NDP Not Legalizing Pot

The NDP seems to want to lag behind the Liberals when it comes to the smart on drugs plan. The NDP apparently according to George Soule the NDP wants to decriminalize pot (making it no longer illegal to have). While the Liberals are now the only party fully in favor of legalizing and taxing marijuana. The main difference is that marijuana will be legal to buy and sell, and the NDP will only allow someone to have it without facing prison time. 


But George Soule said that the NDP would want before decriminalizing a study to be done. A study! I can't believe I am hearing this from the NDP. Asking for a study when it comes to Marijuana a subject that has been studied hundreds of times over is like asking for a study on tobacco. This is a delay tactic! We don't need a study on marijuana we need to get over this issue and legalize it already!


Policy Review 
NDP seems to support having a study on the matter, and possibly decriminalizing it.
Conservatives want to put people with six pot plants in jail for six months.
Liberals want to radically move away from the "War on Drug" agenda as soon as possible and legalize the plant that has proven to reduce crime in many countries.


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Harper Meet Keedle. Your Black!

I an surprise of events Harper told Canada that the War on Drugs have failed. Now when I heard this I was on the verge of an aneurysm. Harper a Prime Minister who in the time of lowest crime rates in Canadian history put in place minimum sentencing and continued a U.S style War on Drugs crusade is now admitting that the war on drugs is over. But don't hold your breath the 10 billion dollars (or one accounting error) are still going to be built.

"What I think everybody believes," Harper said, "is that the current approach is not working. But it is not clear what we should do."

So Harper doesn't support the War on Drugs, but his crime bill says otherwise. Harper can't have it both ways. He can't say he doesn't support the War on Drugs then pass bills in the House of Commons that continues the same reckless crime policy that even the U.S is moving away from. Unless Harper chucks his crime bills and puts money into rehabilitation this statement makes him a hypocrite.

Drugs, he said, "are illegal because they quickly and totally — with many of the drugs — destroy people's lives." 

 The Liberal Party of Canada has had a clear stance on this. Stop the Americanization of our Prison system and end the support of drug cartels and legalizing pot!

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Harper: Not My Problem!

Harper may have a majority in the Canadian house of commons, but in the provincial legislatures (or National assembly in Quebec) people elected different people in government. Yet Harper is going to push down 137 million dollars in cost down the provinces budget for parole and persecution. While the Federal government would only have to pay an extra 9.7 million in parole and persecution. If Harper wants to waste money he can do that, but the provinces shouldn't be forced to pay money that they legislature of the province don't agree with. Harper likes control and he is trying to control our provinces!

The PBO attempts to calculate how government costs would be different if the measure was in place for the 2008-09 fiscal year. It concludes Ottawa would be on the hook for $7.9-million more in prosecution and parole review costs, while the provinces would face $137-million for higher prosecution, court, prison and parole review costs.

This is only part of the bill other parts of the bill will force our provinces to waste million more on prisons. Just because Harper doesn't want to spend money on this wasteful piece of legislation doesn't mean he should have the right to take control of the priority of the provinces budget. 

However the PBO report cautions this analysis only covers one aspect of one part of Bill C-10 and does not include potential capital costs such as building new prisons. Bill C-10, the “Safe Streets and Communities Act,” is an omnibus bill that brings together nine previously separate pieces of legislation that had been introduced but not passed before the last election.

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What A Surprise!!

The Conservatives never seem to stop amazing me on how much hypocrisy is in their government. When the gun registry was being battled in the house of commons one of the main arguments was that the gun registry was inefficient and was a waste of money. Considering the gun registry only cost 2 million dollars (about the same amount of money as that fake lake) this argument doesn't hold water. But Vic Toes is proposing 80 million dollars of money to go towards surveying what we do on the internet.

C-30, a bill to update Canadian law when it comes to crimes committed online, will cost $20 million a year for the first four years and $6.7 million a year after that, Public Safety Canada told the CBC's Hannah Thibedeau on Wednesday.

So let me get this straight a gun registry which police have said helps them against crime that cost 2 million is wasteful, but a 80 million dollar program with a 6.7 million dollar running cost to spy on us is just fine. The Conservatives are continuing to show that they aren't smart on crime!

Legalizing Drugs! Liberals are Here!

Mexico is going to try and convince Canada and the U.S to rethink the war on drug policy. This is a few decades over due. The war on drugs in the U.S have costed billions of dollars, and has helped result in the fact that America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Harper who created minimum sentences that have proved only to increase crime in the U.S.

Prime Minister who has stiffened drug laws at home, imposing mandatory minimum sentences for the possession of six marijuana plants, for example. 

Mexico is the extreme example of the war on drug policy going bad. With drug cartels still practically controlling parts of Mexico, and even though the U.S has provided 1 billion to Latin America to deal with it the problem continues. Obama and Harper are coming very reluctant to do anything. Only if us Liberals were in charge would maybe something get done.

The Liberal party of Canada has endorsed in 2012 the full legalization of Marijuana. It seems Mexico will be the first country to endorse this plan. And since Obama and Romney are both against legalization that gives Canada time till 2015 to be second in the three country relationship to join the "smart on crime" plan.

 Mr. Perez wrote in a recent op-ed in the Observer newspaper: “We have to find new solutions to Latin America’s drugs nightmare. Drug consumption is a public-health issue that, awkwardly, has been transformed into a criminal-justice problem.”

 Guatemala now has one of the highest homicide rates in the world: 60 per cent of its territory is in the control of drug cartels. In Mexico, 50,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon began a military offensive against the organized criminal groups in charge of the drug trade in 2006. 

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Scary is Governing with Ignorance

It's been blogged about again and again, but that is because it's so stupid and at the same time, scary. With their majority government, the Tories are looking to spearhead an omnibus "tough on crime" bill to increase jail time among other things. Crime prevention will be cut in favour of these measures. You'd think that the Conservatives would pretend to be working with the latest statistics, to agree with the facts. Nope!

“We’re not governing on the basis of the latest statistics,” said our Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. So, we have a government that is admitting to governing with ignorance. That is: ignoring the latest facts and statistics, ignoring evidence and putting in measures that have been proven to be counter-productive. And not only does this not work, but wastes our money at the same time. The facts are clear; let's not ignore them.

“We’re not governing on the basis of the latest statistics,” federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said this week. “We’re governing on the basis of what’s right to better protect victims and law-abiding Canadians.”

Read more at the Globe and Mail. 

The War on Drugs Isn't Working

The U.S tough on Crime agenda is slowly being reversed. Amid major Budget deficit the state's are seeing the true cost of putting people for minor offences in jail. California of course the prime example of how tough on crime agenda doesn't at all help you balance a budget or for that matter reduce crime. Prisons for the 2008 fiscal year  of California  cost 10 billion. Interesting.. Harper wants to spend 10 billion on just Prisons alone.  Canada has lower crime rates we don't need new prisons, and we don't need large sentences for small offenders. Harper is trying to impose minimum sentences for crimes something the state's have realized hasn't worked and now 12 states have repealed including Rhode Island which has completely abolished minimum sentences. We need to have Prisons for the major offenders. Currently are prisons are over crowded a little, and yes we should  be building new Prisons to accommodate a natural increase in prison population (as the Canadian population increases the number of crimes increases but crime rates can still be lower), but we should look to stop wasting Prison space for minor offenders that because we make them stay for prison a long time they will just re offend . In Canada we have a very low re offending rate and Harper wants to take us back to the war on drug says of the U.S. By building Mega prisons and minimum sentences.  I wonder how it's going to turn Out.......
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Stop Being Tough on Crime

As has been proven many times before, being "tough on crime" as the Conservatives like to call it does not work. Instead of reducing crime, it has the potential to harden petty criminals and make them repeat offenders, committing worse crimes. Besides, crime has actually been decreasing since about a decade ago. Why stop a system that has already been working for an inferior system already proven wrong?

Moreover, being "tough on crime" also costs more money. A lot more.The Tories are planning to spend at least $2.7 billion on new prisons and other "tough on crime" policies (the budget watchdog says it's more like $5 billion). Even some conservatives in the United States are starting to recognize that this is not the way to lower crime. Being tough on crime just isn't a smart fiscal or crime policy.

The Conservative administration in Ottawa continues to advocate U.S. Republican-style legal solutions even though the American justice system is in a shambles. 

Prison populations are exploding, police and prosecution budgets are strapped and in many states the legal-defender system has all but collapsed.

Read more at the Vancouver Sun.

Related articles

• Provinces want Ottawa to help pay additional costs for prisons (theglobeandmail.com)
• Playing the politics of slogans and fear (theglobeandmail.com)

Prosecutors must Win

The Charest government has forced striking prosecutors to go back to work. These lawyers are some of the lowest paid in Canada and the salary cap is almost one-half of that in Ontario. Also, there is a need to hire more prosecutors to ease the workload. Our Crown prosecutors are being overworked and they simply do not have the resources to compete with rich members of organised crime who can hire a ton of defense lawyers. It's impossible to win when you are outnumbered. Now is the time for the Quebec government to start paying prosecutors what they deserve.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest claims that he has faith in the justice system to get to the bottom of allegations of mob-linked corruption and collusion in the province’s construction industry. 

But his Liberal government’s handling of its striking Crown prosecutors – culminating in back-to-work legislation passed Tuesday after an all-night sitting – will not leave any gangsters trembling.

Read more at the National Post.

Related articles

• Quebec lawyers hand in mass resignations in labour dispute (thestar.com)
• Que. prosecutors back-to-work bill debated (cbc.ca)

Conservatives do not Agree on Crime

Even though they are Conservatives, they do not agree on how to tackle crime. The Cameron Tories in the United Kingdom have taken a completely different stance than the Harper Conservatives. They know that being "tough on crime" costs a lot of money. The Cameron Conservatives are now undoing everything that Labor had done, which is ironically against the Harper Conservatives' ideology.

In the US, some conservatives recognize that prison is not the whole solution to the crime problem. They say that it will make some low-risk offenders do repeat offences and it simply costs a lot. Jail means paying money to have more people commit crime.

Just how conservative are Conservative crime measures, really? In Britain, the Conservative government of David Cameron is working assiduously to make Britain’s prison system less costly. The Cameron Conservatives are grappling with the expensive consequences of 21 criminal justice acts introduced by their Labour predecessors, which “increased the cost of prisons by two-thirds and sent the prison population soaring,” according to Justice Secretary Ken Clarke. “My goal is a conservative one: to find effective ways of punishing criminals while reducing public spending,” Mr. Clarke says. In Canada, the situation appears to be reversed. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is emulating Labour.

Read more at the Globe and Mail.

Related articles

• Grits kneecap bill to impose tougher drug crime penalties (ctv.ca)
• NDP blasts Bloc-Tory co-operation (theglobeandmail.com)

Censor prostitution

Craigslist has removed the adult services ad on its web page. This service has been asked to go off for a long time now many people are sighing with relief that all those exploiting ads are gone. This response from Craigslist came after CNN did a report on the website on how it is too easy to get ads selling sex posted on the website, and calling Craigslist the "Wall Mart of sex trafficking". Craigslist has way before this said that it would look at all post to make sure that anything that looks like it might be implying the sell of sex will be taken off and be reported. Even after this many ads still got on, and now the entire service is gone. If Craiglist can't ensure that no one can post ads that are selling sex than this act is the only solution.

(CNN) -- Online classified service Craigslist's decision to censor its adult services section is a "good step but a continuing battle has to be fought," a leader in the fight against prostitution ads said on Sunday.

"I'm very pleased by this very solid and significant apparent step in the right direction," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who spearheaded a recent letter from 17 attorneys general urging Craigslist to discontinue its adult services section.

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The French Goverment continues it's discrimination.

French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has made a new law to evacuate all Roma people from France. Why? Well, apparently all Roma people are involved with crime, so says Sarkozy. There is some truth to the argument: there is is major crime coming from Roma camps. However, to evacuate all Roma people from the country, because a portion of the group is involved with crime is just stupid and descriminative. If you follow that ideology than you migt as well expell all cultures and groups, because there is bound to be at least one that is invovled with crime.The European Union and the UN consel on rascism condems this act of descrimination. It is just plain wrong to force all Roma people out when it is a minor group that is commiting crime. It would be much better if they increase law enforcement in these areas of high crime, but to evacuate the country of a people, because of this discrimination is wrong on the fullest degree.

Thousands of people have attended demonstrations in Paris and other French cities to protest against tough new security measures introduced by the government which they say are being used to target the country's Roma community.

France began clearing large numbers of illegal Roma camps in July, after Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, announced a series of measures to fight crime.

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BP when will I ever stop hearing your name.

First BP breaks an oil rig and creates the worst oil spill in American history. Then there where proof that BP knew that an oil rig could have been broken if they didn't fix it, but they ignored it. Then there was the whole BP scandal that they underestimated the oil disaster. They still of course then had hundreds of people come in for the president on the beach that they eventually left as soon as Obama turned his back. Now they hired people without any sort of background check to see if they where sex offenders. I don't know if they can do much more. The fact that they are still a living business is nothing short of a miracle. I can't believe that they allowed sex offenders to work without knowing that they where sex offenders. To be fair of course some clean up places did have background checks that did hire sex offenders, and they where watched and they said that nothing happened.

A lack of screening of oil spill cleanup workers meant a sex offender got a job, and left him free to rape a colleague according to a Mississippi county sheriff.

Rundy Charles Robertson, 41, who faces charges of sexual battery and failure to register as a sex offender, is in the Jackson County, Mississippi, jail with bail set at $505,000.

 Read more here 

Tough on Crime Doesn't Make Sense

The Conservatives' tough on crime stance does not make sense. The latest example of this is the "Truth in Sentencing" act. This will cost us about ten billion dollars by 2015. Once again, the Tories do not regard the facts at all in their decision. Research shows that shutting criminals away in jail for an extended period of time makes them more likely to commit another crime when they get out. The Tories even reject the fact that housing more prisoners is going to cost more.

Instead of using the report as a chance to rethink the wisdom of spending billions of dollars -as much as $9.5 billion by 2015-16 -Public Safety Minister Vic Toews rejected Page's figures, saying he "must be making this up."

Tough on crime will be a waste of government spending as it doesn't work. What we need is to make sure that criminals do not become repeat offenders after they get out of jail. Longer stays in jail will actually make our society worse.

Canada has a $47-billion deficit, a crime rate that is falling steadily, and a public that is not clamouring for tougher crime laws. Yet in the face of little real need and even less available money, the Conservative government is planning to more than double the country's spending on prisons, to double the number of inmates.

Read more at the Montreal Gazette.

Related articles by Zemanta

• New laws to send prison spending soaring, watchdog says (theglobeandmail.com)
• Tory crime bill to cost millions more (thestar.com)
• The true costs of 'truth in sentencing' (theglobeandmail.com)
• New crime bill will need 13 new prisons (nationalpost.com)

Tough-on-Crime Bill Illegal

According to the Child Welfare League of Canada, one of the Tories' tough on crime bills violates a UN convention on the rights of minors. This is yet another barrier preventing the bill from passing. Good. Not only does the Conservatives' stance not work, it's illegal. Studies have proven that shutting someone in jail for an extended period of time doesn't work. In fact, they have also proven that these tough-on-crime bills will just make criminals more likely to commit the crime. There is still one funny thing about this bill. It ensures that judges will have to consider protecting the public as a "primary goal." That would go against the tough-on-crime stance as to protect the public, it would be better to not lock someone up for a long time.

OTTAWA - The government's plans to get tough on young offenders violates a United Nations convention and will exacerbate an already racist criminal justice system, critics warn. 

Bill C-4 - dubbed Sebastien's Law which was reintroduced in March - would force courts to make protecting the public a "primary goal" of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Read more at the London Free Press.

Kept in the Dark

The budget watchdog, Kevin Page won't be able to conduct his job properly because he doesn't have enough cold hard data from the government. Apparently, there is a lack of relevant information handed out to MPs and the auditors so that they can know what the government is doing. But, is research even being done? I don't think so. Statistics prove that the Tory "tough on crime" bills only make the situation worse. That means more money spent on housing prisoners in jail and criminals repeating offences when they get out. No wonder the Conservatives don't want anyone to know about this: it completely destroys their stance. Their own research showed that their crime bills don't work. Why should they let any other damning evidence get out into the open? Harper campaigned on government transparency. It's time for him to act.

Also this week, MPs on the Commons public accounts committee are grilling bureaucrats from Industry Canada and Transport about the lack of "relevant" information in their performance reports. All departments and agencies table yearly reports in Parliament. These documents take a lot of time and energy, but the reports are considered so useless that MPs don't even look at them.

Read more at the Ottawa Citizen.

Governments + Cigarette Companies Forever

You would think that in our high deficit times that our government would do all that they could to reduce the deficit. What if I told you that the government can get 10 billion dollars, but instead, they settle for a smaller amount. Not 6 billion, not 3 billion, not 2 billion not even a billion, but 550 million dollars. Yeah, that's right our government gave a 94.5% discount on the amount it sued for. What happened was that the tobacco company's were involved in selling crates of cigarettes into the US subsidizers, then those sold them to the smugglers who brought the cigarettes illegally into Canada. Now I think that we should charge these company's guess what full price they did something illegal why should they be allowed to get a 94.5% discount. Let's get this money and lower the deficit, and invest money into our economy, and not allow the cigarette CEO get off easy while we have the legal right to that money for our economy, and lowering our deficit, but apparently making tobacco companies happy is more important than jobs, economy, health care and education.

Canadian companies shipped crates of cigarettes to American subsidiaries; the cigarettes were then sold to smugglers and brought illegally into Canada through native reserves and border checkpoints; once back in the country, the cigarettes were sold to consumers at a big discount - sometimes for about half the price of legally purchased smokes.

It noted that the federal and provincial governments filed claims for nearly $10 billion over contraband smokes. Mahood said that makes the $550-million settlement "a complete sellout." 

 "Canadian governments led by the feds had an opportunity to play hard ball, to build trust among Canadians in the rule of law related to white-collar crime. Instead, they blew away the opportunity to recoup billions of desperately needed lost tax revenues and made big tobacco financially stronger, with a greater capacity to prey on our children."

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/national/100413/n0413113A.html

Hells angels Conservative?

The Toronto Star reports that Rahim Jaffer, former Tory MP and a man who says he is a former banker for the Hell's Angels tried to sell his political influence. Harper denies that Jaffer had any influence on the Tories and maintains that he is a private citizen.

"Mr. Jaffer is a private citizen and he is responsible for himself and I have no comment to add to that matter," Harper said. "Obviously, I read the newspapers yesterday. The suggestions that were made that Mr. Jaffer has an open door to my office are completely false."

But just a few days ago, he still had the Con. logo on his website. I'm sorry, but you can't have the best of both worlds. This is adding to his drunk driving and drug charges that he accumulated a year ago and got off with minimal charges. So much for "tough on crime." Anyway, we need to make sure that there is no corruption in the government. Harper kicked Guergis out of Conservative caucus and called in the RCMP. There could be heavy charges involved. We'll have to wait and see.

Guergis Resigns

Harper has called in the RCMP on Helena Guergis who through a tantrum in Charlottetown airport. Guergis faces unknown allegations. She called them unfounded. Well, apparently Stephen Harper didn't as he demanded an investigation into Guergis' doings. However, it seems like Harper fired her.

Though Guergis technically resigned her position, Harper, at a Parliament Hill news conference, made it clear she had little choice in the matter.

It's time that he did that. We Liberals were calling for it months ago. Let's count the scandals.

1. Tantrum at Charlottetown 
2. Letters to the editor written by her office assistant, 
3. A shopping spree being written off as election expenses
4. She is being investigated by the RCMP.

And maybe others I didn't hear about yet. Good for Harper, but it's two months late. We shouldn't have people like this representing us. We don't want people like this representing us.

We should watch her carefully. The fact that Harper kicked her out of caucus is unnerving. He's trying to distance his party from her. He's trying to spin it. It won't work. Maybe I should have created a label called "Guergis." I seem to be writing a lot about her.

Read about it at the Toronto Star and the National Post.

Collateral Murder

A web page called "Wikileaks" has released a video (actually two) showing US troops gunning down innocent civilians including two journalists who worked for Reuters. This video shows a lot that the military didn't say how the journalists were killed and said they did not know how children were injured. All lies. These two videos show that the military could have found out who they hit. If some smart guys running Wikileaks could do it, I'm sure the US Army, with all their hi-tech equipment could have pinpointed a grape in the destruction if they wanted to. The point is that incidents can be covered up. Soldiers aren't angels. And investigating incidents like this, can lead to the truth. Investigating incidents like this or demanding access to incidents like these doesn't mean that we don't support the troops. All we want is the truth. The cold hard truth whether it's supportive of our soldiers or not. Is that too much to ask of our government? Therefore, I demand the release of the full uncensored Afghan detainee documents. In other words, I want the truth. Now.
Warning: the videos might be disturbing for some viewers.

Short Version


Long Version


http://www.collateralmurder.com/