Could HarperCrit Sound Any More Like BushCo?

So, Harper's been talking to a "business club" audience in New York. The speech itself hints loudly at further integration with the United States on fronts such as trade and immigration - shades of this conference last week, perhaps?

He urged those in attendance to help push for a border initiative that is pragmatic and not rushed.

"Our border must not be seen as a fence where one country's national security stops and the other's begins," said Harper. "It's not like that in the real world."

Harper's comments came on a day when a U.S. government official told the Associated Press that Boeing has been offered an $80-million US contract that will use high-tech means, including towers, to stop illegal immigrants from entering across the country's north and south borders.

Hmmm...given the current US government, the only way a "pragmatic" solution is going to happen involves Canada swallowing whatever BushCo comes up with.

(Is it just me, or is it mighty convenient that Mini-Shrub is busy travelling about while Parliament is sitting? - taking a page out of Ralph's book perhaps?)

In the next chapter of the "can we afford 'Conservative Justice' saga", we are introduced to Vic Toews' 3 Strikes law. I'm not at all sure we can afford this kind of law in Canada (nor am I convinced that it is necessary). We already have provisions in law for declaring someone a "dangerous offender", which if the crown can demonstrate how the accused is a persistent threat to a judge results in an indefinite sentence.

Toews argues that a 3 strikes law will act as a deterrent, and yet the California experience is far from clear on the matter, with different groups finding that it increases costs and prison population, meanwhile the state republicans published claiming all kinds of success. Clearly neither side has a monopoly on compelling evidence.

Personally, I don't think it will do much good in Canada. I simply do not accept the conserva-think assertion that harsh sentences are a deterrent. Consider that Texas has the death penalty - about as harsh a sentence as you can think of, for murder. Yet, the Texas murder rate hasn't improved substantially. Which leads me to suspect that harsh penalties really don't make a difference to violent offenders (most of whom, I suspect, aren't thinking about consequences when they commit their crimes).

I do not believe that Canada will benefit by following in the footsteps of California on this one, and really what we are doing is setting up a scenario where billions more of Canadian taxpayer dollars will have to be funnelled into the creation of prisons, paying guards and looking after the offenders incaracerated. The only people that will benefit from this will be industrial providers that service the "punishment industry".

Before someone jumps on the obvious argument that I'd respond differently if it was a member of my family that was the victim. That's probably true - I imagine that I would experience a very visceral emotional state where I would want the offender's scrawny neck between my hands. However, I'm also smart enough to realize that there's a big difference between justice and revenge. Our criminal system is about justice, not retribution.