Tough On Crime, Tough On The Criminal Justice System

Put more people in jail for longer; pay the jailer less. And watch the sparks fly, I suppose.

Dead But Not At Rest

10 percenters touting the same tough on crime legislative package the Tories prorogued down the toilet are still appearing in mailboxes across the land. Because if you ever passed this stuff, you couldn't run on it.

C-15 Stalled In The Senate; IP21C Looms

C-15 is the law imposing mandatory minimum penalties on drug dealers that the Liberals got behind a few weeks ago in an attempt to dodge the "Soft on Crime" (SoC) label, thus triggering a certain amount of angst among loyal supporters and more generally anyone blessed with a lick of common sense.

I've argued many times during Dion's tenure that, given the LPoC's position of weakness, it was okay to play a bit of political jujitsu and let stuff pass in the HOC knowing it would expire "in the process" behind the scenes somewhere. However, I thought that those days of weakness were all behind us now and it would be possible to fight some of these battles in broad daylight.

It appears I was mistaken.

IP21C is the Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act (read Geist for background). This is another bill that I have assumed will go nowhere. However, Roblaw (a decent Libertarian-type dude who visits occasionally and argues with Ti-Guy) tells me it resembles previous, LPoC introduced legislation, and so perhaps there will be discussions re "How do we weasel out of this one without looking SoC?" in LPoC backrooms over the summer.

Frankly, this looks to me like the kind of legislation (like C-15) more likely to split the Tory constituency rather than progressives, and therefore something LPoC could safely stand tall against, but what do I know?