I’m being sarcastic. It doesn’t really. You’d just think it does reading the liberal media today.
Columnist Linda Williamson wrote an excellent column today at the good Toronto Sun.
But like so many smart Canadian columnists, for some reason she shies away from bucking up and really connecting the liberal/conservative dots for the Canadians who need it, which is virtually all of those millions who constantly answer “undecided” when asked which way they’re voting. Or those millions who don’t know what in tarnation the difference is between liberals and conservatives.
It’s not a question of seeing things in pure black or white (liberal or conservative), it’s a question of drawing some pretty clear distinctions between how liberals think on issues, and how conservatives think, in a general sort of way. Here’s a perfect opportunity to do that, lost or thrown away (I’m not sure which, and whether this is done by habit, or what exactly).
Her column is headlined “Youth law on trial” (it’s about the youth who was sentenced to one day in jail for manslaughter recently—see here). And that’s a true enough sentiment but it is more than that that’s on trial —it’s liberalism on trial and liberal-left thinking. And in fact they’ve been tried and re-tried. And they need to be convicted in the court of public opinion.
[…]
Here’s Joe Wamback—father of a teen crime victim, leader of a 1-million-signature national petition to toughen youth crime laws (and now head of the Canadian Crime Victim Foundation)—in an interview I did with him in February 2001 about the then-proposed YCJA’s sentencing provisions:
“Nowhere in this legislation are the words ‘deterrence’ or ‘denunciation’ mentioned,” he warned, horrified.
Now here’s Justice Louise Charron, writing for the court (which was unanimous) last week: “The words ‘deter’ and deterrence are nowhere to be found in the YCJA … this omission (by Parliament) is of considerable significance.”
What’s more, she notes, even though there’s a lot of language in the legislation about the need for “accountability” in sentencing young criminals and instilling “respect for societal values” in them, none of that means judges can get tough in order to deter other youths from crime. Rather, they can only look at ways to rehabilitate and reintegrate individual kids facing youth sentences.
Liberals always want to release criminals back into society—they didn’t want them locked-up to start with. Liberals don’t believe in jail for criminals. They believe in criminals being victims of something or other. And they believe in “rehabilitating” criminals and “reintegrating them back into society” (as if they were a good and noble part of society to start with).
But this always remains unsaid in Canadian media.
Continuing…
She even cites a 2002 background paper by Justice Department bureaucrats which stresses: “Denunciation, specific deterrence, general deterrence… are not sentencing objectives” of the YCJA, as they are in the criminal law for adults. (I am not one bit surprised. Many at Justice question whether tough sentences deter crime at all—as did the last minister, Irwin Cotler. But that’s an issue for another column.)
“Many” question that? Many whom? There’s a clear distinction here! LIBERALS question that. Conservatives don’t. That’s a basic tenet of politics in Canada and the U.S., which is what this is really all about. And “the last minister, Irwin Cotler”, it should have been pointed out, was a LIBERAL. This explains everything, which is what I think we’re after, here.
[…] What angers me is all the times I heard politicians dismiss Canadians’ concerns that this law was deeply flawed from the outset, and all the times I watched them campaign (through at least four elections) on the great “reforms” they were making to address—and yes, deter—violent youth crime.
Vic Toews, now Justice Minister, was one of those who recognized those flaws. Last week he reiterated his own party’s promise to review the YCJA—but he didn’t say when.
Now our highest court has told our kids (the good as well as the bad) that judges can’t “scare” them away from crime with tough penalties. With another “summer of guns” upon us in Toronto, I’d say the Conservatives just found themselves another priority.
She might also follow her own good advice and make “another priority” for herself the exposure of liberal-left appeasement policies on law and order in general, criminal sentencing, and even with regard to such things as the global war on terror. That would help bring clarity.
These things aren’t simply policy issues made by unbiased politicians or their carefully hired bureaucrats without an agenda, these are policy problems we now face because of years of liberalism —and an acquiescent liberal media. It speaks to the difference between liberals and conservatives. But apparently it must, by some unwritten Canadian media law, be spoken silently.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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