FATHER DE SOUZA, SPARE ME YOUR BLEEDING HEART

Yesterday's column by Raymond J. de Souza about the federal
government's new Tackling Violent Crime Act ("Stacking the deck") was
offensive. Father de Souza claims the new legislation gives too much
power to police, and will lead to more innocent people being
incarcerated. He also vilifies police and Crown prosecutors for being
"not particularly sensitive to questions of individual liberty or
procedural fairness."

Among other things, the new legislation gets tougher with
gun-wielding offenders, increases mandatory minimum sentences for
crimes involving firearms, and offers new ways to detect and
investigate impaired driving, along with tougher sentences for
impaired driving.

If Father de Souza objects to all this, perhaps he should spend a
week with police working the night shift.

He might find, in some seedy alleyway, a repeat violent offender, who
has already been deported numerous times, doing a drug deal and
threatening to blow someone's head off with a shotgun that --needless
to say -- wasn't filed with the gun registry.

Or he might find himself observing a female officer caught in a
life-threatening situation as she comes between a husband, who has
already threatened to kill his wife, and the threatened spouse.

Father de Souza should meet drug-smuggling king Alfonso Caruana, who
was sentenced to 18 years. He promptly served one, and was
transferred to Fenbrook in Gravenhurst, where you can get a nice
8-oz. steak served to your liking. In Canada it is the minimum of
minimum security. A few weeks ago he was extradited to his native
Italy where he's now doing a 21-year sentence. Isolation. Maximum security.

He should also meet the parents of the children who were tied up and
raped while a man video-streamed the whole thing over the Internet
and got sentenced only to house arrest and three years probation.

Does he know that 48% of offenders convicted of possession and
distribution of child pornography in the Greater Toronto Area receive
a conditional sentence, which means no jail time? Would Father de
Souza change his tune if he saw some of those videos? Maybe. (Then
again, some judges who pronounce sentence on these criminals refuse
to view the tapes themselves because they find them so offensive.)

Father de Souza should go for a drive with Charlie Hart, who finally
received federal time, but not until he had nearly 39 past
convictions for impaired driving, behaviour that resulted in one death in 1971.

Father de Souza says Canada has been heading in the direction of the
American justice system since the 1990s. Is he concerned with
anti-gang legislation, which got tougher in 2001? Before the rules
were tightened, the Hells Angels could open up a new chapter with
three members, none of whom had convictions the previous five years,
and not be considered a criminal organization.

The biggest problem with violent crime in Canada is not too many guns
coming across the border from the United States. It is not a
proliferation of gangs. It is not the socio-economic hardships of
certain groups. The biggest problem with violent crime in Canada is a
too-lenient justice system. A close second is bleeding hearts.