The Toronto Sun ran an editorial about how the Liberals are soft on crime and how nothing will change as long as they are in power. Perhaps but let's take a deep breath and look at the situation objectively. Take a step back and look at the big picture so we can see how the Agenda is using both sides to accomplish it's objective. Remember the problem, reaction solution paradigm. The left creates a problem, the right over reacts to that problem and voila, their Agenda is complete.
Before we dive in let's look at two obvious extremes. The DTES is a sh*t show. So is downtown Victoria outside the safe injection site. The crime and violence is so bad the freak of a mayor wants to build a fence around City Hall to protect the staff from the violent disaster they created.
We've seen the same thing in Northern California. Unrestrained crime has caused businesses to leave and once thriving cities turn into human toilets. This is all the result of leftist extremism designed to destroy society by creating a lawless state.
No one wants to live in a lawless state. Now let's look at the other extreme. No one wants to live in a police state either. Stephen Harper was an enemy of the Canadian Charter of Rights just like Justin Trudeau was. They both were.
Stephen Harper wanted to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for smoking pot. That was insane. Using pot is a nonviolent offense. Why fill up our prisoners with nonviolent offenders? That would be a complete waste of tax dollars.
I'm also going to add that creating 30 year sentences for drug trafficking isn't going to solve the problem. Rob Shannon got a 30 year sentence in the States and that did absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of drugs on the street.
If you make huge sentences for drug trafficking the gangs will simply find another mule because when one gets arrested there's a line up to take their place.
The CIA traffic drugs, then burn their assets with punitive sentences only to replace them with someone else. The punitive sentences doesn't stop the CIA from drug trafficking.
All we have to do is enforce the laws that are already in place. The ones that aren't being enforced. The problem is prolific offenders. Repeat offenders who keep committing violent crime to support their drug habit. The more offenses they commit, the less time they serve. That is the problem.
It's a problem that can be easily fixed without filling up private prisons with inmates and throwing away the Charter of Rights. It's a problem we can easily fix without turning into a police state. After all the absurd government over reach we saw during Covid and the insane over reach we see from the fake Conservative Premier of Nova Scotia, we are all rightfully concerned about becoming a police state.
The US prison system is a bad example. What Donald Trump is doing with ICE and their ICE prisons is insane. I do not want to emulate that in Canada. I want to balance the extremes not jump from one extreme to the other.
Pierre Poilievre wants to get tough on crime and lock up a whole lot of people for the rest of their life. I don't agree with that. I don't support that. Most people thought when I started my blog that I wanted to get tough on crime. Yes and no.
I believe in the New York Model. Rudy Giuliani saved New York and Bill de Blasio flushed it down the toilet. The New York model wasn't about creating a police state. It was about enforcing the laws that were already in place that the left were not enforcing. Just like in the DTES and in Victoria.
Prolific offenders need three full months in prison without access to drugs or methadone for property theft or assault. That is not extreme or excessive. Failing to do that is extreme and irresponsible. My father served many years on the Matsqui Prison alternatives committee. Rehabilitation is a genuine objective of incarceration. There's nothing wrong with that.
Yet protecting victims and society comes first. Punishment and deterrence are also factors. Yet it should not become punitive. As we've mentioned, Norway has one of the best prison systems in the world. I watched a funny TV series on Netflix called Lilyhammer. A former mafia boss gets screwed over so he joins the witness protection program and moves to Norway.
He gets in some trouble when he was there and ended up in prison. He calls up his handler and says get me out of here. This place is like a Christian Bible camp. I thought it was funny.
My point is, don't take the bait and support a police state.
On welfare night in the DTES addicts line up in front of the drug dealers. Everyone knows who they are. Even the police. Arresting on of those drug dealers and putting them in jail for three months is not excessive or extreme. Failing to do that is.
Every other province except for BC make large drug busts on a regular basis. Ask yourself why. They have the same laws because the laws are federal. BC isn't enforcing them. The CFEU in BC isn't doing those same under cover operations. That is the problem. That can easily be fixed without becoming a police state or introducing life sentences for drug trafficking. We just have to enforce the existing laws we aren't enforcing.