OTTAWA — The Conservative government dismissed the cost to taxpayers and the direction of crime trends Tuesday as it introduced sweeping new criminal-justice changes it says will make Canadians feel safer.
“We’re not governing on the basis of the latest statistics,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said at a news conference in suburban Brampton, Ont.
“We’re governing on the basis of what’s right to better protect victims and law-abiding Canadians.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved to make good on an election promise to bundle a series of proposed measures as part of his self-described “tough-on-crime” agenda.
The 110-page omnibus bill tabled in the Commons affects nine pieces of existing legislation including changes to drug laws, youth sentencing, the pardons system, detention of refugees, parole and house arrest and anti-terrorism measures.
“Canadians want and deserve to feel safe in their homes and in their communities,” Nicholson, flanked by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, said at one of several news conferences conducted Tuesday.
“They want a government that is committed to fighting crime and protecting Canadians so that their communities are safe places for people to live, raise their families and do business.”
Controversial proposals on citizen arrests and Internet surveillance are not included in the package, but Nicholson said the omnibus crime bill “is just the beginning of our efforts in this regard.”
The government won praise from victims’-rights groups and at least two provinces but critics say the measures are hugely expensive and have been proven ineffective — or worse — over three decades of increasingly draconian “tough-on-crime” campaigns in the United States.
Crime rates in both Canada and the United States have been trending downward in near lock-step for at least a decade.
Many American state governments are attempting to unravel harsh minimum-sentencing provisions and bring in more parole and house-arrest options in an effort to ease the crushing cost of incarceration.
The Conservative “ideological bent that punishment will deter crime flies in the face of absolutely all the evidence,” said NDP justice critic Joe Comartin, who has been studying justice reforms for seven years.
“They’ve yet to produce one viable study that shows that deterrence works. Prevention works, deterrence does not.”
The Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Pediatric Society and a coalition of justice groups were among those decrying the omnibus bill.
Catherine Latimer, executive director of the John Howard Society, said parts of the provincial and federal correctional systems are so stuffed they may already violate charter protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The omnibus bill will only exacerbate the problems and could send correctional costs through the roof, she said.
Corrections Canada estimates the cost of the system will rise to $3 billion this fiscal year from $1.6 billion in 2006 when the Harper Conservatives took power.
The Harper government fell last spring in part due to a contempt-of-Parliament motion that sprang from the Conservative cabinet’s refusal to detail the full cost of its various justice bills.
The government eventually offered documents that suggested 18 proposed measures would cost about $631 million in total. Critics, however, say that’s far too low.
Many of the new provisions will increase the number of offenders facing sentences of less than two years, putting more strain on provincial jails.
“These costs will be borne by the provinces and by taxpayers across the country and we believe that those need to be fully assessed and disclosed,” said Latimer.
Nicholson sidestepped the question of cost, focusing instead on a 2008 Justice Department study which estimated that crime costs Canadians $99 billion annually.
“Most that is borne by victims,” said the justice minister.
Nicholson’s office did not respond to a question about how much that $99-billion figure will decline once the proposed justice reforms are fully in place.
And that is what has critics so up in arms: There is no evidence “tough-on-crime” laws actually reduce crime, and few verifiable means of measuring their effectiveness.
Liberal Leader Bob Rae said the omnibus bill, delivered on just the second sitting day of the fall session of Parliament, belies the Conservative claim to be fixated on the economy.
Amidst the current economic doom and gloom, said Rae, “the only good-news statistic that we’ve seen in the last while is that the crime rate is actually going down.”
The Conservative crime focus, said Rae, “shows their ideological preoccupation at a time when the country is preoccupied with jobs, with work, with what is happening and not happening in the real economy.”