OTTAWA – The Conservative government dismissed the cost to taxpayers and the direction of crime trends Tuesday as it introduced sweeping new criminal-justice changes it says will make Canadians feel safer.
“We’re not governing on the basis of the latest statistics,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said at a news conference in suburban Brampton, Ont.
“We’re governing on the basis of what’s right to better protect victims and law-abiding Canadians.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved to make good on an election promise to bundle a series of proposed measures as part of his self-described “tough-on-crime” agenda.
The legislation tabled in the Commons includes nine bills incorporating changes to drug laws, youth sentencing, the pardons system, detention of refugees, parole and house arrest and anti-terrorism measures.
“Canadians want and deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their communities,” Nicholson, flanked by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said at one of several news conferences constituting a full-press, public-relations effort to tout the politically popular reforms.
“They want a government that is committed to fighting crime and protecting Canadians so that their communities are safe places for people to live, raise their families and do business.”
The government won praise from victims’-rights groups, but critics say the measures are hugely costly and have been proven ineffective – or worse – over three decades of increasingly draconian “tough-on-crime” campaigns in the United States.
Many American state governments are attempting to unravel harsh minimum-sentencing provisions and bring in more parole and house-arrest options in an effort to ease the crushing cost of incarceration.
A coalition of justice groups held a news conference as the bill went before Parliament, calling it costly and a threat to human rights in an already overcrowded prison system.
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Catherine Latimer, executive director of the John Howard Society, said parts of the provincial and federal correctional systems are so stuffed they may already violate charter protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The omnibus bill will only exacerbate the problems and could send correctional costs through the roof, she said.
Corrections Canada estimates the cost of the system will rise to $3 billion this fiscal year from $1.6 billion in 2006 when the Harper Conservatives took power.
The Harper government fell last spring in part due to a contempt-of-Parliament motion that sprang from the Conservative cabinet’s refusal to detail the full cost of its various justice bills.
The government eventually offered documents that suggested 18 proposed measures would cost about $631 million in total. The independent parliamentary budget officer, by contrast, reported that one measure alone would cost the system billions.
Many of the new provisions will increase the number of offenders facing sentences of less than two years, putting more strain on provincial facilities.
“These costs will be borne by the provinces and by taxpayers across the country and we believe that those need to be fully assessed and disclosed,” said Latimer.
Nicholson sidestepped the question of cost, focusing instead on an estimate that crime costs the Canadian economy $99 billion annually.
“Most that is borne by victims,” said the justice minister.
His office did not respond to a question about how much that $99-billion figure will decline once the proposed justice reforms are fully in place.
And that is what has critics so up in arms: There is no evidence “tough-on-crime” laws actually reduce crime, and few verifiable means of measuring their effectiveness.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said the omnibus bill, delivered on just the second sitting day of the fall session of Parliament, belies the Conservative claim to be fixated on the economy.
Amidst the current economic doom and gloom, said Rae, “the only good-news statistic that we’ve seen in the last while is that the crime rate is actually going down.”
The Conservative crime focus, said Rae, “shows their ideological preoccupation at a time when the country is preoccupied with jobs, with work, with what is happening and not happening in the real economy.”
“We intend to do direct battle with the Conservatives on this issue because we do not believe it is a crime-prevention agenda.”
The omnibus bill, known as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, includes the following measures:
– Heftier penalties for sexual offences against children. It also creates two new offences aimed at conduct that could facilitate or enable the commission of a sexual offence against a child.
– Mandatory minimum sentences for the production and possession of illicit drugs, including trafficking offences for growing six or more marijuana plants.
– Tougher penalties for young offenders.
– An end to the use of conditional sentences, or house arrest, for many crimes.
– Allowing victims to participate in parole hearings.
– Extending ineligibility periods for applications for pardons to five years from three for summary-conviction offences and to 10 years from five for indictable offences.
– Expanding the criteria that the public safety minister can consider when deciding whether to allow the transfer of a Canadian offender back to Canada to serve a sentence imposed by a foreign court.
– Allowing terrorism victims to sue terrorists and their supporters, including listed foreign states, for losses or damages resulting from an act of terrorism committed anywhere in the world.
– Measures to prevent human trafficking and exploitation.
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