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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
one to watch... Bill C-10: The crime bill
SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES Enlarge Image
Vic Toews
It's not so much the crime bill itself that needs watching; a minority of Canadian voters graciously granted Prime Minister Stephen Harper a majority government, so the bill will pass.
What will be interesting to watch is how the bill will play out after it is passed. Even some Tory senators wonder why the Harper government is so fixated on crime, in light of statistics that show crime has actually been decreasing for quite some time.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told a Senate committee reviewing the legislation: "I don't know if the statistics demonstrate that crime is down. I'm focused on danger."
The minister then went on to say his concern is that the public is in danger as long as criminals walk the streets, "and this legislation addresses that."
Given the statistical decline of murderers, rapists, violent robbers and other shady types, the question has to be asked: Who is Toews afraid of when he walks the streets of Canada? Panhandlers? Homeless people?
Arresting them would certainly solve a problem the Tories may face: filling all those super prisons they hope to build. But the streets might not be much safer for it.
"Let's be serious now," an incredulous Conservative Sen. Pierre Claude Nolin said as Toews got up to leave the meeting this week. "You're afraid, minister."
Yeah. We're afraid, too.
-- David Connors
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 4, 2012 J12
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