TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE TO SAVE THE TORIES?

With their political foes braying for an unprecedented
contempt-of-Parliament finding, the government of Stephen Harper cried
uncle Wednesday and released a cost estimate of their law-and-order
agenda.

The Conservatives claim the price is $631 million in addition to $2.1
billion that's already been announced. But whether voters should
believe their estimate is a million-dollar question -especially with
an election campaign launching as early as next week, if it's not on
already.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page reported in June that just one
of the Tories' crime initiatives -the one to remove the two-for-one
credit criminals got for remand time -would cost Ottawa $5 billion
while adding between $5 billion and $13 billion to the cost provinces
pay for jails. It's surprising more premiers haven't been hollering
about how the Tory crime agenda will hit their coffers.

Given the nearly $40-billion deficit the federal government is
expected to announce at the end of the month, one wonders whether we
can afford all this. And that's not even getting into the wisdom of
whether we should, as the Tories propose, jail more people longer,
including young offenders and marijuana users, at a time when crime
rates across Canada continue to fall.