The Sausage Factory

with Dan Lett

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• The rising cost of crime and punishment

  02/8/2012 11:59 AM

  The Free Press has written numerous articles in the last few days on the rising cost of corrections, and concerns by the Manitoba Government Employees Union about prison overcrowding. I weighed in with a column pointing out that maybe it was time for the strident law-and-order advocates to figure out a way of paying for the increased costs of longer sentences and new criminal code offences. The provinces claim it will cost them billions of dollars to pay to administer and incarcerate the increased numbers of prison inmates that will accrue from the federal government's omnibus crime bill, expected to become law later this year.

  The focus of the MGUE story was on prison overcrowding, but that is, of course, only one part of the total justice portfolio. Policing, court administration and prosecutions all have their own budget lines.

  The following is information provided by the Manitoba government on the increases in spending for the four main areas of justice programs:

  	2004/2005	2005/2006	2006/2007	2007/2008	2008/2009	2009/2010	2010/2011	2011/2012 Budget
  COPS (RCMP, WPS, BPS, Dakota Ojibway)	$72,223	$81,789	$86,978	$92,994	$104,273	$112,132	$120,794	$126,601
  COURTS	$39,747	$41,326	$43,618	$45,067	$46,483	$52,840	$52,255	$50,970
  CORRECTIONS	$102,932	$111,590	$121,401	$134,003	$155,928	$176,915	$188,918	$180,889
  PROSECUTIONS	$16,366	$17,094	$17,713	$22,878	$21,457	$24,929	$25,713	$26,293

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  The quick analysis shows that total justice spending has gone from $231.1 million to $384.7 million over the period used above. That is a total increase of $153.6 million, or a 66.5 per cent increase. In individual line items, funding for policing went up 75 per cent ($54 million increase), courts by 28 per cent ($11 million), prosecution rose 61.3 per cent ($10 million) and corrections, the current cause celebre, increased by a whopping 76 per cent ($78 million).

  Submitted for your consideration and debate.

  2004/2005

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• Resisting the urge to hit ‘send’

  11/30/2011 2:44 PM

  Those who know me, especially those unfortunate enough to receive my emails on a regular basis, will snicker a bit when they see that I am writing today to take politicians to task for sending out inappropriate emails and Tweets.

  However, as bad as some of my digital correspondence has been, I’ve never written the kind of profanity-laced tirades that erupted this month from Winnipeg Coun. Ross Eadie and Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin. I’ve been verbose (God knows, I’ve done that) and I’ve frequently been uppity, cranky and unnecessarily confrontational. And I’m the kind of person who absolutely insists on sending out the last message, and then gets disappointed when someone won’t email me back. All that having been said, I try avoid two really bad email habits: I never hit "Reply All" to show people how smart or funny I can be; and I never use expletives.

  Perhaps it’s the knowledge that all of my internal correspondence could, at some point, be called as evidence in some sort of defamation case. If someone were trying to establish malice on my part, then my decision to toss around a few F-bombs in an email to a colleague could get me, and the newspaper, into a lot of trouble.

  Some readers will know all too well that I’m frequently combative when responding to those who email in or post what I consider abusive or mean-spirited comments. Fighting fire with fire is my general philosophy in those moments, although not everyone appreciates the attention. Still, I try to remember that in the digital world, every email, tweet, Facebook entry or comments section post can gain an audience much larger than originally intended.

  Martin and Eadie didn’t seem to understand that. Or did they?

  My NDP sources indicate that Martin knew what he was getting into when he tweeted a bunch of F-sharps to show his displeasure about the Conservative government’s decision to invoke closure on the budget implementation bill debate. He was upset, and in this digital world, probably knew that a tweet to his 6,100 or so followers would produce some added attention to closure. And it’s pretty unlikely his tweet is going to hurt him at the ballot box in Winnipeg Centre.

  Eadie, on the other hand, probably never thought his email would be leaked to the Free Press and thus to a larger audience. Had he thought about the possibility of a wider audience seeing his rant, he might have thought twice. The rationale behind his opposition to a two-storey, four-plex on Scotia Street is not immediately clear. (It’s two storeys high, for goodness sake.) The fact he also lives on Scotia Street makes his rant seem more than a little self-serving. In other words, if there is a more important principle here, Eadie may have buried it under a heap of expletives.

  The moral of the story? I’ve often been advised to write the rant, but not send it. That way you get it out of your system, but don’t suffer by actually having anyone read it. Again, those who correspond with me know that I’m rarely successful in following that advice. But I’m getting better. And in that spirit, I make this offer: Pat and Ross, please join me in this campaign to end widely distributed, poorly conceived, angry, cranky, stream-of-consciousness emails and tweets. The folks who love and respect us will be eternally grateful.

  -- Dan Lett / The Sausage Factory

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• It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you

  11/16/2011 2:11 PM

  Perhaps it was no coincidence that on Tues., Nov. 15, the same day the Free Press published a column on on Mayor Sam Katz and his failure to show up at Remembrance Day ceremonies, I had an opportunity to speak to a political science class at the University of Manitoba. The class, taught by the extremely well-informed Robert Ermel of the Manitoba Institute for Policy Research, wanted to discuss the relationship between the media and politicians. They couldn’t have picked a better day.

  My column took direct aim at Katz for failing to attend Remembrance Day ceremonies. It was particularly easy to pick this fight because it was so incredibly odd for the mayor of a big city to miss this one particular day, given its incredible political importance. We punctuated our case by showing photographs of the legion of other big-city mayors who did attend Remembrance Day.

  Related Items

  1. Articles

     • Mr. Katz: Please call home
     • Katz absent, but councillor at Nov. 11 service

  2. Columns

     • Where were you on Nov. 11, Sam?

  (Parenthetically, as demonstrated by the parenthesis to the left, I was not able to get any answer from Katz or his handlers about where he was on November 11. Thanks to sources and citizens, we have been able to confirm he was at his vacation property in Phoenix, and left the Wednesday before Remembrance Day.)

  Katz would not talk to the Free Press about his decision to pass on November 11. He did, however, go on CJOB radio where, after refusing to actually say where he was, he complained that the Free Press in general and me in particular were "out to get him." At Ermel’s class, I denied that was the case, arguing that the inner workings of political office, and decisions such as the one Katz had made, were relevant issues that deserved debate. Thus, our justification for exposing it.

  To my surprise, not everyone in the class agreed with me. One student made a strong argument that it was a rather meaningless story. Moreover, that this was less about news and more of an effort on my part to embarrass the mayor. I didn’t agree with her, for obvious reasons, but I will acknowledge her forceful argument does provide food for thought.

  Was this story just mischief? I will agree with the dissenting student on one point: not everything I know about politicians is news. I know a great many things about the professional and private affairs of politicians. It’s inevitable that the more time you spend talking to genuinely connected people in politics, the greater the chance you’re going to hear some pretty sensitive things. However, not all of them deserve to be published. I couldn’t tell you exactly where the line is drawn, but each revelation needs to be carefully weighed on case-by-case basis. Truth may be a good defence, but it is not complete justification for publishing any and all things you learn about a prominent person.

  So, what about Sam and his absence from Remembrance Day? I did not suggest that Katz had committed a crime against humanity. I argued it was an unusual strategy for someone holding elected office. The people who greatly value Remembrance Day are people who vote. Missing a chance to show those people you care about them is an odd way to curry their favour. As evidence, we showed that every other big-city mayor in Canada attended Remembrance Day ceremonies; only one used November 11 for an extended long weekend.

  I also noted that to date, this kind of stuff hasn’t hurt the mayor at election. That’s probably why he continues to ignore prominent cultural, political and philanthropic events. And why he’d rather suggest that journalists who take issue with his decision to bypass events that are normally considered part of the mayor’s job description are "out to get him."

  Was it a legitimate story? The mayor does not think so and will hand-pick the media outlets to push that point. The Free Press, on the other hand, will likely continue to watch the mayor’s comings and goings to determine if he is fulfilling his mayoral duties. We are certainly out to get that story.

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