COSTS RISE, VOTES SINK IN CRIME CRACKDOWN

Spending Tops $1B As Hardline Tories Lose Support In Polls

The murder rate from guns is up, and so too is Conservative government
spending on its sweeping anti-crime agenda -- way up.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day fudged for months on the cost of
arming border guards before the Canada Border Services Agency revealed
the fat tab of $1 billion. It stretches over 10 years and includes
hiring more guards. Do I hear, "billion-dollar boondoggle?"

Justice Minister Vic Toews also belatedly tagged the cost of building
new prison spaces -- $246 million -- for additional prisoners
streaming from the Conservative crackdown. The anticipated 270 extra
prisoners each year will cost a further $40 million to maintain.

Toews claims tougher mandatory sentences are a deterrent; most
criminologists disagree. Day says border guards need arms to protect
against fleeing gunsels; critics say adding police to border crossings
is a safer play than putting poorly-trained guards at risk.

When Statistics Canada last week documented a fractional increase in
the overall murder rate in 2005 (declining again so far in 2006),
Conservatives hawked their answer.

"Tackling Crime," as Stephen Harper headlined one of numerous
law-and-order flyers to B.C. households, is the keel on the Tory hull,
running hard in the deep waters of terrorism, college shootouts and
gangland gunplay.

As Day orders hard time and Toews installs police to help select
judges, two new polls show crime well down the list of Canadians'
priorities. It ranked 10th in an Environics poll, behind homelessness,
and seventh in an Innovative Research Group survey, behind social issues.

Less than four per cent of the nearly 5,000 Canadians surveyed listed
crime as their top concern. As a public worry, crime now ranks far
behind the environment and war in Afghanistan, Harper's two most
badly-handled files.

His anti-crime furnace is no political heater. The Conservatives have
fallen into a cold tie with the Liberals.

Day also wages a shaky battle against the long-gun registry. RCMP
figures show the entire gun registry now costs less than $15-million
per year to operate, the long-gun portion less than $3 million.

In May, 67 per cent of Canadians told an Ipsos-Reid survey they wanted
the registry strengthened, and in September, teenager Anastasia De
Sousa was killed and 20 others wounded when a gunman went berserk at
Montreal's Dawson College.

The tragedy hardened Quebec's support for the registry, also highly
popular in Ontario and backed by a majority in B.C. One of the
survivors, 18-year-old Hayder Khadim, has two bullets in his head and
challenged Harper to debate gun control: "We need to put a stop to
this nonsense."

A timely Vancouver Board of Trade report brings it all home,
convincingly arguing that "early prevention" spending on children --
attacking homelessness, providing "quality institutional childcare,"
promoting literacy -- is far better for society than "later
intervention" spending on justice.

Harper's got it backwards. He builds prisons while offering no
national housing program, and buys guns while killing funding for day
care, adult literacy and the Kelowna aboriginal accord.

Something's out of whack here. It isn't the Canadian public.