CAMPBELL CLARK and LES PERREAUX
MONTREAL — Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Sep. 24, 2008 9:36PM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 8:49PM EDT
Stephen Harper is calling on Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe to retract his remark that the Conservatives' youth-justice plan would provide "fresh meat" for older inmates.
The Conservative Leader, who earlier in the day dismissed the remark as extreme, attacked Mr. Duceppe in a speech in Comox, B.C., last night, insisting the Bloc Leader had attributed intentions to him.
"Here, he has passed the limit," he said. "Rather than debate ideas, Mr. Duceppe is saying extreme, irresponsible, and unacceptable things. Things he himself knows to be false."
Mr. Duceppe had stated that teenaged criminals sent to prison under Mr. Harper's plan to crack down on youth crime would be “fresh meat” for the perversions of adult inmates.
“We all know what happens in prison,” Mr. Duceppe told reporters after meeting with union leaders.
“They will be fresh meat, let's not kid ourselves.”
As Mr. Duceppe attacked the Conservative plan that would send more criminals as young as 14 into the adult justice system, he was emboldened by support emerging in the province Wednesday.
The Bloc opposition was backed by the province's main police union along with lawyers, judges and even political opponents in Quebec.
Jacques Dupuis, Quebec's Liberal minister of public security, said the Tory plan would turn teenagers with serious problems into hardened criminals.
“At those ages, we can try to get them out of that life,” Mr. Dupuis told Radio-Canada.
“If you lock a person up for life at 14, he'll come out at 30 or 40. What will he have learned in prison? I think he's likely to be far more dangerous when he gets out.”
Mr. Harper accused Mr. Duceppe of using the issue to try to find his footing in the election campaign. Polls have shown the Bloc and Conservatives running neck-and-neck in Quebec.
“Mr. Duceppe is searching for a raison-d'etre for his party through extreme statements,” Mr. Harper told reporters in Vancouver.
“We are speaking here, obviously, of stronger sentences, but we're speaking of sentences for very serious, severe crimes like murder, homicide, serious sex crimes. It's obvious that the population in Canada and even in Quebec thinks that the true sentence for such a crime is not daycare.”
Over the past week, Mr. Harper and the Tories have become increasingly isolated in the province as they promise a crackdown on youth crime and dismiss complaints about cultural funding.
Even some in the Action Démocratique du Québec, a right-leaning provincial party, has sought distance from some Tory views.
Mr. Harper is gambling that voters outside of Montreal share his view that artists are coddled with public funds and that young offenders get off too easy.
Mr. Duceppe drew a parallel between the proposed crime plan and Tory cuts to arts funding that have triggered a deluge of complaints and dismissive words from Mr. Harper and some of his candidates.
Mr. Duceppe said Mr. Harper is running a “campaign of denigration and disdain.”
In a speech to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Duceppe assailed Mr. Harper, referring repeatedly to his Reform Party roots. The Reform _ one of the predecessors of the current Conservative Party _ never managed to take root in Quebec.
“Stephen Harper, one of the founders of the Reform Party, takes his inspiration from the American system, which produces far more violence,” Mr. Duceppe said.
“It's madness, Reform madness.”
Week 3 of the campaign
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