PM'S SENATE PLURALITY DOESN'T GUARANTEE SMOOTH SAILING FOR TORIES'
JUSTICE AGENDA

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his recent Senate appointments
would help make Canada a safer place by allowing his government' s
justice legislation to pass into law unchanged, but with the
Independent Senators now holding the balance of power things aren't
likely to be much different.

The government introduced 17 law-and-order bills last year, of which
three were passed into law, and the rest died on the Order Paper when
Parliament was prorogued on Dec. 30. Of the three bills that were
before the Upper House two were still making their way through the
normal legislative process, and one was amended by the Liberal
Senators with the support of four of the five Independents, with one
absent due to illness.

The last bill, C-15, would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances
Act to provide for mandatory minimum prison sentences for anyone
found with more than five marijuana plants. The amendments that were
passed in December changed the bill so that anyone with less than 201
plants would not require a mandatory minimum sentence as long as the
production occurs outdoors, not in a residential area, and the grower
must own the land. But if someone produces one plant in a residential
neighbourhood, on a rented property, or in a house that the person
owns, C-15 still prescribes a nine-month prison term.

The Conservatives said the Liberal Senators "gutted" Bill C-15, and
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (Niagara Falls, Ont.) plans to
reintroduce the bill in its original form in the Senate when
Parliament returns in March. But even though the Senate's Legal and
Constitutional Affairs Committee, where the amendments were
originally conceived, will be reconstituted to reflect that the
Conservatives now have a plurality in the Senate, the amendments can
be reintroduced in the Senate Chamber and will pass unless the
Liberals or Independents change their minds. The Standings in the
Senate are now 51 Conservatives, 49 Liberals, and five Independents.

"I don't think that the position of the Senate will change on it,"
Liberal Senator George Baker told The Hill Times recently.

Alberta Independent Senator Elaine McCoy said the power she and her
fellow Independents now hold won't change how they vote on specific
issues, including Bill C-15.

"Every bill that comes before us I've been looking at it and making
up my mind on that issue, so I'm not going to change, that's still
going to happen," she said.

When asked how C-15 would meet with a different fate this time
around, a spokesperson for the Justice Minister said the fact that
the Liberals will no longer have a majority on the committee could
have an impact. She said the government would not consider waiting
until they have a majority in the Senate, which won't be possible
until 2011, to reintroduce the bill. Also of note, a bill similar to
C-15 was first introduced by the government in 2007 but subsequently
died on the order paper when Prime Minister Harper called an election in 2008.

Even though the government's justice legislation was passed in the
House of Commons with the support of the Liberals, the Tories have
been aggressively going after the Grits for obstructing what the
Prime Minister called "urgently needed" new laws. When Mr. Harper
(Calgary Southwest, Alta.) filled five vacant Senate seats last month
the PMO put out a press release stating that all of the new Senators
are committed to community safety and justice for the victims of
crime, and new Ontario Senator Bob Runciman held a press conference
calling on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff (Etobicoke-Lakeshore,
Ont.) to order his Senators to pass Bill C-15.

"After months of Liberal stalling and delays, Ignatieff's Liberals
gutted this important piece of legislation. Canadians are fed up with
unelected Liberal senators doing Ignatieff's dirty work and standing
in the way of action to protect victims and get tough on dangerous
criminals. Michael Ignatieff needs to explain to Canadians why his
own unelected Liberal senators gutted this special measure and he
needs to tell his Liberal senators to support it when it is
reintroduced and Canadians expect nothing less," Sen. Runciman said
at the time.

Nova Scotia Liberal Senator James Cowan, leader of the opposition in
the Senate, recently sent a lengthy letter to Mr. Nicholson in which
he accused the Justice Minister of being dishonest with the Canadian
people by blaming the Liberals for holding up the government's
justice legislation, pointing out that it was the Prime Minister's
decision to prorogue Parliament that stopped most of the bills in their tracks.

The letter also noted that, considering the government said the
legislation was urgent, it has been slow to implement the bills that
have already been passed. Once a bill is given Royal Assent it can be
implemented immediately, but the government can also put a provision
on a bill so that the coming-into-force date is set by order of the
governor in council (the Cabinet), which has been the case with much
of the government's crime bills.

At a press conference in January Prime Minister Harper implied that a
member of the so-called Toronto 18 terror suspects was able to get
out of jail earlier because the Liberals held up the government's
changes to the two-for-one sentencing act, even though it was his
government that waited four months to implement the bill. Bill C-25
received third reading in the Senate on Oct. 21, 2009, but will not
come into force until 2010. Additionally, Bill C-14, dealing with
organized crime, received third reading in the Senate on June 22,
2009, but was not brought into force by the Harper government until
Oct. 2. Bill S-4, which was started in the Senate and strengthens
laws around identity theft, received third reading in the Senate on
June 11, 2009, and in the House of Commons on Oct. 20, but wasn't
implemented until Jan. 8, 2010.

Once the reintroduced C-15 makes its way through the Senate this time
around it will then have to be sent back to the House of Commons. In
the last session of Parliament the NDP and the Bloc voted against the
bill, while the Liberals voted with the government. Liberal MPs have
said publicly they are uncomfortable with aspects of the government's
crime agenda, and that they were in part motivated by a fear of being
labeled "soft on crime" by the Tories.

But since then a new team has been put into place in the opposition
leader's office, and the party has been taking steps to try and
distinguish their policies from those of the government. In an
interview last week with The Hill Times, Liberal public safety critic
Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering, Ont.) said the prorogation period,
during which the Grits have been holding roundtables on a plethora of
policy areas, has allowed the caucus to take a "careful second look"
at the government's crime legislation.

Mr. Holland said the party agrees with certain aspects of the
government's crime bills, but expressed concern that other measures,
such as mandatory minimum sentences, would do nothing to deter
criminals and would only swell the prison population, as has been the
case in many U.S. states. He said his party would finalize its
position in the "near future," and left the door open to the Liberals
withdrawing their support for the government's law and order agenda.

"When you start looking at the whole package, the whole picture, the
whole thing that's starting to emerge of where they're going you
start to say, 'We saw this picture, it was California, it was a
disaster and we don't want to be that.' And I think that's what this
pause is allowing, is an opportunity to consider the totality of the
impact of what's happening here," he said.

Mr. Holland has asked Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page to
examine how much the government's changes to the justice system would
cost in terms of increased expenditures for prisons, and Mr. Page is
expected to release his report sometime in March. The annual budget
for "corrections infrastructure" has grown from $88.5-million in
2006-07, to $195.1-million in 2008-09, and is projected to reach
$211.6-million this fiscal year. The average annual cost of keeping a
Canadian inmate incarcerated is $93,030.