Editorial cartoon by Brian Gable
Besides promoting pedophilia and clubbing babies to death with a mallet, failing to be sufficiently "tough on crime" is the third rail for Canadian politicians. If you can find MPs of any stripe ready to stand in numbers against the Tories' mix of harsher sentencing and more money for more prisons, I'd appreciate you having a look for my keys and glasses.
A troll through the Grits' website - wherein I entered "crime legislation" in the search engine - revealed two entries the latest of which reads (under the slug Reality Check):
"Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's bellicose rhetoric about the Conservative crime record strains all credibility.
Minister Nicholson likes to blame the Senate for delays in passing crime legislation, but the Conservatives killed eighteen of their own crime bills by shutting down Parliament, including two in the Senate.
Consider these facts regarding the Truth in Sentencing Act that came into force today:
1. This bill was passed and received royal assent in October 2009, but Harper Cabinet waited until now to bring the law into force - a delay which is 100 percent the fault of the government.
2. Liberals called for this bill before the government introduced it, having joined with several of the Western Attorneys General to call for the elimination of two-for-one credit for time served in response to the escalation of gang violence in Vancouver in early 2009.
3. Liberals helped this bill speed through the House of Commons in thirty-six days. In fact, it would have passed sooner if the government hadn't insisted upon dealing with other legislation first. More to the point, the Senate dealt with the bill quickly. The government introduced it in the Senate right before Parliament rose for the summer, effectively preventing it from being passed at that point. Once the Senate returned, the bill was passed - in total, the bill was in the Senate for only 19 sitting days."
All of which seems to suggest that for the Grits (unlike the soft-headed Tories) harsher punishment delayed is harsher punishment denied.
Even the Dippers (who used to count the Quakers as allies when it came to prison reform) want in on the act. At lunch with a senior Commie some weeks ago I raised an article in The Economist which read in part:
"Fighting crime has been a priority for Mr. Harper's minority government ever since the Conservatives defeated the Liberals in 2006. A third of the 63 bills introduced in the House of Commons in the past year have dealt with some aspect of criminal justice, and more are on their way. Despite complaints that a similar, purely punitive approach has not worked in the United States, and that piecemeal change will clog up the justice system and leave taxpayers with a larger bill, the government has not deviated."
My man mumbled something about Jane Creba and that if I were to raise that sort of mumbo jumbo in a forum concerned with soliciting votes from real people I'd get laughed out of the room.
Well, sure, I responded, but, ah, crime stats are down across the board and doesn't supporting tough-on-crime legislation make you guys what the late Paul Tsongas used to call "pander bears?"
At which point my socialist interlocutor changed the channel on the conversation like I was a rerun of The New Beachcombers.
If the Tories make a success of building prisons to house inmates for committing crimes they'll likely have to invent (does anyone hear remember the war on drugs? Anyone?... Bueller?…anyone?) we'll look back on these as the last dim days before The Dark.