CRIME BILL DRAWS DISSENT

Legislation making its way through Parliament could tip the scales of
justice toward harsher penalties, causing some groups concern about
imbalance in sentencing.

Bill C-10, named the Safer Streets and Communities Act, is an omnibus
piece of legislation rolling nine proposed reforms that had been
debated during the previous sessions but had never become law.

They range in scope and content from increasing penalties for sexual
predators of children, delaying pardons for serious crimes and
combatting human trafficking.

Conservative MP Dan Albas (Okanagan Coquihalla) said the legislation
builds sentences to match the severity of the crimes, such as when a
drug trafficker sells next to a school, involves violence in the
commission of an offence or is a repeat offender.

While aggravating factors were considered by judges, he said, the
sentence meted out did not reflect the severity of the situation.

"All of those things were an option before, but when that threshold
has been met, when someone has multiple of those factors, they are
going to be getting a sentence commensurate to the crime," Albas
said. "That's a justice system that's fair. Our first priority in
government is to protect our citizens and that's what people want to see."

But there are elements causing consternation among members of the
Canadian Bar Association, and Michael Welsh is lending his name to
the opposition. A criminal trial lawyer who is vice-president of the
Penticton and District Bar Association as well as the provincial
representative on the B.C. branch of the Canadian association, he
said lawyers understand the price the legislation will have on the
country's most vulnerable population.

"It's going to criminalize a lot more of our youth. We're going to
have a lot more people going into custody with these mandatory
minimums, and that's only going to reinforce criminal behaviour," he said.

Welsh explained that stiffer adult penalties will cause less people
to plead guilty, resulting in more trials, delays in the system and
ultimately over-crowded prisons akin to California and Texas.

"We're penalizing the taxpayer by creating a system where we're
spending hundreds of millions of dollars in expanding and building
new prisons and warehousing people when we can ill-afford this," he
said. "The people we'll be sending to jail are low-level grow
operations with respect to marijuana, and that's over $100,000 a year
to incarcerate somebody when statistics have indicated the crime rate
is coming down.

"It's just a cynical public relations exercise on the part of the
federal government as far as I'm concerned. They're trying to grab
votes from people who think law and order and tough on crime is the
way to go without understanding what's really happening in this country."

Albas said that the government is spending money on the federal
corrections systems, in part because of aging infrastructure.

"Since we took office we've been making strategic investments to make
sure the federal penitentiaries are getting safer. A lot of them are
very old, very decrepit and not energy efficient, so we've been
making those investments and continue to make those investments," he
said, adding the government wants to continue with prevention
programs. "In our riding of Okanagan Coquihalla, we've invested quite
heavily in both crime prevention and youth initiatives."

The bill is currently being debated in Parliament, expected to wrap
up discussion this week.