Soft On Crime

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson staged several announcements last fall to highlight legislation to fight white-collar criminals that was never adopted; it now must be re-introduced in the spring.

Legislation to eliminate house arrests for serious crimes, cracking down on auto theft and requiring Internet service providers to report child pornography content found on their servers are also among the bills which must now start over in Parliament.

Mind you, Bloc Québécois House leader Pierre Paquette makes note of the fact that some the crime bills introduced by the Harper government last session don't even address the issues they are supposed to be targeting:

"...this is a smokescreen to support Conservative propaganda suggesting they are tough on crime and opposition parties are soft (on crime), when this is totally false," Paquette said.

But the nice thing about smoke is you can produce more and more of it again and again and again. Some of these Tories bills are in their 2nd and 3rd incarnations. And the whole point seems to be that they should always and forever be in the process of becoming law, but never actually become law. That way the Tories never have to deal with the consequences of their own legislation.

PS. One of the bits of legislation that lives through the prorogation is Bill C-384, the Right To Die With Dignity Bill. In some quarters, and wondering now if C-384 will ever come to a vote:

"Since the Conservative government appears to be setting up an election for May or June, Lalonde may find a way to trade-back again in the order of precedence and prevent C-384 from ever being voted on" by this government, Schadenberg observed.