Canada is beginning to resemble the subfusc world depicted in Arthur Koestler’s Stalinist dystopia: Darkness at Noon.
Or at least it is in the dark corners of the CPC’s creepy campaign for re-election, coffee mugs to one side.
Like Koestler’s book, we have our own “Number One”, the menacing dictator from the novel. Stephen Harper says things and they become true, or at least they do for those low-information voters who tell pollsters that they intend to vote for him.
According to polls, lying apparently comforts three-in-ten Canadians.
Consider the case of Carol Baird Ellan. The Conservative Party attack-machine is going after the ex-judge turned NDP candidate in Burnaby North Seymour for being soft on crime. The Cons have an entire website devoted to examples of Baird Ellan handing out what they describe as “lenient” sentences to serious criminals, including sex offenders.
Perhaps the Cons are acting on the advice of Lynton Crosby, the political hit-man from Australia who has been advising Stephen Harper for months. They say Crosby’s expertise is messaging; it is actually turning elections into cattle drives of fear and loathing.
Perhaps the advice came from one of the princelings of darkness that inhabit the bottom of the Tory aquarium otherwise known as the war room. It hardly matters. Sex crimes get the pulse racing in the Conservatives’ electoral base and Harper knows he needs something to jump a few volts through a lifeless campaign.
What the attack on Baird Ellen really comes down to is an attack on judicial independence and the discretion of judges. For years, Harper has tried to impose his political will on Canada’s justice system — including a frontal assault on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) for the high crime of offering unsolicited constitutionally sound advice.
Instead, Harper has knowingly appointed nincompoops to the bench whose principle asset was “right thinking.” He has violated constitutional convention and been found in contempt of parliament. And now his party is going after the first woman in British Columbia to be appointed Chief Justice and who served a full five-year term.
Are the Conservatives trying to pretend that Harper knows more about the law than she does?
Unless the Conservatives are saying that Baird Ellan misconstrued the law, their complaint is not against the judge at all. It is against the statutes under which she made her sentencing decisions. If Harper thinks the laws under which she exercised discretion are flawed, why didn’t he pass new statutes to force judges to send sex offenders to jail and throw away the key?
The answer is very simple. Harper has already placed his hand on that stove-top and got his fingers burned over his misbegotten law and order agenda.
Last April, the SCC struck down the Harper government’s law that set a mandatory-minimum sentence of three years for gun crimes on a first offence, and five years on subsequent convictions. The 6-3 ruling written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin found that among many other defects, mandatory minimum sentences threaten the principle of proportionality in sentencing. Or as the Chief Justice herself put it, “They function as a blunt instrument that may deprive courts of the ability to tailor proportionate sentences at the lower end of a sentencing range.”
And so back to Baird Ellen’s alleged crime – leniency with a view to rehabilitation. Only the sitting judge knows all the circumstances in play that affect discretion in sentencing, including developmental disability, the true danger to society posed by a convicted person, and mental illness. One of the main reasons judges need discretionary sentencing powers, powers by the way that often persuade them to lean towards rehabilitation, is the utter lack of proof that jail time equals deterrence.
Again, in the Chief Justice’s own words: “The Government has not established that mandatory-minimum terms of imprisonment act as a deterrent against gun-related crimes. Empirical evidence suggest that mandatory-minimum sentences do not, in fact, deter crimes.”
Of course, Harper never has and never will care about empirical evidence, on this or any other file. He is in the Republican Kool-Aid business and that is the only thing he dispenses. More proof? Here is something that a lot of people have forgotten.
Back in August 2010 the Harper government made a curious decision. With crime rates falling, and alternatives to incarceration being practised in most other jurisdictions, then Public Safety minister Stockwell Day announced the construction of two new inmate housing facilities at the federal prison in Springhill, Nova Scotia. The justification for building 192 new spaces for prisoners was that Canada was facing a substantial increase in its inmate population — his famous reference to an “alarming” increase in unreported crime.
How did it work out? Not very well for Capt. Sea-Doo. At the time the cell expansion was announced, Springhill had 396 inmates. It now has 397. In fact, if you believe numbers cited in a September 23, 2015 article, the prison houses just 378 inmates, 19 fewer than in 2010. In any case, neither of the new buildings has ever been occupied and two years after they were built, they remain empty.
One other thing. Although the original cost for the expansion of the federal prison in Springhill was $17 million, it ended up costing $40 million.
Can you say boondoggle? It used to be the Conservative Party’s favourite word when they were in opposition.
Liberal candidate in the riding of Cumberland Colchester, Bill Casey, a former Progressive Conservative MP, has written to Public Safety minister Steven Blaney to ask how much it costs Canadian taxpayers to maintain this Correctional white elephant. Let’s hope Casey can hold his breath for a long time.
The ultimate irony of Harper’s accusations that Carol Baird Ellan is too soft on crime is Bruce Carson.
This week in Ottawa, Carson’s criminal trial for influence peddling begins. The charge relates to the accusation that Carson used his influence as a former government official to try to sell water filtration systems to native reserves, and that he directed 20 per cent of the revenue from the deals to his then fiancee, Michele McPherson. McPherson is a former escort who worked in the Ottawa sex-trade.
Carson also faces three other charges of illegal lobbying which will be tried in court next year.
For the Conservatives, the connection between Harper and Carson is not the best example of their being tough on crime. Carson was Harper’s research and policy director in the opposition years, and joined the PMO staff as a senior adviser after Harper won the 2006 election.
The thing is, before joining the PMO, Carson already had two criminal convictions — one for theft in 1983 and another for fraud in 1990. He had been sentenced to 18 months in jail on the theft conviction. He was also disbarred by the Law Society of Upper Canada.
Here’s the kicker: Carson’s lawyer, Patrick McCann, said his client fully disclosed his criminal past during his security clearance check BEFORE starting work at the PMO. So, despite knowing about his record, this tough-on-crime prime minister hired him anyway.
Harper also appointed now-deceased fugitive Arthur Porter as head of SIRC; and he also made Dean del Mastro, who is appealing his jail term for campaign fraud, his parliamentary secretary.
So if Carol Baird Ellan is soft on crime, what does that make Stephen Harper?
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
No comments:
Post a Comment