08.03.2010 10:23 PM

In other news

The Harper government today also announced that it was buying snowmobiles for its troops in Afghanistan, building international land border-crossing facilities for Newfoundland, and conducting a study to measure the flow of the Niagara River from North to South.

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25 Comments

  1. Namesake says:

    Can’t wait to hear about the forthcoming multi-million-$ untendered sole-source contract Stock will be issuing to the private security firm to go round up all those unreported, undescribed criminals to stock those new $10-B prisons they’ll be building. (These clowns are turning out to be as bad as Cheney & Halliburton.)

  2. Terry Wilcox says:

    If you build jails, you need people to put in them. You can’t have them sit empty or you’ll look foolish and lose an election.

    Do we have a new war on drugs coming? New, harsher rules for copyright violators?

    It’ll be easier for the feds to slide these things past us once they’ve gutted Stats Canada. They’re certainly not eliminating the long form census because they care about privacy. If they cared about privacy, they wouldn’t use the peep-show X-ray machines and they wouldn’t be pushing for ISP’s to install surveillance software to spy on users.

    I don’t think Harper does anything like this without careful thought, so what’s he really trying to accomplish? How can he use this to crush the opposition and win a majority?

    • James Smith says:

      … so I’m keeping all my MP3’s on my Nano in an old shoe under a bed just incase some of the songs my kids have lent me might get me put in one of those new fangled super jails! Super jails, hmmm, where have I heard that term before? According to this left wing publication the whole Super Jail thing is not working out so well:

      http://www.economist.com/node/16636027?story_id=16636027

  3. Steve T says:

    Good luck trying to sell the “crime rates are lower” argument to mainstream Canada. The justice system in this country has been far too soft for far too long. Activist judges, who live in cushy suburbs, decide that every offender just needs a pat on the head and a hot meal, and they’ll be a model citizen. Then that same offender goes and steals another car, kills another person, etc.. But it doesn’t happen in the judge’s affluent neighborhood, so they are insulated from the results of their actions.

    Personally, I have almost an unlimited capacity to donate my tax dollars for bigger prisons and more law enforcement. By contrast, I have a low appetite for paying into the system for useless rehabilitation programs that are proven time and time again to be ineffective.

  4. Steve T says:

    Further to my comments, check out the news item below. This is the reason that people want a tougher justice system. Here in Manitoba, we see this sort of thing all the time. Giving people second chances just doesn’t work. Explain to the family of the victim how we don’t need more prisons and stricter sentencing guidelines.

    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/08/03/mb-bail-stabbing-woman-winnipeg.html

    Those who think crime is getting better don’t live in the rough areas of Canada, or even the rough areas of their own city.

    • James Smith says:

      Steve,
      There is no easy fix to crime, and your example does not address the situation. Read the Economist article I posted the link to above, warehousing folks does not either make us safer nor does it improve the lot of victims, it is a red herring.
      I put to you the roots of much of the violent crime in Toronto can be directly linked to programmes aimed at troubled youth THAT WERE CUT during Harris administration, & many of the people responsible for that debacle are in the present PM’s cabinet.
      Lack of: social skills, opportunity, stable home life, and basic needs contribute more to crime than any example you may raise of pandering. A drug policy who’s only winners are organized crime is a further factor.
      Pithy grumpy stern answers are easy, thoughtful policy & responsibility is tough.

      • Steve T says:

        Yet another story from Winnipeg. Tell me why this scumbag should ever see the light of day again:

        http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/08/04/mb-handicapped-man-stabbed.html

        As for the concerns about petty thieves and drug offenders, is that really a reason to dismiss any suggestion of criminal reform?

        • Namesake says:

          Reform, fine. Hopefully that would entail some review of prevention measures, not just the after the fact, too late to do anything constructive about it measures.

          So, tell me, how is this big-whoop “reform” your new tough on crime czar announced today to help swell the prison ranks supposed to help reduce the no. of senseless stabbings going on in Winnipeg?

          (Lotto crime? Seriously?!)

          “The Conservative government has expanded the list of serious offences included in the Criminal Code, a move it says will give law enforcement more options for probing and prosecuting organized crime.

          Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced Wednesday that 11 offences will now be considered serious crimes under the Criminal Code, including:
          * Keeping a common gaming or betting house
          * Betting, pool-selling and book-making
          * Committing offences in relation to lotteries and games of chance
          * Cheating while playing a game or in holding the stakes for a game or in betting
          * Keeping a common bawdy-house
          * Various Controlled Drugs and Substances Act offences which relate to the trafficking, importing, exporting, or production of certain scheduled drugs

          http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100804/criminal-code-serious-crime-regulations-100804/20100804/?hub=OttawaHome

    • Namesake says:

      Well, there’s crime, and there’s crime…. Sure, in the violent crime dept, Winnipeg has been “the murder capital of Canada” off & on for going on 20 years (tho’ Saskatoon has caught up), and that _is_ reflected in the statistics: and especially in the “if it bleeds it leads” media.

      But you think it’s a good idea to select a Justice Minister from the worst area (Toews) with a similarly skewed vision of the problem who wants to implement policies for the whole country based on what’s happening in the worst area? That doesn’t strike you as a tad… imbalanced?

      And the vast majority of those stuffing the prisons aren’t violent offenders… they’re petty thieves & drug offenders. And there’s a lot of discrimination about who gets arrested and tried. And you know which bleeding heart Liberal now sees the injustice of that and calls bulls–t on your talking point that rehabilitation doesn’t work so we should lock ’em up & take away the key for all these other offenders no matter the cost?

      No less than Lord Black: “I developed a much greater practical knowledge than I had ever had before of those who had drawn a short straw from the system; of the realities of street level American race relations; of the pathology of incorrigible criminals; and of the wasted opportunities for the reintegration of many of these people into society. I saw at close range the failure of the U.S. War on Drugs, with absurd sentences, (including 20 years for marijuana offences, although 42% of Americans have used marijuana and it is the greatest cash crop in California.) A trillion dollars have been spent, a million easily replaceable small fry are in prison, and the targeted substances are more available and of better quality than ever, while producing countries such as Colombia and Mexico are in a state of civil war.”

      Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/31/conrad-black-my-prison-education/#ixzz0veYN9HTh

  5. Anonymously Posted says:

    Stock, Stock, Stock, you adorable little moron, you!!

    Some day there will be a sitcom about these guys. Call it The Cabinet. I think it will be first-rate dark comedy.

  6. Greg says:

    I also heard that they were so concerned about submarines overheating, that they were having screen doors installed.

  7. Philippe says:

    This is so wild. A friend of mine is a senior public servant that just got transferred to corrections Canada and he’s completely beside himself at the stupidity of this approach. It will cost us a godd^&*^*& fortune and won’t work (as shown in the US of A where countless studies prove it hasn’t).

    How DUMB (see “ideological”) is this government? No wait, how DUMB are we if we let this fly without booting them out of office?

    Where are the Libs on this? They should be using countless studies as props and telling Canadians the truth about how this won’t work and will take tons of cash from our pockets. Do they think people won’t get it? Afraid to be called soft on crime? Stop shaking in your damn boots- that’s the reason you’re so low in the polls. What is an opposition for if not to attack & attempt to block bad policy? Get with it.

    • Iris Mclean says:

      Where have the Libs been for the last four years? Harper has been ruling as if he had a majority because we don’t have a functioning opposition.

  8. Paul R. Martin says:

    Hello Warren
    It must be difficult to keep the troops motivated this summer. I understand that Liberal fund raising efforts are lagging again now that Rocco Rossi is no longer in charge.

  9. Anthony says:

    Stockwell’s Field of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come?”

  10. James Bow says:

    Man, the guy’s an idiot.

    Can’t he even follow through the logic himself? If a crime is “unreported”, police don’t catch the criminals, and the crooks don’t go to prison. Ergo, no new prisons are needed.

    If crooks are caught, and sent to prison, the crime is not “unreported”.

    Crime statistics are going down because crime is going down. The majority of our streets are safer, regardless of what Conservatives think.

    But, then, reality often has a liberal bias, it seems.

    You know, this does feed into the issue of the Conservatives’ gutting of the long form census. They don’t like statistics, full stop. If the facts don’t agree with them, some of them try to get themselves some new facts.

  11. Robert says:

    Leave Minister Day alone. You don’t know what it’s like to be him. You don’t know what it’s like to have to live in his world, where south is north, the invisible is visible, the unreported is reported. Show some sympathy.

  12. luke says:

    I tried to dig up crime stats, and I found a few key things:

    1. Between 1962 and 1973 there was a massive increase in reported crime (I personally blame a wide-spread and covert Soviet effort to undermine Canada for this increase), that is almost totally attributable to the fact that crime reporting and stats went from a literal paper trail to computer generated. It was therefore more comprehensive and more reliable. What this also means is that to cite stats from 1962 is simply wrong. The information is incomplete and unreliable.

    In fact, when you look at this document ( http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/af-fdr.cgi?l=eng&loc=Z1_14-eng.csv) the crime rate jumped by this ‘300%’ figure during the transition from paper to computerized record keeping. So rather than some increase in recent times, this phenomenal increase in the crime rate actually occurred in the 1960s. Moreover, going back to 1962 where incomplete and inaccurate stats were the only source of information is so intellectually disingenuous, that it’s difficult to describe. If a university student handed in a stats paper, or ANY paper, with this methodology they would fail. If an employee used this methodology they would be deemed incompetent and summarily fired. For a government to cite such flawed methodology to support it’s billion dollar boondoggle for new prisons, is troubling to say the least, because they either are deliberately lying to and misleading the Canadian public, or they are incompetent.

    2. From 1962 to 2010 Canada’s population has nearly doubled. So the insane number of 300+% jump in crime as reported by CPC mouthpiece Sun Media, is both inaccurate due to the change in method of tracking crime (paper to computer), and because it fails to account for population increase.

    3. The ‘unreported’ crime fiasco is a little more difficult. I can’t seem to get access to the stats, which start in the 1980s. But barring some truly phenomenal jump in ‘unreported crime’, it will not off-set the actual drop in ‘real’ crime. Moreover, there’s the outstanding issue of the fact that the majority of the crimes that fall into the unreported category are minor and wouldn’t merit a prison sentence that would necessitate this MASSIVE billions of dollars increase in spending on prisons.

    Furthermore, there is still the fact that these are ‘unreported’ crimes, making it impossible to send the offenders to prison, whether the crime could be punished by incarceration or not.

    Conclusion:

    No matter how you slice it, the Conservative position is without foundation and a gross and deliberate distortion of the facts and/or an undeniable indication that the CPC are incompetent and have no business governing our country.

  13. H Holmes says:

    http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/091208/dq091208a-eng.htm

    Interesting, crime is down but incarceration is up.

    Changes to the 2 for 1 will affect the amount of people on remand, but it will also increase the already crowded jails.

    This will also increase the amount of prisoners in the federal system.
    I guess this will help the provinces deal with the their overcrowding issues.

    On a side note almost all corrections facilities built before 1980, do not meet present corrections requirements. Most of the money that will be spent will be to meet new codes.

    Although none of this address the problems of gang recruitment, drug use and skills training in the corrections system, which to me are the real problems.

  14. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    TODAY’S QUIZ:

    Who said the following:

    I never met a prison I didn’t like. Here’s a hint. It wasn’t Will Rogers.

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