Tag Archives: Tough on Crime

Roundup: Detaining refugees versus the Charter

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Apparently an internal report at Citizenship and Immigration says that the government should consider detaining Roma refugees if the new changes to the Act don’t stem the tide of claimants. It’s a bit hard to see how that would be squared with the Charter, considering it would be arbitrary detention and racial profiling, no?

The National Energy Board is now demanding that report from the Enbridge spill in Michigan two years ago as part of the Northern Gateway review panel. Thomas Mulcair, meanwhile, considers the project dead, while still calling the oil sands an “important resource.” Okay then.

Despite Conservative promises that the whole F-35 purchase was going to be frozen and rethought, Lockheed Martin says there’s no change on their end and we appear to be going full steam ahead.

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Roundup: The political theatre of ankle monitors

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Despite a pilot project showing that they didn’t really work as well as they’d hoped, Corrections Canada is nevertheless going forward with rolling out more anklet monitors for parolees. But it’s the sense of security that someone is keeping an eye on these offenders that’s important – right? So long as they look like they’re doing something, no matter that what they’re actually doing isn’t working is what’s really important, no? That bit of political theatre is pretty much the hallmark of their justice agenda.

Michael Petrou at Maclean’s tries to sort out the business of whether or not we’re giving aid dollars to Syrian rebels. Meanwhile, Canadian Relief For Syrian are still trying to figure out what happened on the government’s end.

Andrew Mitrovica takes on Chuck Strahl’s responses about his new role as the chair of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee, and pretty much calls him out for being a government lapdog and not someone who will be an effective watchdog of CSIS.

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Roundup: Spinning prison gangs as good news

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What’s that? More gangs in prisons as we’re seeing more overcrowding, more double-bunking, more and incidents of violence that might entice prisoners to join gangs for protection? You don’t say! What’s more audacious, however, is the government dressing this up as more gang members in prison and off the streets, and yet not having any police data to back that particular claim up. Just so long as it has to feel convincing, we don’t need facts!

Martha Hall Findlay, Hedy Fry and Joe Volpe are trying to make a deal with Elections Canada about their outstanding leadership debts now that the courts won’t give them any more extensions.

Tim Uppal wants Parliament to stop “stalling” the Senate Reform Act. Um, it’s your government that’s not bringing it forward for debate. Oh, and they want the provinces to pay to “elect” (but not really since it’s just a “consultation”) federal senators. Predictably, no province except Alberta is wild on the idea and won’t pursue their own plans if they have to pay for them. Not that it matters anyway, since the whole thing is unconstitutional to begin with.

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Roundup: Redford vs Clark

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The brewing battle between premiers Christy Clark and Alison Redford went up a notch yesterday as Clark fired back at Redford’s suggestion that her demands for a portion of the royalties meant rewriting Confederation. Clark, not unsurprisingly, called Reford’s comments “silly” and unreasonable to suggested that she was trying to destroy Confederation. Clark’s point is that BC is taking a disproportionate share of the risk with regards to the length of the pipeline and the marine consequences, but isn’t guaranteed an adequate proportion of the revenues. She also steadfastly says that she is neither supporting nor objecting to the pipeline at this point considering that the environmental review process remains incomplete. On a side note, here’s a look at how the upcoming elections in BC and Quebec may play out at the Council of the Federation Meeting that starts today.

The head of Peter Penashue’s campaign says he’s sorry for exceeding the limits and for his lax bookkeeping. Well, so long as he’s sorry, that makes everything better, right? (Todd Russell, the former MP, who lost by a mere 79 votes, doesn’t plan to challenge the results given the recommendations, for the record). Meanwhile, Elections Canada was not interested in offering Dean Del Mastro “immunity” in exchange for more information about the funding irregularities.

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Roundup: Prepping the First Ministers’ meeting

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In the lead up to Wednesday’s Council of the Federation meeting in Halifax, the premier of Nova Scotia discusses how he finds the federal government’s aloofness to be “troubling.” Meanwhile, environmentalists are hoping to engage the premiers at said meeting, given that the proposed national energy strategy will be one of the key topics discussed. A new Senate report will add fuel to the fire on the need for such a strategy.

In a not unrelated matter, it seems that BC Premier Christy Clark is starting to talk tougher on the Northern Gateway Pipeline, and sent out two of her ministers to outline her concerns. It seems like this is reverberating enough that Joe Oliver is starting to moderate his own tone a little. Alberta Premier Alison Redford, however, is none too happy with the objections.

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Roundup: The politics of gun violence

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I believe Colin Horgan said it best, so I’ll start off by quoting him: “Yes, never miss a chance for partisan shots. With senseless human tragedy comes political opportunity! Well done, everybody.” He is, of course, referring to the release put out by the government in the wake of the shootings in Scarborough, to which the government gave two lines of condolences and twelve lines of partisan salesmanship about how the opposition needs to support their tough-on-crime agenda. Because we all know that if the mandatory minimums that already exist on the books didn’t prevent this, well, then we need even tougher penalties for deterrence! It also didn’t help that Vic Toews took shots at those judges who struck down the mandatory minimums as arbitrary and inappropriate in some cases – and it was both in the cases in which they were struck down. And then Julian Fantino is the one to sound reasonable? How did that happen? (And just to note that Liberal MP John McKay, whose riding the shooting happened in, was also eminently reasonable, while NDP MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan, from the neighbouring riding, took to Power and Politics to suggest they talk to the critic another day. Oops).

The Federal Court shot down a challenge to the government’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol because, well, it’s actually the government’s right to do so. That’s the way executive powers work, even if you don’t agree with them – not that it seems to stop the civically illiterate from taking to the courts to try and change the foundations of parliamentary democracy on a whim because they lost a political battle.

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Roundup: Disingenuous prison “savings”

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Vic Toews held a press conference yesterday to say that hey, that big explosion in prisoner populations didn’t happen, so here, let’s reallocate $1.48 billion from corrections back to the Finance Department’s fiscal framework. Except that Toews is being awfully disingenuous here. The provisions from Bill C-10? Most of them haven’t even come into force yet, and some of them won’t until oh, November. Add to that the time it will take the cases that the court sees after such rulings come into force to make their way through the system (since these laws aren’t retroactive), and then, two or three years down the road, we’ll see the effect. So one has to wonder – is Toews trying to manufacture a crisis in the corrections system? We know there is overcrowding and double bunking happening already, we know that there is a rise in prison violence, and we know that there is a time bomb on the way when it comes to that explosion in prison populations. And the endgame? Well, I suspect it may have to do with more private sector involvement in the penal system, as we’ve already heard they’re looking into. Something to consider anyway.

After those Enbridge hearings in the States, Thomas Mulcair says that we should pull the plug on the Northern Gateway pipeline entirely. BC Premier Christy Clark is putting Enbridge “on notice” about pipeline safety.

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Roundup: Clerical errors and attack ads

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The Supreme Court heard arguments about the Etobicoke Centre election yesterday, and the crux seem to hang on whether “clerical errors” are enough to overturn votes and “disenfranchise” Canadians. But how many errors are too many and how many should we let slide before it becomes “fatal” to the integrity of the election? It’s actually a weighty issue to ponder, and they have reserved judgement. While it’s supposed to be handled expeditiously, the point was also made that the remedy – a by-election – is time-sensitive, and so one can hope that the Court will be swift in its ruling. (I offered some of my own thoughts as to the arguments here).

The NDP launched their own attack ads in response to those the Conservatives launched against Thomas Mulcair. The crux of the message: Harper created the recession, the deficit, and is now making cuts to the vulnerable. It’s all pretty much demonstrably untrue and contradictory, but since when were attack ads supposed to be entirely factual when the intent is to cast doubt on your opponent? James Moore was quick to respond via the Twitter Machine: “Hope is better than fear.” Touché.

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Roundup: Stampede Triumphalism

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With it being Stampede time in Calgary, Stephen Harper has made a triumphant “homecoming speech” to the crowd there about how he wants to transform Canada to be one of the “next generation of economic powers,” and that even though all of his changes aren’t popular they are necessary. Note that he again takes credit for Paul Martin’s achievements and for resource prices. Also in attendance were Alison Redford and Danielle Smith, and Redford got more applause than Smith, even though that federal Conservatives tend to be more in the Wildrose Party camp.

As is typical at this time of year, journalists seem mystified that the Liberals are showing the flag in the heart of “enemy territory” – as if there are no Liberals in Alberta, which is not true. Bob Rae says that looking at the elections of Naheed Nenshi and Alison Redford shows that there is an appetite for centrist, progressive politics in places like Calgary – though traditionally this has been harder to achieve at the federal level, as Calgarians tend to vote increasingly conservative the higher level one goes. And add the obligatory Justin Trudeau leadership speculation as he works – and woos – the crowds there.

If you do plan on attending Stampede, here is some expert advice from stylists on how to dress without looking like a complete bumpkin.

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Roundup: A wee little cabinet shuffle

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Stephen Harper surprised everyone yesterday with a wee little cabinet shuffle – Julian Fantino is going to CIDA in Oda’s place, and Bernard Valcourt gets the associate deputy minister position for defence while retaining his ACOA portfolio and the Francophonie.  Fantino is an…interesting choice, considering he’s spent his career being the guy who as getting tough on crime and now he’s being the face of Canada’s compassion and aid. As for Valcourt, he’s a Mulroney-era veteran who is moving a up the ladder a little bit, but considering how marginalised the military procurement file has become in the advent of the era of the procurement secretariat, it makes one wonder why they bothered to retain the portfolio. Also, interesting that Peter MacKay and John Duncan are staying put despite major gaffes of their own, and more evidence that Harper will refuse to make changes in order to avoid admitting that he made a mistake with his choices.

The government is tightening temporary foreign worker rules so that it will exclude exotic dancers, escorts and people who work in massage parlours, as they’re more “vulnerable to exploitation.” Of course, one suspects that this will just drive this all that much further underground and rather than have people documented so that they have access to some kind of assistance if they are being exploited, they’ll just be classified as “hostesses” or “servers” (provided they take a drink order) and it won’t actually have an effect on exploitation of human trafficking (assuming of course that we’re not just conflating human trafficking with the sex trade, as they are not the same thing).

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