Prime Minister Stephen Harper was up to his old tricks again last week of creating solutions in search of problems and sowing fear.
Doing his best tough guy impression, the PM announced from now on a life sentence in Canada will mean a life sentence for the most notorious murderers.
I’m sure it will sound very good to his base on the election trail, but intrinsically it is empty rhetoric.
In the first place, the actual provision seeks to extend parole eligibility to 35 years from 25 in first-degree murder cases that involve killing of police or correctional officers, terrorism, kidnapping or sexual assault. So, “life means life” does not mean life at all, it means 35 years, and only for a subset of criminals.
He also intends to take the parole decision out of the hands of the parole board and into the hands of the federal Cabinet. This is a laughable bit of politicking, but maybe he actually truly believes he will be in power forever or that future progressive elected officials will be less likely to grant parole than bureaucrats because they have to face the voters.
I doubt it, this is not an issue for most voters.
In any event it is moot. Who are we actually talking about here? There are only a handful of these most heinous criminals. They are the likes of Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olsen and Robert Pickton, monsters who are never getting out of jail even under the current system.
Fortunately, there are a lot of very smart journalists in this country who still ask tough questions leaving the likes of Justice Minister Peter MacKay scrambling to come up with other justifications for unnecessarily changing the Criminal Code… again.
He said it sends a message of deterrence. No, it doesn’t. To think that a guy like Pickton would be deterred by an extra 10 years of parole ineligibility is delusional.
Of course, the announcement immediately had justice experts scratching their heads over what the legislation is actually trying to accomplish.
Experts sometimes think too much. It’s an obvious play for votes. Votes, I might add, that Harper already has.
“Tough on crime,” is not a ballot box question for anybody except the hard-core base of the Conservative Party. And the fear is not that they will vote for somebody else, but that they won’t show up at the polls.
Canadians have never been safer. Crime and crime severity are at an all-time low in Canada.
The upcoming election is going to be about one thing. To paraphrase Bill Clinton campaign strategist James Carver, “it’s the economy, stupid.”
Of course, that’s the last thing Conservatives want to talk about right now since they’ve done such a dreadful job managing it that they can’t even deliver a budget on time.
