Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Slava

I'm only willing to relitigate this issue if ypu admit the CPC was pushing for more money to be sent and not less. It's easy to throw mud at the governments response and say it was a pile of money, because it implies that the opposition would've spent less. That's just not the case though. The CPC wanted more money spent and just conveniently let's that slide these days.

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/pol...1_5548837.html

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5744222

Again whataboutism, disappointed because you are the rare poster here that I respect. I haven't visited your links but let's just start where the Conservatives wouldn't have started "hopefully" in a massive red hole to begin with. Trudeau promised a small deficit of less than 10 billion per year for 3 years then a return to balance. What a load of crap. Things were out of control a long time before Covid made an easy excuse to blow tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Jacks

I specifically said how the programs could been done better and had basic safe guards, did you even read what I posted?

Have you read what anyone else posted about your suggestions or are you just going to keep whining about “Liberal apologists”? Lumping Locke and Slava in as Liberal apologists is, honestly, hilarious.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Again whataboutism, disappointed because you are the rare poster here that I respect. I haven't visited your links but let's just start where the Conservatives wouldn't have started "hopefully" in a massive red hole to begin with. Trudeau promised a small deficit of less than 10 billion per year for 3 years then a return to balance. What a load of crap. Things were out of control a long time before Covid made an easy excuse to blow tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars.

You're blaming the Liberals for inflation though, and that's the point I'm arguing. I'm certainly not holding up the NDP and Liberals as being fiscally prudent. But, the spending would've been at least as bad if not worse under Erin O'Toole.

It's not whataboutism at all. It's the facts of the situation regarding the economy, inflation and how the BoC has handled it. While government spending was a contribution it also propped things up in 2020. I think it went on for too long, but I also think that the central bank has basically handled things perfectly in hindsight. They got inflation down from highs last summer to almost the target rate this summer, without massive job losses and recession. That's got less to do with the government and more to do with monetary policy, of course. But, while I give Trudeau zero credit for the monetary policy that has brought inflation down, I also give them very little blame for the global inflationary issue...which seems to be where you and I differ.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Again whataboutism, disappointed because you are the rare poster here that I respect. I haven't visited your links but let's just start where the Conservatives wouldn't have started "hopefully" in a massive red hole to begin with. Trudeau promised a small deficit of less than 10 billion per year for 3 years then a return to balance. What a load of crap. Things were out of control a long time before Covid made an easy excuse to blow tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars.

Whataboutism!

What about if the Liberals didn't start with a deficit in the first place

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Slava

You're blaming the Liberals for inflation though

I don't think I mentioned inflation?
Please link the post.

Originally Posted by Slava

But, the spending would've been at least as bad if not worse under Erin O'Toole.

I seriously doubt that.

Originally Posted by Cappy

Whataboutism!
What about if the Liberals didn't start with a deficit in the first place

They didn't. You might be able to argue a tiny deficit if you want to work at it but the budget was essentially balance when Trudeau took office.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Jacks

I don't think I mentioned inflation?
Please link the post.


I seriously doubt that.


They didn't. You might be able to argue a tiny deficit if you want to work at it but the budget was essentially balance when Trudeau took office.

Budget was balanced and the economy was ####. Harper had the lowest job growth of any of our past 4 Prime Ministers (lower than Trudeau, lower than Martin, lower than Chrétien). Most people are not concerned with whether the budget is balanced if they are unemployed.

[Fuzz]

Didn't Harper only balance the budget by selling off assets at the end, and other ####ery before the election to fool rubes into believing they are good financial stewards?

[Roughneck]

Harper almost balanced the budget but chose to reduce the GST instead.

A moment where fiscal conservatism trumped fiscal responsibility.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

Harper almost balanced the budget but chose to reduce the GST instead.

A moment where fiscal conservatism trumped fiscal responsibility.

Ya, that one was earlier that was accompanied by raising income taxes at the same time. They managed to have everyone remember the GST cut but not the tax increase that went with it. The reality is there is no magic bullet unless you ignore the reality of what happened. But people still cling to their flash reality.

[jayswin]

Only LIBERALS raise taxes!!!!

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Didn't Harper only balance the budget by selling off assets at the end, and other ####ery before the election to fool rubes into believing they are good financial stewards?

No. The sale of the GM shares went through during Trudeau's first fiscal year.

[Doctorfever]

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...t-of-a-pattern

Hmmmm.

From out of the woodwork will again come the liberal apologists.

I’m sure the snowflakes are feeling sorry for poor, poor Paul.

Kelly was following the law passed by Justin Trudeau and supported by every Liberal caucus member, including current Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino who called the transfer of Bernardo “shocking and incomprehensible.”

[Red Slinger]

n/m

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...t-of-a-pattern

Hmmmm.

From out of the woodwork will again come the liberal apologists.

I’m sure the snowflakes are feeling sorry for poor, poor Paul.

Please edit this post and add “woke” or “SJW” somewhere. I’m one square away from getting a BINGO.

[Roughneck]

Pepsi, suppose your house was ransacked by thugs. Your family tied up in the basement with socks in their mouths. You try to open the door, but there’s too much blood on the knob…

[TheIronMaiden]

I get that Trudeau sucks, I have never voted for him.

Still, people constantly grasping at straws to blame him for everything gives off 13 year-old suburban kid who thinks his dad is ruining his life vibes.


Canada is far from perfect, but it is a damn nice place to live. The world ain't that bad.

[timun]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...t-of-a-pattern

Hmmmm.

From out of the woodwork will again come the liberal apologists.

I’m sure the snowflakes are feeling sorry for poor, poor Paul.

I'm sure you're going to dismiss me as a "Liberal apologist snowflake coming out of the woodwork", but you should stop reading Brian Lilley opinion columns and stop reading The Sun in general, because it's absolute trash that distorts the truth. I'll do the hard work for you and explain why this is BS.

Lilley wrote:

[Anne Kelly, Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada,] stated prisoners are classified by criteria set out in the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and “Periodic security reviews are undertaken in adherence with the ‘least restrictive’ principle in section 28 of the CCRA.”

The review even spells out the criteria of section 28, which states, “the Service shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that the penitentiary in which they are confined is one that provides them with the least restrictive environment for that person.”

When Kelly said Bernardo’s transfer followed the rules, this is what she is talking about, but the question should be, where did that rule come from?

Bill C-83 was passed into law by the Trudeau Liberals in 2019 and it amended section 28 of the CCRA to those exact words, “least restrictive environment.”

Kelly was following the law passed by Justin Trudeau and supported by every Liberal caucus member, including current Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino who called the transfer of Bernardo “shocking and incomprehensible.”

Mendicino voted for the law that let this happen, so he shouldn’t be shocked.

It is true that the Liberal-backed Bill C-83 amended section 28 of the CCRA to read "least restrictive environment". However, the questions anyone who reads Lilley's piece should be asking themselves are:

1. What does section 28 of the CCRA say in its entirety, in context?

2. What did it say before the Liberals amended it?

3. Why did the Liberals change it?

What it says in its entirety is:

28 If a person is or is to be confined in a penitentiary, the Service shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that the penitentiary in which they are confined is one that provides them with the least restrictive environment for that person, taking into account

(a) the degree and kind of custody and control necessary for

(i) the safety of the public,

(ii) the safety of that person and other persons in the penitentiary, and

(iii) the security of the penitentiary;

(b) accessibility to

(i) the person’s home community and family,

(ii) a compatible cultural environment, and

(iii) a compatible linguistic environment; and

(c) the availability of appropriate programs and services and the person’s willingness to participate in those programs.

What did it say before the Liberals changed it in Bill C-83? The opening paragraph used to read:

If a person is or is to be confined in a penitentiary, the Service shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that the penitentiary in which they are confined is one that provides them with an environment that contains only the necessary restrictions, taking into account

I've highlighted the changed part in red for you. Why did they change it?

Well, the reason for writing C-83 in the first place was to address the fact that sections 31 through 37 of the CCRA regarding "administrative segregation" were held to be unconstitutional by the BC Court of Appeals (2018 BCCA 282) and Ontario Superior Court (2017 ONSC 7491), and those court decisions directed the government to rewrite it. And so they did. The change to section 28 was made at the same time to bring a little clarity back to that section.



You should also be asking whether section 28 always read that way, with the bit about "an environment that contains only the necessary restrictions", originally. And if not, who changed it and why?


Weeeeeeeelllllllll here's the good part: guess what? It didn't always read "an environment that contains only the necessary restrictions". Guess who changed it and when?


The Harper Conservatives in 2012. They amended section 28 of the CCRA in Part 3 of the Safe Streets and Communities Act, an omnibus bill that changed a whole bunch of stuff. Before they changed it, section 28 used to read (bold and red is my emphasis):

Where a person is, or is to be, confined in a penitentiary, the Service shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that the penitentiary in which the person is confined is one that provides the least restrictive environment for that person, taking into account

And that's how it read in the first place when the CCRA was enacted in 1992 by the Mulroney Conservatives. Not coincidentally, it's basically the same wording that the Liberals changed it back to in 2019.




Why did the Harper Conservatives change it?

That goes back to a policy paper called A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety authored by a review panel appointed by Stockwell Day when he was Minister of Public Safety in 2007. The panel recommended revamping the Correctional Service of Canada's mandate, including an "increased emphasis on offender accountability": the idea being that an offender couldn't be successfully rehabilitated unless they were putting in effort too. They recommended that one of the CSC's guiding principles, to "use the least restrictive measures consistent with the protection of the public, staff members and offenders", needed to be expunged and replace with "appropriate measures", because,

The Panel believes that this principle has been emphasized too much by the staff and management of CSC, and even by the courts in everyday decision-making about offenders. As a result an imbalance has been created that places the onus on CSC to justify why the least restrictive measures shouldn't be used, rather than on offenders to justify why they should have access to privileges based upon their performance under their correctional plans. The Panel believes that this imbalance is detrimental to offender responsibility and accountability. The Panel acknowledges that these measures should be applied with respect to the Rule of Law.

This was always going to be problematic because, as the Canadian Bar Association's review of the Safe Streets and Communities Act put it, it fails the Oakes test: it does not "impair the [Charter] right in question as little as possible". That's why section 28 of the CCRA was written with "the least restrictive environment" in the first place in 1992.

The Allard School of Law at UBC published an analysis of the Roadmap in 2009 and of it, the authors wrote:

Neither the report nor the transformation agenda has been subject to any serious public policy analysis or debate, yet corrections is now being made over in its image. Makeovers – of faces, bodies and houses - may provide acceptable scripts for popular reality television shows, but this makeover of federal corrections affects not just the external façade of prisons but would undermine the fundamental human rights of the men and women confined behind their walls and fences. Yet the Roadmap makes no reference to and indeed seems oblivious to the long struggle in the history of Canadian imprisonment to entrench a culture of respect for human rights. There are many recommendations of the Roadmap which reflect ideological and populist views that being “tough on crime” is a sufficient and defensible basis for public policy. Not only will implementation of many of the key recommendations undermine respect for human rights but they will also do nothing to enhance public safety. They are deeply flawed and we believe it is necessary that the Government and CSC be held accountable before the “transformation” makes a mockery of Canada’s commitment to the defence of human rights.

There would have been no need to prepare this response had the Roadmap been the result of an informed and objective panel whose credibility was not seriously undermined by obvious politically partisan influences and ideology. It might not have been necessary if the Panel had been aided by expert independent policy and research staff, or if its recommendations had enjoyed significant public review. It would not have been necessary had there been time for the Panel to prepare a carefully constructed analysis that clearly justified its recommendations in terms of effectiveness and cost. Neither would it have been necessary had the recommendations been built upon our well documented correctional history, human rights considerations and an understanding of the relevant law. But none of these essential components for responsible, principled and effective public policy making were present.

The revision the Liberal government made to section 28 of the CCRA in 2019 was the revision suggested by the CBA in 2011 before the Safe Streets and Communities Act was passed in the first place, verbatim. (See page 45 of the PDF I linked earlier (page 39 of the document).) They mostly just put it back the way it was before the Harper Conservatives ####ed around with it because they had to, because just as the CBA predicted in 2011 the changes the Conservatives made were eventually found to be unconstitutional by the courts.



Paul Bernardo wasn't transferred to a medium-security institution because the Liberals aren't "tough on crime" as Lilley exclaims: Bernardo was evaluated to be suitable for incarceration in a medium-security institution based on the same policies and procedures used to determine every inmate's security level. If you read the report published by CSC about the decision to transfer Bernardo, he had been evaluated as suitable for medium security all the way back in 1999, and at every single subsequent evaluation, but was kept in maximum security solely because they were keeping him away from other inmates for his safety.

[Locke]

If you want to come down on Trudeau and the Liberals theres lots of ammo there.

Like calling a Pandemic Election to put us right back where we started, or using the pandemic to try to sneak through that bill that would give his Government unchecked spending powers for something like 18 months that even his own Party shot down.

How are those WE guys doing in Kenya? Or the SNC execs?

Sometimes we can forget how much of a snake-in-the-grass Trudeau can be, but CERB? I dont give him credit for it, he was led by the nose on that one, but I dont blame the Liberals for it either.

It had to be done.

[jayswin]

@timun - He didn't read it.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Locke

but CERB? I dont give him credit for it, he was led by the nose on that one, but I dont blame the Liberals for it either.

It had to be done.

I hope you aren't referring to me since I was specifically not talking about CERB. Not sure who you are addressing?