The Windsor Star’s editorial today speaks to the hideously lenient sentencing to which Canadians are becoming accustomed.
But of course it’s worse than that—it seems those with ties to “government” (that’s the word they chicken-out and use—I would replace it with the more accurate “Liberals”) get off far easier.
As they say in the introduction to their editorial, “… Paul Coffin will serve hard time on his sofa and the speakers’ circuit. He’ll traverse the land lecturing students about, of all things, business ethics—a topic he’s no better equipped to speak about than Jack the Ripper is about lovemaking.”
And the editorial board is apparently baffled by all this Canadian wonderment, even while they—as nearly all Canadian media has managed to do—leave out the word “liberal” or even “Liberal” in their whole piece.
[…] [Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy] Boilard’s lenience is baffling.
It’s not as though the Criminal Code or judicial precedent precluded him from slapping Coffin with jail time. The maximum sentence for fraud over $5,000 is 10 years in prison. The Crown asked for 34 months.
Of 11,577 fraud convictions meted out in 2003 (the last year for which statistics are available), 3,972, or roughly one-third, led to jail time. Because Statistics Canada doesn’t compile rich detail about Canadian fraud sentences, it’s impossible to know the scale of these cons or the criminal backgrounds of their perpetrators. Such factors naturally affect sentencing.
However, a look back at recent Windsor fraud cases provides anecdotal evidence that run-of-the-mill con artists have been jailed for crimes less serious than Coffin’s.
In July, Jimis Odish, 22, was sentenced to a year behind bars (he’d already served four months) for defrauding several financial institutions of about $100,000 with fake credit cards.
Last October, Punit Thind, 27, was sentenced to a year in jail for bilking 49 computer customers out of nearly $100,000 with an internet fraud scheme. He had no record, pleaded guilty and apologized.
In February of 2004, a faux fortune-teller from Leamington was sentenced to five months in prison for convincing clients to give her nearly $100,000 in cash jewelry and furniture to ward off dark clouds and evil.
If cons to the tune of $100,000 can draw jail time, how could a fraud 15 times that size draw a community sentence? Especially when the crime was perpetrated against every taxpayer in Canada?
Coffin’s sentence not only fails to achieve the twin purposes of “denunciation and deterrence”—as Boilard absurdly insisted it did—it sends the message that defrauding the public is acceptable and that lenience is reserved for well-to-do types with government ties. […]
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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