The bizarre eruption by Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu became much more understandable yesterday with the news of the family tragedy he had gone through. His 27-year-old daughter Julie was abducted, raped and murdered in 2002 by a repeat offender.
Any father who has experienced something as horridly traumatic as that can be excused for having views on crime that are somewhat adrift of the norm. The senator’s words – give them a rope in their cells so they have the option of hanging themselves – and the ensuing controversy should not be seen as an indication the government wants to reopen the death penalty.
Safe to say there are many in this Conservative Party — the most right-wing government in Canadian history — who favour it. But the prime minister, who handled the brouhaha well yesterday, realizes that Canadian public opinion would not tolerate a move in that direction.
Because the senator’s outrageous recommendation grabbed all the headlines, a more serious development on the justice and jails front was barely noticed, it being a court ruling on the government’s callous approach to Canadians incarcerated abroad. Breaking with the country’s traditional humane approach, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews refuses to allow these prisoners to be transferred to serve out their sentences in Canadian institutions.
A Federal Court ruling by Justice Robert Barnes flayed Toews and two Tory predecessors in the portfolio who, in some cases, rejected the recommendations from their departments and who did not provide explanations for their decisions.
This has the look of another example of justice in this country being determined by the gut and political ideology as opposed to sophisticated empirical data. We’ve witnessed the approach from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson who, with his so-called tough-on-crime agenda (tough to some, stupid to others) has come right out and said he is not interested in what the research tells him; his gut knows better.
This, I suppose, gets close to the classic definition of the neanderthal approach. Back in pre-Cambrian times, the cave-dwelling folk had little research to go by. Short on education, they were reliant on more primitive resources. It would be nice to think that advances have been made since that era.
In one recent foreign prisoner case, Judge Barnes ruled that Toews did not provide sufficient grounds for turning down a repatriation bid by Richard Goulet, a Quebec construction worker who is serving seven years in the U.S. for smuggling marijuana. Goulet is a first-time offender. A Correctional Service Canada report given to Toews said the 42 tear-old was unlikely to cause further problems.
Toews didn’t listen. His conclusion, wrote the judge, “ran contrary to the overwhelming weight of evidence.” Toews was ordered to review the case and come up with a better explanation for his decision.
The judge cited a dozen cases where Conservative ministers failed to iustify their actions. Other ministers in the portfolio were Stockwell Day and Peter van Loan. In one case, Van Loan, according to the judge, cited organized crime concerns “when the evidence was that the applicant had no links to organized crime.”
Some cases involved more serious crime. But Goulet’s lawyer, John Conroy, made the point that denying the transfer of inmates doesn’t increase public safety in Canada. Canadian inmates in the United States who aren’t transferred home, he said, are deported to Canada anyway following the serving of 85 per cent of their sentence.
Some of the hard-line decision-making reflects the government’s anti-drug paranoia. Last fall the Supreme Court blasted the Conservatives in a ruling stating that Vancouver’s supervised drug-injection Insite clinic, which the Tories tried to close, could remain open because evidence overwhelmingly indicated it saved lives.
On the death penalty, Liberal MP Scott Brison has noted that this is the first government which refuses to intervene to help Canadians abroad who are on death row. The Conservatives may not support the death penalty at home, said Brison, but they appear to do elsewhere. In the case of Omar Khadr, the Afghan teenage soldier, the Conservatives chose to support the disgraced Guantanamo system of justice until compelled to do otherwise.
In the judicial area, it’s a government that operates from gut instinct in some cases and from political calculations in others. It would be nice, this being the 21st century, to think that evidence and erudition played a larger part.
Original Article
Source: iPolitico
Author: Lawrence Martin
Any father who has experienced something as horridly traumatic as that can be excused for having views on crime that are somewhat adrift of the norm. The senator’s words – give them a rope in their cells so they have the option of hanging themselves – and the ensuing controversy should not be seen as an indication the government wants to reopen the death penalty.
Safe to say there are many in this Conservative Party — the most right-wing government in Canadian history — who favour it. But the prime minister, who handled the brouhaha well yesterday, realizes that Canadian public opinion would not tolerate a move in that direction.
Because the senator’s outrageous recommendation grabbed all the headlines, a more serious development on the justice and jails front was barely noticed, it being a court ruling on the government’s callous approach to Canadians incarcerated abroad. Breaking with the country’s traditional humane approach, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews refuses to allow these prisoners to be transferred to serve out their sentences in Canadian institutions.
A Federal Court ruling by Justice Robert Barnes flayed Toews and two Tory predecessors in the portfolio who, in some cases, rejected the recommendations from their departments and who did not provide explanations for their decisions.
This has the look of another example of justice in this country being determined by the gut and political ideology as opposed to sophisticated empirical data. We’ve witnessed the approach from Justice Minister Rob Nicholson who, with his so-called tough-on-crime agenda (tough to some, stupid to others) has come right out and said he is not interested in what the research tells him; his gut knows better.
This, I suppose, gets close to the classic definition of the neanderthal approach. Back in pre-Cambrian times, the cave-dwelling folk had little research to go by. Short on education, they were reliant on more primitive resources. It would be nice to think that advances have been made since that era.
In one recent foreign prisoner case, Judge Barnes ruled that Toews did not provide sufficient grounds for turning down a repatriation bid by Richard Goulet, a Quebec construction worker who is serving seven years in the U.S. for smuggling marijuana. Goulet is a first-time offender. A Correctional Service Canada report given to Toews said the 42 tear-old was unlikely to cause further problems.
Toews didn’t listen. His conclusion, wrote the judge, “ran contrary to the overwhelming weight of evidence.” Toews was ordered to review the case and come up with a better explanation for his decision.
The judge cited a dozen cases where Conservative ministers failed to iustify their actions. Other ministers in the portfolio were Stockwell Day and Peter van Loan. In one case, Van Loan, according to the judge, cited organized crime concerns “when the evidence was that the applicant had no links to organized crime.”
Some cases involved more serious crime. But Goulet’s lawyer, John Conroy, made the point that denying the transfer of inmates doesn’t increase public safety in Canada. Canadian inmates in the United States who aren’t transferred home, he said, are deported to Canada anyway following the serving of 85 per cent of their sentence.
Some of the hard-line decision-making reflects the government’s anti-drug paranoia. Last fall the Supreme Court blasted the Conservatives in a ruling stating that Vancouver’s supervised drug-injection Insite clinic, which the Tories tried to close, could remain open because evidence overwhelmingly indicated it saved lives.
On the death penalty, Liberal MP Scott Brison has noted that this is the first government which refuses to intervene to help Canadians abroad who are on death row. The Conservatives may not support the death penalty at home, said Brison, but they appear to do elsewhere. In the case of Omar Khadr, the Afghan teenage soldier, the Conservatives chose to support the disgraced Guantanamo system of justice until compelled to do otherwise.
In the judicial area, it’s a government that operates from gut instinct in some cases and from political calculations in others. It would be nice, this being the 21st century, to think that evidence and erudition played a larger part.
Original Article
Source: iPolitico
Author: Lawrence Martin
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