TORY TALK SLIDES TO CRIME

Prime Minister Paul Martin took a break yesterday from the eight-week
federal election campaign, allowing Conservative Leader Stephen Harper
to once again set the daily news agenda by focusing on crime and punishment.

For the fourth consecutive day, Harper rolled out a key plank in his
platform, this time highlighting the drug-control section of the
party's criminal justice agenda with promises of mandatory prison
sentences, stiffer fines and an end of conditional sentences.

"I want to talk about the values of a peaceful, orderly and safe
society, and a problem none of the other parties seem to care about --
the problem of crime and the threat it poses to our families and our
communities," Harper said at a recreation centre in Burnaby, B.C.

The Tory promises include:

- - Mandatory, minimum sentences of at least two years for trafficking,
exporting, importing or producing heroin, cocaine and crystal meth, as
well as more than three kilograms of marijuana or hashish.

- - Eliminating conditional sentences, or house arrest, for all
indictable drug offences.

- - A commitment to not reintroduce legislation to decriminalize
marijuana.

- - Make it harder to get the chemicals to make crystal meth, such as
ephedrine and cold remedies. Manitoba and Saskatchewan adopted a
similar strategy last month.

- - Close safe-injection sites in Vancouver and elsewhere.

Several studies have shown minimum mandatory sentences add an enormous
cost burden to the corrections system without offering any clear deterrent.

But Harper said he wants to see concrete justice ideas that work.

"I think common sense is that if you're serious about enforcing the
law, you provide real penalties," said Harper. "And the evidence I've
seen suggests that what works are penalties that are fairly certain,
not penalties that will not be imposed."

The Liberals quickly tried to turn the tables on Harper.

The party issued a release stating the opposition parties, by forcing
this election, effectively killed eight bills that would have
strengthened law enforcement in Canada.

Among those bills was a proposed law that would have established new
criminal offences and tougher sentences to target marijuana grow-ops.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said his party is alone in offering a balanced
approach to drug crime.

"We've got to get to the root causes of crime -- despair, poverty,
addiction -- in our communities," Layton said during a stop in
Vancouver. "That means we've got to put an equal emphasis on the
prevention of crime in the first place, as we put on dealing with the
results of crime at the end of the day."

Layton said the NDP would be coming out with its own criminal justice
platform soon.

Since the writ was dropped Tuesday, Harper has come out with his
message early, forcing other leaders to respond before being able to
shift the media's focus back to their own message of the day.

Faced with an eight-week campaign, the leaders are strategizing as
much about pacing as they are about building momentum.