THE Conservative government wasted little time in introducing its new crimefighting bill Tuesday.
Called the Safe Streets and Communities Act, the bill re-introduces several pieces of crimefighting legislation that were before Parliament when the federal election was called.
West Vancouver MP John Weston described the bill as an attempt to balance the rights of victims with those of people accused of crimes. Weston said in most of the cases brought to his attention, victims feel they have few rights in the justice system compared to criminals. "I see this as a response to what Canadians want," he said.
Weston spoke of one case in his riding where the parents of a child who had been murdered as an infant feared they would not be permitted to speak at the killer's parole hearing because of glitches in the current system.
Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson who introduced the bill said the measures are intended to make communities safer, by cracking down on a number of serious crimes, including child sexual offences and drug trafficking.
The bill includes stiffer penalties for people who deal drugs, including marijuana. It also increases the mandatory minimum sentences for a variety of crimes, including child sexual offences. Under current laws, minimum sentences for some of those crimes are between 14 and 45 days. The new laws would bring in minimum sentences ranging from 90 days to one year in jail for several child sex crimes. It would also make providing pornography to a child in a practice commonly referred to as "grooming" for a sex crime illegal.
If passed, the new laws would also take away the ability of judges to allow criminals to serve their sentences under house arrest for a number of additional serious crimes, including luring a child, kidnapping and theft over $5,000.
The laws would also increase the time a person must wait before applying to be pardoned for a crime from three years to five years for less serious crimes and from five years to 10 years for more serious ones. Some cases would no longer be pardoned.
Weston said the crime bill is "not an attempt to become a repressive society." He noted there would be exemptions to some of the minimum sentences for drug offences if the offender was in a drug treatment program, for instance.
"It's important to know we're not throwing away the important compassion Canadians have . . . for perpetrators. We're just trying to bring these rights and privileges into balance," he said.
Not everyone is convinced the laws need changing. Dave Walsoff, a criminal defence lawyer on the North Shore, said statistics all point to an aging population and a drop in the crime rate.
Walsoff said the new get-tough-on-crime measures "reek of fear mongering."
"Show us the empirical evidence this is needed," he said. "We live in one of the safest communities in the world."
Yet Walsoff said most people are still convinced that crime is out of control.
He added mandatory minimum sentences take away from judicial independence and are likely to result in more cases being taken to trial, clogging up the courts.
"The government has to be prepared to put their money where their mouth is," he said - and that means more judges, more prosecutors and more jails. It'll also mean more business for lawyers, he said.
"It's short-sighted," he said. "You wonder where they are getting their advice from."
jseyd@nsnews.com
