The Speaker of the House has ruled against the Harper government claiming they breached parliamentary privilege by refusing to provide all documents the Standing Committee on Finance requested detailing the full cost of its crime bills. No kidding. How much will it cost to send every Canadian citizen who smokes a blunt to jail? How will that help us deal with violent crime and hard drugs in the face of already over crowded prisons in an economic recession?
The government wants to take more money from us to put more of us in jail. What a democracy. Don't get me wrong, we need changes in our judicial system. We need prudent course corrections not sweeping catastrophe. House arrest for trafficking cocaine for the Hells Angels is insane. We won't have any money to fix that problem if we spend more than we have sending all the pot smokers to jail. Crack and meth are the problem, not pot.
Locking a prolific offender who commits a large amount of crime to pay for their drug habit in jail for three months is logical and prudent. Sending everyone to jail who jay walks, smokes a joint or drives after having two drinks with dinner is not. It really isn't brain surgery but Harper isn't getting it and Ignatieff is an idiot.
Every Canadian who gets caught smoking a blunt will go to jail??? No where in the crime bill is that proposed. According to your link, people that are GROWING PLANTS, between 5 and 201, for the PURPOSE OF TRAFFICKING face a minimum sentence of 6 months. We've already seen that pot can be traded for coke, so why not impose larger sentences for the production of pot for the PURPOSE OF TRAFFICKING.
ReplyDeleteTo say that every Canadian caught smoking a blunt will be thrown in jail is complete bullshit. You provide the links, maybe it would be beneficial to read the article instead of jumping to wild conclusions.
5 plants is a lot more than a blunt, as it 201 plants.
Perhaps you've failed to understand other aspects of bill s-10 also... Explane how imposing harsher sentences for those caught selling drugs in close proximety to schools is a bad thing. How is giving "Dangerous Offender" status to those that commit 3 violent, or sexual offences a bad thing??
Over simplifying a bill based on a misunderstanding of ONE component of that bill seems a little foolish... no?
Other links clearly say mandatory minimum sentences for possession of pot. The rest of the bill is good. Harper won’t take the amendment because he wants to forward himself. That is a bad thing. He’s lost my vote.
ReplyDeleteThat might be true... but the article that YOU provided the link to states that its 5 to 201 plants...
ReplyDeleteI guess my point that I keep flogging over and over again is that I don’t think those kinds of penalties for pot is right. I don’t support mandatory minimum sentences for pot even if it involved 6 or more plants. If you look at the number of grow ops the police bust in Surrey and Langley alone each month, that represents a large number of people. Incarcerating that many people will cost a lot more money.
ReplyDeleteAs it stands now our prisons are overcrowded and underfunded. To make two important changes, introducing mandatory minimum sentences for selling crack or meth, and mandatory minimum sentences for violent crime, that will cost more money. That money has to come from somewhere. I think we should make that change and spend that money. I don’t think we should go to the other extreme and send everyone who has five pot plants or more to jail. That would either bankrupt the system or prevent us from enforcing mandatory minimum sentences for violent crime and crack.
Harper lost the vision when he merged with Mulroneyism. He just wants to exploit our probem for his own personal gain. And lie I said, Ignatieff is worse.