HARPER DIDN'T POINT OUT DROP IN CRIME

IT has been just over a week now since Prime Minister Stephen Harper
rode into town cowboy-style to deliver his gangbuster's speech on
cracking down on crime, and the reviews are still coming in.

In the course of his speech, Harper had suggested that, unlike the
good old days when we grew up, violent crime in Canada is up, and up
dangerously.

His used the refrain "guns, gangs and drug crime" to focus his aim
and then used the word "terror" and streets in the same sentence.

But one man in the audience -- who requested anonymity -- dropped me
a line this week that proves Stephen Harper didn't fool everyone.

"Everything Prime Minister Harper said at that lunch was based on the
premise crime growth is rampant," the man recalled.

"When I pointed out to someone at our table that crime rates have
actually been dropping for a couple of decades," he continued, "they
looked at me as if I had escaped from an asylum. Since everyone
'knows' that crime is much worse, I was obviously delusional."
Perhaps because he was concerned that he might, indeed, be imagining
things -- and given that a Canadian leader of the Prime Minister's
ethical stature would never purposely mislead his people -- the man
went straight back to work after the lunch and checked the Statistics
Canada website.

"It took me about 15 seconds," he reported. What he found was this:

Based on data reported by Canadian police services in 2004 -- the
latest year for which statistics have been processed -- violent crime
and crime overall fell that year.

As crime has for decades.

In fact, overall crime dropped 12 per cent in the last decade.

On the other hand, homicide -- a small but important part of violent
crime -- was up 12 per cent in 2004, although that needs to be
measured against the year before, when the Canadian murder rate
reached its lowest level in 36 years.

Winnipeg's murder rate as a city led the nation two years ago.

But if you want to equate any of that with "terror" in the streets --
even with the sensational gang-related Boxing Day shooting of an
innocent young woman in Toronto -- you need to put homicide in
context. It's well known that most murders are committed by people
who know each other. In fact, among solved homicides nationally in
2004, a whopping 85 per cent were committed by people who knew their victims.

More than a third of the cases involved family members killing other
family members.

But here's the most telling statistic on "terror" in the streets:

Of the nation's total of 622 homicides, only five happened in public places.

Public places like our streets.

But then there's the spectre of "guns, gangs and drug crime" that
Prime Minister Harper raised.

Handgun homicides are up over the last decade, although at last look
they were involved in only about a quarter of all murders.

And gangs, because they supply and push drugs, are a real threat to
our children.

We can all agree on that and, if need be, we can adjust our laws
accordingly. But we can do it using the facts in an intelligent way.

Instead of using fear like an unregistered weapon.