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Stephen Harper

Get smart, not tough, on crime

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Thu, 09/02/2010 - 6:29pm
LTE The Star: Alex Long
 
The Harper Conservatives are at it again with their costly conduct-no-research policy making. Rob Nicholson and Stephen Harper are spearheading a campaign to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for a litany of drug crimes.
 
After their first two attempts failed (Bill C-26 and Bill C-15), the Conservatives are hoping the newly stacked Senate will pass this bill unamended. The bill introduces mandatory minimum drug penalties for offenses like growing six marijuana plants or making a pot brownie and sharing it with friends. This comes at a time when recent polls suggest more than half of Canadians want marijuana legalized.

Our drug priorities need to change

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 08/31/2010 - 9:45pm
By MINDELLE JACOBS, Toronto Sun
 
The federal government has it half right. We have a drug problem. But it’s not marijuana, which has never killed anyone. It’s the abuse of prescription drugs which kills hundreds of Canadians annually.
 
Whether it’s because of ongoing pain, depression or the urge to get high, more and more people are heading to their doctors — not the neighbourhood pusher — for a fix.
 
As the International Narcotics Control Board noted in its 2009 annual report, the abuse of prescription drugs in North America is second only to the abuse of cannabis.

CMA Journal article backs drug injection site

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 08/31/2010 - 9:21pm
CBC News
 
An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal slams the federal government for its efforts to shut down Insite in downtown Vancouver, Canada's only safe injection site for drug addicts.
 
A co-author of the paper has told CBC News he believes the federal government should stand aside, allow the centre to operate, and abandon an appeal to the Supreme Court
 
"We've concluded after reviewing the evidence that Insite is doing what it's supposed to be doing, and furthermore that we're very concerned that the federal government has misled on the science," said Dr. Michael Rachlis, a professor of health policy at the University of Toronto.

Review says safe injection site works and government should drop legal action

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 08/31/2010 - 9:10pm
By: The Canadian Press
 
The authors of an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reviewing the history and effectiveness of Vancouver's safe-injection site are urging the federal government to give up its Supreme Court of Canada challenge aimed at shutting the facility down.
 
The analysis, published Monday, concludes the facility reduces needle sharing, cuts overdose deaths and allows for addiction treatment.
 
The article's authors, the Peel Region's associate medical officer Dr. Kathleen Dooling and University of Toronto professor Dr. Michael Rachlis, are urging Ottawa to abandon its "last-ditch" appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Canadian Medical Association supports Insite; Harper government still looking to shut it down

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 08/31/2010 - 9:07pm
By: John Streit, News 1130
 
A new report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal supports Insite and urges the Harper government to abandon its Supreme Court of Canada Challenge to shut the Vancouver facility down.
 
The report, like many before it, finds the medically-supervised drug injection site reduces needle sharing, cuts overdose deaths and allows for addiction treatment. The federal government has been wanting to shut down Insite, claiming it diverts money away from health care when studies have showed it does the opposite.

Federal Government should follow the evidence and stop trying to close Insite, Co-authors of new CMAJ Article Say

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 08/30/2010 - 9:46pm
NewsWire.ca
 
TORONTO, Aug. 30 /CNW Telbec/ - Drs. Kathleen Dooling and Michael Rachlis, the two co-authors of a new review of the evidence and events surrounding Insite - Vancouver's supervised drug consumption public health facility - say the federal government "should drop its last-ditch Supreme Court appeal that would allow the government to permanently close this public health facility. They should stand back so public health and law enforcement professionals can do the work that their local community wants them to do."
 
Read more »

Kelly McParland: Tory bodies are piling up

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Fri, 08/20/2010 - 2:32am
By: Kelly McParland, National Post Full Comment
 
 
It is now taken for granted that any senior, or even semi-senior, official who loses, quits or otherwise departs from their job in Ottawa is doing so because he/she somehow fell afoul of Tory policy and is being hounded from office by Stephen Harper’s demand for blood.
 
It has become part of the narrative. When a plane crashes anywhere in the world, the default response of Canadian news editors is: “Were any Canadians on board?” When a bureaucrat gets the boot in Harper’s Ottawa, the equivalent reflex is: “Did he offend the Tories?”

A know-nothing strain of conservatism

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Tue, 08/17/2010 - 5:56pm
By: Andrew Coyne, Macleans
 
Every week another Ekos poll comes out, and every week the media hyperventilates over whatever tiny incremental change in federal voting intentions it reveals. But in addition to party preference, Ekos asks Canadians two more questions. One: whether, in their opinion, the country is “moving in the right direction.” And two: whether the government is moving in the right direction.
 
In every poll, week after week, more than 50 per cent of respondents tell Ekos they think the country is on the right track, as they have for more than a year. Yet since January, nearly as many respondents—in the high 40s, most weeks—have said they think the government is on the wrong track. That’s up from about 40 per cent last year. Read more »

An ineffective way to fight crime

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 08/16/2010 - 9:53pm
 
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews insists that the prison farms had to close because they cost $4-million to operate and, by his account, were worthless because inmates didn’t get jobs on farms after release.
 
Yet he somehow tries to justify the expansion of old and new prisons, without admitting the cost will be well into $9 Billion and much higher over time, even though that clearly proves there will be more people imprisoned at an alarming rate, not more people rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.

Pot penalty illogical

Submitted by Nicole Seguin on Mon, 08/16/2010 - 9:13pm
By: Robert Bandurka, The Star Phoenix
 
Mixed in with the Harper government's list of crimes now considered serious is "trafficking in any quantity of cannabis." Selling of a couple of ounces of marijuana will bring a minimum sentences of five years.
 
Such a pot penalty under a law and order agenda makes little sense. Alcohol kills more people in a weekend than pot does in a decade. We should incarcerate killers by banning alcohol, not marijuana. But prohibition was tried 100 years ago and we ended up with more criminals and less security. Will increased penalties for pot be any different?
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