Pubdate: Mon, 01 Feb 2010
Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2010 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact:  http://www.ottawasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329
Author: Greg Weston

HARPER NOT SO TOUGH ON CRIME

OTTAWA -- In the world according to Stephen Harper, it has become 
something of a political maxim that when the going gets tough, the 
Conservatives get tough on crime.

Seems just about every time the Harper gang needs to get out of 
trouble, it offers up some new piece of lawmaking that promises to 
put the bad guys behind bars.

Gunslinging always seems to please the Conservative core.

It is certainly came as no surprise, therefore, that the prime 
minister's latest round of Senate appointments he once promised never 
to make came wrapped in the Conservative flag of law and order.

Few things in government risk sending right-wingers into convulsion 
more effectively than a bunch of political hacks being ushered into hog heaven.

But by the time the dust had settled behind last week's unseemly 
stampede to the trough, even commentators of the hard right were 
applauding Harper for taking the pig by the tail, as it were.

After all, the Liberals made him do it.

For the first time since the Mulroney years, Harper's five 
appointments to the Senate last week gave the Conservatives a 
plurality in the upper chamber.

That means those criminal-coddling Grits in the Senate no longer have 
a majority they can use to block the Conservatives' legislative 
law-and-order. As the PM put it: "Our government is serious about 
getting tough on crime ... The Liberals have abused their Senate 
majority by obstructing and eviscerating law-and-order measures that 
are urgently needed and strongly supported by Canadians."

No doubt about it -- when it comes to thwarting new laws to keep us 
free from muggers, rapists and pot-smoking hippies, the prime 
minister certainly is something of an expert on the subject.

The Conservative government introduced a total of 17 law-and-order 
bills in parliament last year.

Three of those actually were passed into law, one dealing with 
organized crime, another dealing with sentencing calculations for 
time served behind bars before conviction.

The third, aimed at identity theft, actually came from that 
obstructing, eviscerating, Liberal-dominated Senate.

The remaining 14 "law-and-order measures that are urgently needed," 
as the PM put it, were automatically killed en masse when parliament 
recently was ordered shut down by the, um, PM.

Of those, 11 were sitting somewhere on the Commons agenda, and only 
three bills were anywhere near the Senate at the time of their demise.

One of those three, one repealing the so-called "faint hope" clause 
for lifers, arrived in the Senate less than two weeks before the 
place went dark.

The second bill that died in the Senate when Harper prorogued 
parliament dealt with auto theft, and went to committee in the upper 
chamber the week before the Christmas recess.

The third piece of legislation lost in Harper's official lights-out 
provided mandatory minimum prison terms for anyone caught with more 
than five marijuana plants.

That bill was so urgent that it first was introduced by the 
Conservative government in 2007, but was killed by Harper's calling 
of the 2008 election. It was resurrected, debated and died again when 
Harper recently shut down parliament.

Thank goodness the prime minister has stuffed another five political 
pals in the Senate.

The world will surely be a safer place.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart