
Rob Nicholson may have crossed the line in threatening the senate committee, but he jumped right over it when he posted a partisan attack on OUR Justice department website.
Yesterday, I shared the notice in it's entirety, and then informed members of CAPP. Others had done the same and many concerned citizens sent emails to the integrity commissioner.
I just hope It doesn't end there. One of our members stated that he had worked as a public servant for 33 years, and has never seen anything like this. That's a common complaint, I'm afraid.
Can I just say, that if you've never examined these new crime measures, they are absolutely horrible. Their intent is not to reduce crime, because we all know this will only increase it. Their purpose is to fill the private prisons that they are allowing the Americans to build here. They can't very well get them to do that when Canada has the lowest crime rate in almost three decades. Solution ... make more things criminal.
First on my list would be cabinet ministers abusing their office for partisan purposes. Sentence ... LIFE!
The Liberals have complained to Canada's top bureaucrat about using the Justice Department's non-partisan website for a "brazen partisan attack" in announcing five new senators to clear the way for the Conservatives' law-and-order agenda.
"This is a concerted effort on the part of this government to politicize the public service," said Liberal MP Marlene Jennings.
"This is not the first time, it is reprehensible and it has to top." Jennings lodged her complaint with Privy Council Clerk Wayne Wouters over a press release posted on the Justice Department's website saying, "New Senators to Help End Opposition Obstruction of Law-and-Order Bills." The release went on to say the opposition gutted the government's bill proposing mandatory jail time for serious drug offences, a key part of its bid to fight organized crime.
Jennings said the press release flouts the public service's value and ethics code, which dictates that bureaucrats maintain neutrality in their work to protect the public's confidence in its integrity and impartiality.
Similarly, the government's communications policy says public servants must provide information to the public in a "non-partisan fashion" while protecting the "value and reputations of public institutions." Jennings said it was particularly worrisome that a partisan release was on the Justice Department's site. She wants it removed and Wouters to investigate whether public servants wrote, approved and posted it, or if it was prepared by political staff and posted under their orders.
She also wants to know if any bureaucrats objected. "I hope the deputy minister and Mr. Wouters can say when they investigate that it was political staff and not public servants who drafted that press release and it went out against the advice of public servants," said Jennings.
"If not, then one has to say public servants have demonstrated to be politicized and we can't rely on what they say to be non-political." Government officials were unavailable for comment.
In her complaint, Jennings cited several other releases she felt violated the code. She pointed to a press release Public Safety issued in 2007 accusing the opposition of being "soft on security and terrorism," while the government was committed to protecting the safety of Canadians. In another by Fisheries and Oceans, Liberals were accused of pandering to special interest groups while the Conservatives protected Canada's "hardworking sealers."
It's an issue that worries many experts, who fear the unravelling of Canada's independent and impartial public service. Some worry the government's attack on diplomat Richard Colvin for his revelations about the handling of Afghan detainees has created such a chill within the bureaucracy that public servants won't push back if politicians or political staff cross the line.
Peter Aucoin, professor emeritus at Dalhousie University, has long sounded the alarm about government communications being used for partisan spin. Policies should clearly spell out what's allowed on department sites. "It should be impartial and we should be able to distinguish between political communications and government communications," he said.
The growing concern about the impartiality of the public service, especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter, prompted Public Service Commission president Maria Barrados to call a review into the nature of non-partisanship in the 21st century. The commission is the watchdog of merit and neutrality in the public service.
Oh wait. We can't can we? Harper has shut everything down. However, I think we are entering a crisis zone here, because this government is out of control.
In an attempt to change the narrative from war crimes and the lobbying scandal, they have actually posted on the Justice Department website that they are only able to get their damn un-Canadian crime bills passed by stacking the senate.
This is an official GOVERNMENT website. OUR website. It is not for partisan propaganda. I think the Governor general needs to step in here.
Here are some facts:
1. Most of these bills were sabotaged by Harper himself.
2. Canada's crime rate is the lowest it's been in 30 years. We did not need these bills in the first place.
3. They were presented to the senate without costing. When they asked for a dollar figure they were told by the Conservatives that it was a cabinet secret. I understand that Kevin Page, our parliamentary budget office, is currently attaching a price tag that is believed to be in the billions.
This is from the website and if there are any constitutional lawyers out there, I hope someone comes forward. I have never seen anything like this in my life.
OTTAWA, January 29, 2010 – The Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and the Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister of Natural Resources, today celebrated the appointment of five new members of the Senate of Canada. They were joined by two of the five: Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu and Senator Bob Runciman.
“Moments ago it was announced that the Prime Minister has appointed five outstanding Canadians to fill vacancies in the Senate,” said Minister Nicholson.“The Prime Minister’s action has not only brought additional talent and expertise to the Senate; it has greatly strengthened our efforts to move forward on our tackling-crime agenda.”
The opposition has obstructed that agenda in the Senate, most notably by gutting Bill C-15 – a bill proposing mandatory jail time for serious drug offences, and a key part of the government’s efforts to fight organized crime ....
There was a great op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen about the Reform Conservatives new so-called law and order initiative. The whole thing is ridiculous and based on ideology, not sound reasoning.
Canada's crime rate is the lowest in 25 years, so where is the evidence that we need tougher laws? I think like journalist Murray Dobbin points out, it's all part of Harper's vision for Canada.
Many people think Canada's justice system is on the right track. The problem is none of them are members of the federal Conservative government.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks that the country's justice system is broken, that it is so soft on crime that it is failing to protect the public, which is why he has promoted a tough-on-crime agenda. But, to a great extent, this view of Canada's justice system is unsupported by evidence. Professional criminologists are eft wondering how much of the government's rhetoric reflects an ideological predisposition ....
Harper's former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, hit the nail on the head in the MacLean's article, stating that it "... was a good thing for us politically, in that sociologists, criminologists and defence lawyers were and are all held in lower repute than Conservative politicians by the voting public. Politically it helped us tremendously to be attacked by this coalition of university types.” A coalition of university types? Wow. So glad something this important is all about discrediting 'university types'.
Blogger Jeff Jedras, brought up something else that was quite interesting. For all their rhetoric, they've cut the budget of the department that investigates 'white collar crime'.
Once again, the gap between Conservative rhetoric and Conservative reality is gaping. This time, white-collar and financial crime is in thespotlight.
The Conservative rhetoric: Today, the Conservative government announced new legislation to crack down on white-collar crime.Our government understands that those who are defrauded by white-collar criminals have been victimized just as much as a person who has been mugged....The Conservative government will always work for the safety of Canadians, their families, and their savings.
And the Conservative reality: Canada's financial transactions watchdog says its services are in greater demand than ever, yet the federal government has cut its budget by eight per cent in the last two years.
It was kind of neat in the above video, watching Rob Nicholson get the smack down. "If you don't pass my crime bill, I'm telling ....". He looked a little humbled after this. Maybe Ref-Con blackmail is losing it's punch.
However, John Geddes wrote a piece recently for McLean's, and is wondering, as many of us are, why so much smoke, when there's no fire?
The last Statistics Canada report on crime revealed that our crime rate is now the lowest in 25 years. Why this panic toward a 'tough on crime' bill. They want it passed without reporting on it's cost, claiming it to be a 'cabinet secret'. Obviously, they're just playing to their base, because a recent poll shows that health care is still the number one issue with Canadians and they haven't done a thing to improve that.
This government is doing nothing to move this country forward. They continue to try to take us back to the 'good old days' that were never as good as they remember. This is not who Canadians are.
Are we really soft on crime? The Tories prefer tough talk to hard proof on punishment by John Geddes November 9, 2009
The federal Department of Justice boasts Canada’s biggest concentration of legal brainpower. Of its roughly 4,300 employees, about half are lawyers, and its policy branch alone employs about 200 bureaucrats. Not surprisingly, the department has a long history of producing sophisticated policy papers and commissioning probing research on crime and punishment. So as the Conservative government continues this fall to roll out its long series of tough-on-crime initiatives built around mandatory minimum penalties for a raft of offences—from gun crime to big-time fraud—it would be reasonable to expect a thick stack of Justice studies explaining why dictating longer prison terms is the way to go.
But Justice Minister Rob Nicholson doesn’t offer up any departmental research at all to support the Tories’ major law-and-order thrust. Nor does Nicholson rely on reports by independent experts to buttress his case for telling judges how long they must lock up criminals for a slew of offences. Instead, in response to requests from Maclean’s for any analysis or data justifying the new minimum sentences, his office produced a 1,000-word memo explaining the policy. It candidly admits that research doesn’t offer persuasive evidence that mandatory minimum penalties, called MMPs for short, reduce crime. “In our opinion,” it says, “the studies are inconclusive particularly with respect to the main debate: do MMPs deter crime?”
If they can’t be shown to act as a deterrent, why put MMPs at the core of the government’s high-profile anti-crime push? Nicholson offers a list of seven other reasons. Some are rarely, if ever, mentioned in the government’s relentless tough-on-crime messaging, like the goal of ensuring that criminals “spend a minimum amount of time in custody to receive the treatment and rehabilitation they need.” The memo also cites the aim of keeping criminals behind bars long enough to disrupt their gangs. But the top reasons on Nicholson’s list have to do, not with actually fighting crime, but with assuaging the anger of law-abiding citizens who believe the system coddles the bad guys.
The top item on Nicholson’s seven-point list: “ensure victims feel that justice has been rendered.” And the second: “ensure that the amount of time served is proportional to the gravity of the offence.” It’s these linked objectives that clearly stand at the centre of the government’s MMP policy. They combine into an undeniably powerful argument: if judges refuse to hand down sentences that fit the crime, then victims will feel doubly victimized and society understandably outraged, leaving the government little choice but to legislate longer prison time.
This seemingly irrefutable line of reasoning, however, rests on the premise that the government knows sentences now being handed down by the courts are too light. In fact, they often haven’t bothered to collect that information. Nicholson’s office and his departmental officials admit they have not compiled statistics on typical sentences in convictions for most of the crimes they’ve targeted for MMPs. And it’s not always clear the new minimum terms will be any tougher than the sentences often imposed up to now. For instance, the government announced last month, with much fanfare, that fraudsters who net more than $1 million will face at least two years in prison under a new MPP. According to some experts, that’s low. Vancouver lawyer Eric Gottardi, who chairs the Canadian Bar Association’s criminal law subsection in his city, says that when a white-collar criminal in an authority position is convicted of major fraud, the “quite settled” pattern is for the judge to hand down “a sentence in the range of three to five years in prison.” And the penalties can be much tougher in extreme cases, like the crooked financial adviser convicted in a recent high-profile Montréal case, Vincent Lacroix, who was sentenced to 13 years.
Statistics on gun crime are particularly murky, since firearms offences often occur in combination with other crimes, like drug dealing or robbery. The government’s Tackling Violent Crime Act dictates at least a five-year sentence on the first offence and seven years on subsequent convictions for using a gun in the most serious crimes, like attempted murder or hostage-taking. But will that really translate into significantly stiffer penalties? For 2005-’06, the latest Statistics Canada figures available, the average prison term for all firearm-related violent crimes—including many offences less serious than the ones targeted by the new mandatory minimums—was just over four years, about double the typical sentence for the same crimes committed without a gun.
The government’s refusal to present detailed evidence of soft sentences to justify imposing minimums makes this a debate more about impressions than facts. That frustrates criminologists who argue that the research, by and large, doesn’t show much measurable benefit from MMPs. Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd says mandatory minimums might be justified, but only if they were more narrowly targeted.
Rather than the government’s proposed two-year minimum for anyone convicted of growing 500 or more marijuana plants, he suggests “smart and focused” tougher sentencing only for those who use guns, set spring-traps or endanger children in running a grow op. Boyd slams the broad application of MMPs by the Tories as “not tough on crime, but stupid on crime.”
That’s exactly the sort of exasperated expert reaction Conservative strategists welcome. Ian Brodie, the former university political science professor who served as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, explained why in an unusually candid talk on Conservative strategy last spring at McGill University in Montreal. “Every time we proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, sociologists, criminologists, defence lawyers and Liberals attacked us for proposing measures that the evidence apparently showed did not work,” Brodie said. “That was a good thing for us politically, in that sociologists, criminologists and defence lawyers were and are all held in lower repute than Conservative politicians by the voting public. Politically it helped us tremendously to be attacked by this coalition of university types.”(What a horrible thing to say. So this thing is entirely political and not what is in the best interest of Canadians. Good to know)
The popularity of any policy sold as a crackdown on crime is a given around Parliament Hill. As a result, Liberals show little interest in pushing back against the Conservatives’ law-and-order agenda. Some NDP MPs, including Libby Davies and Megan Leslie, have been more willing to challenge Nicholson. When he appeared before the House justice committee last spring, Davies repeatedly pressed him for evidence that MMPs work. He didn’t offer any. “We have the mandate of the Canadian people,” Nicholson answered, “and they have told us that this is what they want to see us move on.” (The have the mandate of 1/3 of the Canadian people)
The policy extends beyond mandatory minimums to other measures aimed at locking up criminals for longer. Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, Nicholson’s partner in combating crime, recently announced a range of measures to make it harder for prisoners to get parole.
Under a program introduced in 1992, non-violent, first-time offenders often qualified for parole after serving only one-sixth of their sentence. Van Loan is ending that practice, along with the routine granting of full parole when prisoners have served one-third of their time. He estimates the move to make it harder to qualify for parole will cost $60 million a year to pay for keeping non-violent criminals behind bars longer.
Like mandatory minimums, the tougher parole rules play on the public fear that criminals will return to crime soon after they’re let out. It happens, of course, and sometimes with tragic and highly publicized results. But statistics suggest only a tiny minority of offenders commit new crimes while on parole. Correctional Services Canada, part of Van Loan’s department, says 1.3 per cent of federal offenders were charged with another violent offence while they were out in the community under some form of supervision in 2006-’07.
After serving their entire sentence, about six per cent of violent offenders are convicted of another violent crime within two years, just under 10 per cent within five years. About the same proportion of non-violent offenders—one released prisoner in 10—are convicted for another non-violent crime within five years.
Dry data of this sort doesn’t make it into speeches by Nicholson and Van Loan. It’s only fodder for discussion among those “university types” disdained by a government that asserts, when it comes to crime, a higher “mandate of the Canadian people.” A more thoughtful debate might include a discussion about how to identify that minority of convicted criminals most likely to reoffend, rather than lengthening time behind bars for broad categories of prisoners. It might seek to first establish a clear understanding of what sorts of sentences judges are actually handing down, before prescribing mandatory minimums as an all-purpose solution. As it stands, Canadians are hearing plenty of the tough-on-crime rhetoric they clearly crave, but not much about evidence-based policy thinking to back it up.
In the continuation of the article from the Walrus, Stephen Harper and the Theo-Cons, it reveals how Stephen Harper carefully crafts his faith based messages to appeal to both the moderate Christians, and the extreme. Author Murray Dobbin had noted that Harper had a knack, when writing Reform Party policy, for making his points ambiguous enough that he kept out the extreme elements, while not exactly keeping out the extreme elements.
It has been said that he was behind the cancelling of a national child care plan, the raising of the age of consent and the implementation of Canada's new censorship laws.
In the video above, he met with the most powerful cabinet ministers, including Rob Nichols (Justice) and Stockwell Day (Security). But we also know that he was an invited guest of Jim Flaherty at his reading of the budget and has unlimited access to Jason Kenney.
Charles McVety is head of the Canadian branch of Christians United for Israel, and like most of the Reform-Conservatives, believes that every word of the Bible is true, and that our constitution should be based on that book and that book alone.
If you polled Canadians you would probably find that a large portion would profess to being Christian. But if you polled Canadians and asked them if they believe we should annihilate all Muslims, put the Jews and a boat and force them to go to Israel, where they accept Christianity or die; the numbers would be significantly lower. But sadly, that's what McVety believes, and sadly, McVety holds a special place of honour within the chambers of the Reform-Conservatives.
More from the Walrus magazine article: Stephen Harper and the Neo-Cons
Harper has been so careful not to reveal his faith that many voters were stunned when he capped off his election-night victory speech with “God bless Canada.” Was it a slip of the tongue—a case of rhetorical exuberance swamping his celebrated intellectual cool? Or, as some critics insisted, a shameless aping of every American president within recent memory, no matter their political stripe? Even New York Times correspondent Clifford Krauss noted that it was “an unusual line in a country where politicians do not customarily talk about God.”
In fact, Harper had already used the tag line as opposition leader, and he wasn’t the first prime minister to do so. On February 15, 1965, Lester Pearson jubilantly roared out the same benediction as he hoisted Canada’s first red and white maple leaf flag over the Parliament Buildings. “It’s just ridiculous to think that this is some novelty that was learned by watching Republicans on television,” scoffs Preston Manning. “This is a country that used to end every public meeting by saying, ‘God Save the Queen.’”
As pundits pondered the significance of Harper’s taste in exit lines, one thing seemed clear: a politician known for attempting to control his party’s every public utterance had chosen to invoke what National Post columnist Warren Kinsella dubbed “the G-word.” If, as suspected, Harper was sending a message to the country’s estimated 3.5 million evangelicals—not to mention the 44 percent of Canadians who tell pollsters they’ve committed their lives to Christ—what was he trying to tell them?
In his pre-election chat on the Drew Marshall Show, Harper managed to work in an undisguised plug: “I always make it clear that Christians are welcome in politics,” he said, “and particularly welcome in our party.” That invitation has not gone unnoticed. As Janet Epp Buckingham, director of the Evangelical Fellowship’s Ottawa office, notes, “In the last election, the media was pointing out that evangelicals are scary, and in the election before that the Liberals were doing quite a bit of fear mongering. It’s such a relief to have a party that says, ‘You guys are welcome here.’” (No one suggests that all Evangelicals are scary, only those from the Christian Right and Christians United for Israel)
That relief translated into votes. According to an Ipsos-Reid poll in April, 64 percent of weekly Protestant churchgoers—the vast majority of them evangelicals—voted Conservative in the last election, a 24-percent jump from 2004. For the first time in the history of polling in Canada, Catholics who attend church weekly also shifted a majority of their votes from the Liberals to Harper’s party. While the Ottawa press corps has been preoccupied with Harper’s ability to keep the most blooper-prone Christians in his caucus buttoned up, he has quietly but determinedly nurtured a coalition of evangelicals, Catholics, and conservative Jews that brought him to power and that will put every effort into ensuring that he stays there. Last spring, when Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty could barely wangle an hour with him, Harper made time for dozens of faith groups, including a five-woman delegation from the Catholic Women’s League which hadn’t managed to snare a sit-down with any prime minister in twenty-four years.
“Smile if you’re a so-con,” ran a headline in the Western Standard above a photo of the meeting. “Canada’s traditional Christian groups can’t say enough good things about the Tories’ social policies so far.”
Harper’s agenda turns out to be hidden only to those who don’t know where to look. Within weeks after the election, the first leak about his upcoming legislative package outlined a plan by Justice Minister Vic Toews, one of the most conservative evangelicals in his cabinet, to raise the age of sexual consent to sixteen from fourteen.
The media greeted the scoop with a barely concealed yawn, but the Evangelical Fellowship, which had been lobbying for years on the issue, recognized it as a custom-tailored bulletin. Says Epp Buckingham, “We took it as a message that we were being heard.”
Borrowing a page from Bush’s White House, which boasts a deputy responsible for “Christian outreach,” Harper has installed a point man for the religious right, among other groups, in his government, under the title “director of stakeholder relations.” But evangelical activists know that a more direct route to the prime minister is through his parliamentary secretary, Jason Kenney.
After the election, many in the Ottawa press corps were astonished when the Calgary loyalist who served as a critic in every recent Reform/Alliance shadow cabinet didn’t win a portfolio. But these days, Kenney may have more clout than any minister, playing emissary to groups with whom Harper doesn’t wish to leave prime ministerial fingerprints, above all on the religious right. Despite being a Catholic, Kenney is a regular on the evangelical circuit, turning up at so-con confabs and orchestrating discreet meetings with the boss. “Jason,” says one Ottawa insider, “has a lot more influence than you might think.”
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The problem for those of us on the left, is that we are viewed by Reform-Conservative supporters, especially from the Religious Right, as all being secular. That couldn't be further from the truth. But since this group has politicized religion, it has become like an 'us against them', when in fact, we all share some common ground. Just like the Religious Right, there is a Religious Left.
Wikipedia describes this Religious Left (or Christian Left) as "a spectrum of left wing Christian political and social movements which largely embraces social justice and a counter-point to the Christian right which largely embrace social conservatism."
They go on to say that the most common religious viewpoint which might be described as 'left wing' is social justice, or care for the poor and the oppressed ... Supporters of this might encourage universal health care, generous welfare, subsidized education, foreign aid, and government subsidized schemes for improving the conditions of the disadvantaged.
The Christian left believe in private prayer. According to Matthew 6:5-6:"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
In his book The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, Rabbi Michael Lerner claims that the political left "often sees religion not merely as mistaken but as fundamentally irrational, and it gives the impression that one of the most important elements in the lives of ordinary Americans is actually deserving of ridicule." and "The Left's hostility to religion is one of the main reasons people who otherwise might be involved with progressive politics get turned off."
Stephen Harper can craft his messages in such a way that it would appear he is tolerant of all religious thought, when it fact, he clearly belongs to the judgemental, and espouses the right-wing philosophy of eradicating social programs.
Despite all their bluster about being tough on crime, the Conservatives only adhere to the punishment side, without giving any thought to crime prevention, the courts, or the difficulty of overextending incarceration.
I know they are pandering to the private prison lobby and their 'law and order' base, but they have to stop and give their head a shake.
For once in their lives, they need to listen to those who will be affected the most from their lack of insight.
Peter Van Loan's recent announcement was no exception.
OTTAWA - The Harper government says it wants to increase victims' rights while getting tougher with inmates who break prison rules or violate parole conditions.
But critics say the latest move in the Tory law-and-order agenda would actually increase public risk in the long run. Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said legislation proposed Tuesday would offer victims more information about inmate parole and rehabilitation. If passed, the changes would also create new penalties for inmates who throw urine at guards or act out in other ways.
Police could also immediately arrest without a warrant any offender suspected of breaching release conditions.
Adam Boni of the Criminal Lawyers' Association warned the move would increase pressure on overstretched prisons that are already struggling to rehabilitate inmates.
"This government says society is safer as long as we can keep them locked up for as long as possible. In fact, what this approach does is create a powder keg in the federal penitentiary system.
"What it means is more over-crowding, more expense, less programs, less meaningful treatment. When these people are ultimately released ... they're going to be less equipped and less rehabilitated than they need to be. And we all suffer as a society."
Van Loan stressed that Ottawa has committed $479 million over five years to "set the foundation to strengthen the federal correctional system."
The federal government now spends more than $2 billion a year to oversee 13,500 inmates in 58 institutions. Another 8,000 prisoners are under varying degrees of supervision on the outside.
The majority, including sex offenders, never fully complete rehabilitation programs because of long waiting lists and frequent transfers, correctional investigator Howard Sapers told the Commons public safety committee this month.
However, inmates are routinely assessed upon arrival for mental health issues, Van Loan said. And programs to battle drug and alcohol abuse are being offered in the first 90 days of incarceration where none used to exist.
The minister conceded "there are real challenges" - including a chronic lack of psychologists and other specialists in prisons. Hiring and retention are ongoing issues in corrections as in the mainstream health system.
Sapers says many offenders are released without ever receiving recommended treatment due to lack of staff and resources.
Criminologists said Tory plans to curtail house arrest just as they increase minimum mandatory sentences for various crimes will only lock up more people with little or no effect on crime rates.
Van Loan has championed that approach and said there's more to come.
"We have a long-term commitment to work toward earned parole to replace statutory release," he said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly promised to scrap the automatic release of prisoners after serving two-thirds of their sentence in favour of "earned parole for behaviour and rehabilitation in prison."
Such a move is expected to vastly increase the amount of costly prison space needed. Other changes proposed Tuesday to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act include: -Informing victims about the reasons for offender transfers and giving advance notice where possible . -Informing victims about inmate program participation and any serious discipline issues. -Sharing the reasons for a temporary leave from a prison. -Requiring inmates to respect other people and property; obey all penitentiary rules and conditions governing release; and actively participate in fulfilling their rehabilitation plan. -Enshrining in law a victim's already existing right to participate in parole board hearings. -Emphasizing the importance of considering the seriousness of a crime in National Parole Board decision-making.
Sounds like a lot of bureaucracy with little meaningful results.
Of course they're bringing all of this out during the final days of the session, so they can accuse the Liberal senators of stonewalling. They always have an agenda.
OTTAWA — Justice Minister Rob Nicholson accused the Liberals of being soft on crime Tuesday, saying the Senate is stalling legislation needed to protect Canadians. “Liberal softness on crime is demonstrated again and again by gutting our crime legislation, tying it up in red tape and playing procedural games so that it never becomes law,” Nicholson said.
The Liberal majority in the Senate, however, says it won’t simply rubber stamp legislation and the Conservatives themselves are responsible for many of the delays.
“They want to appear to be tough on crime,” Senate Opposition Leader James Cowan said. “If they were really serious about this, they would have introduced these bills at the beginning of the session and processed them through the House and gotten them to us before the end of the session.”
The comments come after Nicholson complained to reporters that it was taking too long for crime legislation to be adopted and to urge Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff to order Liberal senators to pass the bills before they leave this week for summer vacations.
Nicholson also singled out the Bloc Quebecois for blocking crime bills such as those that call for mandatory minimum sentences.
The Liberals, however, say Nicholson is being “disingenuous” and suggested he look to his Conservative colleagues in the Senate who have sometimes taken days or weeks before initiating debate on bills.
Some bills have taken a month or two to pass the House and now Nicholson wants them to pass the Senate in only two or three days, Cowan said.
“We’re not going to be pushed into doing that,” Cowan said, suggesting the Conservatives are trying to distract attention away from the economy and the isotope shortage.
“We’re taking our time to do what we are paid to do and that is to take a careful look at these.”
While talking tough on crime and promising justice for victims, it would appear that the entire thing was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
