Tough on crime or the fast route to a police state?
With today’s Speech from the Throne, Canada is about to embark on a radical makeover of its justice system, dividing the left from right with tough-on-crime policies such as mandatory minimum sentences and an end to pardons for serious crime.
While Stephen Harper’s Conservative majority government has served notice its focus will remain on Canada’s fragile economy – and passing the budget that had come to a screeching halt before the election – the law-and-order agenda is firmly in its sights.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston is expected to give full expression to the Tories’ crime agenda when he addresses the Senate chamber this afternoon, his first Speech from the Throne since he was appointed last July.
There will be few surprises.
Harper vowed during his election campaign to ensure that an omnibus crime bill, consisting of a compilation of at least eleven previously delayed tough-on-crime bills, would be passed within the first 100 sitting days of Parliament. All of the bills had been previously introduced individually, and, in some cases, had been kicked around the Hill for years.
The very majority government that Harper can depend on to pass his wide-ranging omnibus bill was born of a non-confidence vote over its costs in March, resulting in the fall of the Conservative minority government and a spring election. The opposition found the Tories in contempt of Parliament for failing to provide enough information about the costs of its crime legislation, following a historic rebuke by the Speaker of the Commons.
The full cost of the crime package is unknown, but Canada’s budget watchdog, Kevin Page, has warned that longer sentences and reduced pre-sentence jail credits will add $1-billion a year to total spending on corrections in Canada, along with more than 4,000 inmates to the federal prison system.
Full Article
Source: HuffingtonPost
With today’s Speech from the Throne, Canada is about to embark on a radical makeover of its justice system, dividing the left from right with tough-on-crime policies such as mandatory minimum sentences and an end to pardons for serious crime.
While Stephen Harper’s Conservative majority government has served notice its focus will remain on Canada’s fragile economy – and passing the budget that had come to a screeching halt before the election – the law-and-order agenda is firmly in its sights.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston is expected to give full expression to the Tories’ crime agenda when he addresses the Senate chamber this afternoon, his first Speech from the Throne since he was appointed last July.
There will be few surprises.
Harper vowed during his election campaign to ensure that an omnibus crime bill, consisting of a compilation of at least eleven previously delayed tough-on-crime bills, would be passed within the first 100 sitting days of Parliament. All of the bills had been previously introduced individually, and, in some cases, had been kicked around the Hill for years.
The very majority government that Harper can depend on to pass his wide-ranging omnibus bill was born of a non-confidence vote over its costs in March, resulting in the fall of the Conservative minority government and a spring election. The opposition found the Tories in contempt of Parliament for failing to provide enough information about the costs of its crime legislation, following a historic rebuke by the Speaker of the Commons.
The full cost of the crime package is unknown, but Canada’s budget watchdog, Kevin Page, has warned that longer sentences and reduced pre-sentence jail credits will add $1-billion a year to total spending on corrections in Canada, along with more than 4,000 inmates to the federal prison system.
Full Article
Source: HuffingtonPost
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