PRIME MINISTER'S TOUGH-ON-CRIME AGENDA ENERGIZES BASE, APPEALS TO SWING VOTERS

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is expected to reintroduce
a slate of justice bills, but experts predict the measures will only
increase incarceration rates at great expense to taxpayers.

As crime rates in Canada fall, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
government is expected to reintroduce a slate of justice bills to
beef up sentences and enforcement, but justice experts predict the
measures will only increase incarceration rates at great expense to
taxpayers, and political observers say the Tories' stance will
energize their base and appeal to law-abiding swing voters.

In the last session of Parliament the government introduced 17
law-and-order bills, of which three were passed into law and the rest
died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued on Dec. 30.

Last week Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (Niagara Falls, Ont.)
announced the government would table a bill proposing changes to the
Youth Sentencing Act, which among other things would give judges
powers to consider non-criminal behaviour when sentencing youths,
even though according to Statistics Canada youth crime is down 26 per
cent from 2002-2003. The government also announced plans to make it
harder to repatriate Canadian criminals in foreign jails, and
reintroduced a bill to bolster the national sex-offender registry.

A spokesperson for the minister, Pamela Stephens, said Mr. Nicholson
would reintroduce Bill C-15, which would bring in mandatory minimum
sentence for narcotics offences, in the Senate, and that discussions
among the various House leaders about the possibility of
reintroducing other justice bills are ongoing.

Canada's overall crime rate declined by 15 per cent between 1998 and
2007, and the Crime Severity Index, which tracks the relative
severity of a crime in comparison with other crimes, declined by 21
per cent. Experts appearing before both the House of Commons and
Senate Justice committees testified that mandatory minimum sentences
do not deter crime, and in the U.S. have led to skyrocketing
incarceration rates. A 2001 report by the federal Justice Department
reached the same conclusion.

Yet the government is forging ahead with its "tough-on-crime" agenda.

Doug Lewis, who served as justice minister, attorney general, and
solicitor general under former Progressive Conservative prime
minister Brian Mulroney, said the Harper government's approach
appeals to people's common sense.

"I think [the justice laws] have a broad measure of appeal to the
voting public because the vast majority of the voting public keeps
the law, and obeys the law, and does not get into trouble with the
law and therefore the general attitude is, 'Well listen, if I'm
obeying the law, and earning a living, and raising my kids as well as
I can, why should these people who decide it's much easier to break
the law and earn something that way get off scot-free?' It's a
natural reaction," he said.

Indeed, a recent study by Angus Reid Strategies revealed Canadians
are taking a more punitive view of justice issues. The firm used a
statistical technique called "cluster analysis" to identify four
groups of people with similar attitudes to crime, ranging from the
"Punitive" cluster group, who supports the death penalty even for
things like kidnapping, to "Reformers" cluster group at the opposite
end of the spectrum, who believes measures like mandatory minimum
sentences could do more harm than good and feels more resources
should be put into prevention and rehabilitation.

In each group there was a significant portion of people who believed
that crime in Canada has increased; a third of "Reformers" thought
crime rates had gone up, and 68 per cent of so-called "punishers"
believed crime rates were on the rise, with the other two groups
falling somewhere in between. Only 11 per cent of the Punitive group
thought crime had decreased, compared to a third of Reformers.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), in a 2008
speech, blasted research-based justice policies for trying to
"pacify" Canadians, a view he reiterated in his first-ever YouTube
interview last week.

"I think the view of the population of Canada on this issue is
actually pretty clear, that when serious crimes are committed, people
expect the penalties to match these crimes," Mr. Harper said in
response to an online question. "There are these arguments that told
people somehow if you don't punish criminals, that crime will go
away. I never quite understood the philosophy, but I think people
understand that that approach has not been effective."

Mario Canseco, vice-president of public affairs at Angus Reid, said
the Harper government's justice agenda is a way to "re-energize" the
Conservative base, nearly 90 per cent of who support the
law-and-order agenda. He added it could also attract swing voters if
crime stories are big in the news when the legislation is being tabled.

Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada,
said the government's policies are meant to appeal to the "Tim
Hortons crowd" and rely on people's ignorance about crime in Canada
and the justice system. But he predicted the as-yet-unknown costs
that will be incurred through increased enforcement and incarceration
would "shock and awe" Canadians when the numbers are eventually released.

The recently published 2010-2011 Treasury Board Estimates showed that
Correctional Services Canada saw its total budget increase by
$255.7-million, of which $87.2-million is for the implementation of
the "Truth in Sentencing Act," a measure limiting the amount of
credit prisoners can get for time served in prison before and during
their trial, which became law in February.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is compiling a report,
requested by Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland
(Ajax-Pickering, Ont.), on the projected costs of the government's
changes to the justice system. In February Mr. Page told The Hill
Times the report would likely be ready this month, but his office
said last week it would be further delayed and couldn't say when it
would be released.

Mr. Jones said he's been in contact with the PBO about the report,
and the reason for the delay is because Mr. Page is having difficulty
getting the government to release the projected expenses of its
justice bills, such as construction costs for prisons, and the
expected growth of the incarcerated population. In 2007-08, the
annual average cost of keeping one person incarcerated was $101,666 per year.

"All of those numbers are still Cabinet confidence, and that's the
government's prerogative, but if we continue down this track it seems
to me the government is asking Canadians to write a blank cheque for
a crime agenda in a context in which crime is already in decline," he said.

But Mr. Lewis, the former Tory justice minister, said voters are more
interested in seeing tough justice for criminals than studying
expenditures for corrections services.

"Any government could spend all their time providing information," he
said. "But the vast majority of the public only has an interest when
they decide to have an interest, and this demand for great chunks of
information doesn't make things go round in their daily lives so I'm
skeptical as to how much they want to know."

Another former justice minister, Martin Cauchon, who served under
former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien and is planning to run in
the next election, said the Conservative government's justice
policies lack vision and only seek to increase penalties without
addressing the roots of crime. When he was justice minister, from
2002 to 2003, he put forward legislation to decriminalize the
possession of small amounts of marijuana, and also put in motion the
process leading to the legalization of same-sex marriage, which was
realized in 2005.

The Harper government's Bill C-15, which the justice minister will
reintroduce in the Senate, would change the law so that someone
caught with as few as five marijuana plants would spend a minimum of
six months in jail. Mr. Cauchon said the reason he sought to change
the law around cannabis was to bring it into line with "the reality,"
and he still believes this is the right approach, noting his
legislation contained strong measures to crack down on drug traffickers.

In the last session of Parliament the Liberals teamed up with the
Tories to pass Bill C-15, with some Grit MPs telling the media they
did so out of fear of being labeled soft on crime. It's unclear
whether they will continue to support the government's justice
legislation when it's reintroduced, although in recent statements to
the media the Liberals have blasted the Tories' approach as
simplistic and shortsighted.

Mr. Cauchon said it's often more difficult to explain good justice
policy to voters, but said it's possible, it just takes some hard
work. He pointed out that when he first started arguing in favour of
same-sex marriage around the Cabinet table more than 60 per cent of
Canadians were opposed.

"When you have a vision and you believe in this as I did you roll up
your sleeves, you travel, you communicate to people," he said. "You
work with your caucus and at the end of the day you succeed. And look
at same sex marriage that was enacted about five years ago and today
we don't even talk about it. Canadians society is on side; they have
accepted it and they know today it's exactly where we had to go as a society."