Conservative "Justice" Policy

Stephen Harper - along with his advisors - needs a swift kick upside the head. Today, the CPC unveiled it's Get Tough on Crime policy.

Key features:

- Mandatory minimum sentences
- More police on the streets
- Increase the age of consent from 14 to 16
- Mandatory "adult" sentences for 'serious' crimes committed over the age of 14
- Expanded Mandate for CSIS (to include overseas activity - and goodness knows what else)
- Arm border guards
- Re-establishment of the Canadian Border Police to combat drug smuggling
- Shut down the Federal Gun Registry

Let's think about this collection of issues carefully for a moment.

1) Where's the money going to come from to expand our prisons? Mandatory minimum sentences are going to increase the load on our entire justice system - from police on the street through to prisons and probation officers.

2) Under Conservative thinking, a fourteen year old isn't smart enough to engage in sex (they do), but can be held as an adult for criminal activities?

- which is it people? At the age of fourteen, someone is either aware of their actions and can take responsibility for them, or they're not.

3) Last I checked the Youth Justice act provides mechanisms to handle offenders as adults even if they are under the age of 18. These are tools at the hands of the police and crown to use as needed. It seems to me that an 'automatic' tool simply handcuffs our law enforcement officials by imposing a politically expedient policy on all situations.

4) Expanding CSIS's mandate does not strike me as a useful thing to do. Given the recent fiasco in the United States over George Bush's little "spy on the neighbors" program, I have to think that Canada would do well to keep its spy agencies on a fairly short leash. (come to that I'm not at all sure I want Canada giving itself the mandate to operate extraterritorially without specific parliamentary supervision at the moment)

5) Arming the Border Guards and resurrecting the Canadian Border Police strikes me as a phenomenal waste of time and resources. Border agents are generally not dealing with criminals, and arming them really just leaves things open to bigger problems - especially without the significant training that police have in dealing civilian populations.

As for the "Canadian Border Police", I thought they got folded into the RCMP. Canada doesn't need "another police force" so much as it _might_ be beneficial to expand the RCMP.

6) Shutting down the Gun Registry is nothing more than a play pandering to the Alberta Redneck population. (The same people that really do want a gun rack in their truck...) Thanks, but no thanks. Registering a gun is no different to me than registering a car - get over it.

I don't believe that the registered gun discourages the criminal particularly, but the rest of the laws around storing the weapons does a lot to defuse domestic violence before it gets out of hand.

Oh yes - the Conservatives claim that they will "invest" in "programs to help at-risk youth avoid getting involved in gangs and drugs". Uh-huh - will this be like GWB's lovely "abstinence-only" sex ed policy in the states?