More Conservative "Justice"

Conservatives are at least consistent about one thing - their perspective on justice. Foolish, perhaps, but consistent.

Recent events in Ontario, and British Columbia are being spun by Justice Minister Vic Toews as an excuse Get Tough on Crime.

I'm no expert on US racketeering laws, or the evidentiary standards that they contain. However, I worry when the United States pops up as an "example" of how to fight crime. Canada's crime rate has traditionally been quite a bit lower than the United States, and mysteriously manages to trend downwards even without massive programs of incarceration.

Conservatives love to use the line "if you do the crime, you do the time", usually followed up with "it's got to be serious time". These are lovely sound bites, but they really mean nothing.

Those people who are involved in organized crime probably aren't overly intimidated by prisons. Let's face it, they know that their organization is involved in drug trafficking, prostitution or whatever other vice is. They've probably spent time in prison themselves before for one thing or another - they aren't scared of "the man", nor will they be deterred by "stiffer" sentencing.

The people who will be deterred by stiff sentences are the "casual" criminals - the same people who won't jack your car if it has a security system in it. Not because the security system really stops them, but they just can't be bothered with the extra effort.

I'm not saying that we should not punish criminals, but I am not at all convinced that longer incarceration periods is going to have any real effect on crime rates.

Meanwhile, the "Pro-Corporate" colours of the CPC are coming out in full flower:

Starting with cuts to Environment Canada programs dealing with Greenhouse Gas issues, and moving into tax cuts which will further shift the burden of government spending onto the middle class in this country. By reducing corporate income taxes and the GST, middle class Canadians wind up holding an even larger proportion of the government's obligations through their income taxes.

Even more worrisome is a rollback of previous income tax cuts designed to ease the tax burden on the lowest income Canadians which is not ameliorated by GST cuts, no matter what the CPC claims.