HARPER'S CRIMINAL GRIT

OTTAWA - In the world according to Stephen Harper, it has become
something of a political maxim that when the going gets tough, the
Conservatives get tough on crime.

Seems just about every time the Harper gang needs to get out of
trouble, it offers up some new piece of lawmaking that promises to put
the bad guys behind bars.

Gunslinging always seems to please the Conservative
core.

It is certainly came as no surprise, therefore, that the prime
minister's latest round of Senate appointments he once promised never
to make came wrapped in the Conservative flag of law and order.

Few things in government risk sending right-wingers into convulsion
more effectively than a bunch of political hacks being ushered into
hog heaven.

But by the time the dust had settled behind last week's unseemly
stampede to the trough, even commentators of the hard right were
applauding Harper for taking the pig by the tail, as it were.

After all, the Liberals made him do it.

For the first time since the Mulroney years, Harper's five
appointments to the Senate last week gave the Conservatives a
plurality in the upper chamber.

That means those criminal-coddling Grits in the Senate no longer have
a majority they can use to block the Conservatives' legislative
law-and-order.

As the PM put it: "Our government is serious about getting tough on
crime .. The Liberals have abused their Senate majority by obstructing
and eviscerating law-and-order measures that are urgently needed and
strongly supported by Canadians."

No doubt about it - when it comes to thwarting new laws to keep us
free from muggers, rapists and pot-smoking hippies, the prime minister
certainly is something of an expert on the subject.

The Conservative government introduced a total of 17 law-and-order
bills in parliament last year.

Three of those actually were passed into law, one dealing with
organized crime, another dealing with sentencing calculations for time
served behind bars before conviction.

The third, aimed at identity theft, actually came from that
obstructing, eviscerating, Liberal-dominated Senate.

The remaining 14 "law-and-order measures that are urgently needed," as
the PM put it, were automatically killed en masse when parliament
recently was ordered shut down by the, um, PM.

Of those, 11 were sitting somewhere on the Commons agenda, and only
three bills were anywhere near the Senate at the time of their demise.

One of those three, one repealing the so-called "faint hope" clause
for lifers, arrived in the Senate less than two weeks before the place
went dark.

The second bill that died in the Senate when Harper prorogued
parliament dealt with auto theft, and went to committee in the upper
chamber the week before the Christmas recess.

The third piece of legislation lost in Harper's official lights-out
provided mandatory minimum prison terms for anyone caught with more
than five marijuana plants.

That bill was so urgent that it first was introduced by the
Conservative government in 2007, but was killed by Harper's calling of
the 2008 election. It was resurrected, debated and died again when
Harper recently shut down parliament.

Thank goodness the prime minister has stuffed another five political
pals in the Senate.

The world will surely be a safer place