LAVAL, Que. — Comments on sexual assault by a retired judge running for the Liberals in Alberta are “utterly, totally unacceptable,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Thursday.
But Ignatieff won’t demand that John Reilly quit his candidacy, saying one “disgraceful” remark does not undo a lifetime of public service.
Reilly told a radio interviewer that a 20-year-old man’s inappropriate sexual contact with a drunken teenage girl did not warrant three years in prison.
The girl, naked in bed, objected to the man’s advances and he left, but he was charged with sexual assault and faced three years.
Reilly described the incident in graphic detail in the middle of a lengthy interview over his opposition to the Harper government’s expansion of mandatory minimum sentences.
Reilly apologized for the comments after the Conservatives circulated them to campaign reporters Wednesday.
“I unreservedly apologize for the clumsy example I used during my remarks last week on the Rutherford Show,” Reilly said in a release.
“I want to make explicitly clear that I believe that all sexual assaults should be prosecuted and the guilty individuals should be subject to sanctions.”
It was the second day in a row the Liberal campaign has been rocked by the actions of candidates in no-win ridings.
Ignatieff on Wednesday jettisoned a candidate in northern Quebec who started a whites’ rights group and had a long record of offensive public comments about aboriginals, Muslims and gays.
The Liberal leader said he won’t turf Reilly, who is running in the Tory stronghold of Wild Rose.
“He has served the community with a long record of distinguished public service,” said Ignatieff.
“He made one remark that he’s going to regret for the rest of his life. He’s offered an unreserved apology. I’ve accepted it.”
Reilly’s radio interview highlights the explosive nature of public debate about justice issues.
Conservatives have adeptly exploited public revulsion with crime to paint any critics who question their self-labelled “tough on crime” reforms as being friends of criminals and heartless toward victims.
A 30-year history of increasingly harsh justice measures in the United States has left many states near bankruptcy and even staunch Republicans question whether measures that incarcerate large numbers of people for long periods are effective policy.
Reilly had raised the U.S. example in his radio interview.
“They have all these mandatory sentences in California and they were locking up so many people that it was bankrupting the state of California,” he told host Dave Rutherford.
“So one day last year, Arnie Schwarzenegger just releases 40,000 prisoners and goes on national television to tell the people, ’Don’t worry about this, because these people aren’t dangerous.’
“Well, my question is: if they’re not dangerous, why are we locking them up in the first place?”
It’s a valid question, but not one that is likely to get a good hearing in the super-charged atmosphere of an election campaign.
The campaigning Conservatives jumped on Reilly’s radio interview to repeat their long-running claim that Liberals are “soft on crime.”
“Sexual offences of any kind are totally and absolutely unacceptable,” Julian Fantino, the Conservative candidate and former Ontario police commissioner, said outside a home in his riding of Vaughan, Ont.
“I don’t know how anybody could have any tolerance whatsoever for any type of crime, let alone sexual offences. I don’t know where (Reilly) is coming from but obviously he is coming from a soft-on-crime perspective.”
Despite the apology, Ignatieff is not backing away from his attacks on the Harper government’s criminal justice agenda.
“Jets, jails and corporate tax cuts” form the unholy Conservative trinity in Ignatieff’s stump speech and he repeated the theme again Thursday.
He noted that one of the reasons the Conservative minority was found in contempt of Parliament was its refusal to divulge the cost of its tough sentencing laws.
“It’s become clear from the parliamentary budget officer that the cost implications are staggering,” said Ignatieff.
“We get into government — and we believe we will be the next government of Canada — we have to review the entire matter.”
Putting more people behind bars for mandatory minimums will not only cost the federal penitentiary system billions, he said, it also has major cost implications for the provinces, who jail offenders sentenced to less than two years.
“This is a government that’s saying let’s put all the money into mega-prisons and nothing into crime prevention, education and youth training.”
“Sensible justice policy,” Ignatieff said, “has got to get the balance right.”
Many of the Conservative justice measures were passed in Parliament with the help of the Liberals, however. Ignatieff avoided a direct question on which specific measures a Liberal government would repeal.