Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his recent Senate appointments would help make Canada a safer place by allowing his government' s justice legislation to pass into law unchanged, but with the Independent Senators now holding the balance of power things aren't likely to be much different.
The government introduced 17 law-and-order bills last year, of which three were passed into law, and the rest died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued on Dec. 30. Of the three bills that were before the Upper House two were still making their way through the normal legislative process, and one was amended by the Liberal Senators with the support of four of the five Independents, with one absent due to illness.
The last bill, C-15, would amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for mandatory minimum prison sentences for anyone found with more than five marijuana plants. The amendments that were passed in December changed the bill so that anyone with less than 201 plants would not require a mandatory minimum sentence as long as the production occurs outdoors, not in a residential area, and the grower must own the land. But if someone produces one plant in a residential neighbourhood, on a rented property, or in a house that the person owns, C-15 still prescribes a nine-month prison term.
The Conservatives said the Liberal Senators "gutted" Bill C-15, and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson (Niagara Falls, Ont.) plans to reintroduce the bill in its original form in the Senate when Parliament returns in March. But even though the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, where the amendments were originally conceived, will be reconstituted to reflect that the Conservatives now have a plurality in the Senate, the amendments can be reintroduced in the Senate Chamber and will pass unless the Liberals or Independents change their minds. The Standings in the Senate are now 51 Conservatives, 49 Liberals, and five Independents.
"I don't think that the position of the Senate will change on it," Liberal Senator George Baker told The Hill Times recently.
Alberta Independent Senator Elaine McCoy said the power she and her fellow Independents now hold won't change how they vote on specific issues, including Bill C-15.
"Every bill that comes before us I've been looking at it and making up my mind on that issue, so I'm not going to change, that's still going to happen," she said.
When asked how C-15 would meet with a different fate this time around, a spokesperson for the Justice Minister said the fact that the Liberals will no longer have a majority on the committee could have an impact. She said the government would not consider waiting until they have a majority in the Senate, which won't be possible until 2011, to reintroduce the bill. Also of note, a bill similar to C-15 was first introduced by the government in 2007 but subsequently died on the order paper when Prime Minister Harper called an election in 2008.
Even though the government's justice legislation was passed in the House of Commons with the support of the Liberals, the Tories have been aggressively going after the Grits for obstructing what the Prime Minister called "urgently needed" new laws. When Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) filled five vacant Senate seats last month the PMO put out a press release stating that all of the new Senators are committed to community safety and justice for the victims of crime, and new Ontario Senator Bob Runciman held a press conference calling on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.) to order his Senators to pass Bill C-15.
"After months of Liberal stalling and delays, Ignatieff's Liberals gutted this important piece of legislation. Canadians are fed up with unelected Liberal senators doing Ignatieff's dirty work and standing in the way of action to protect victims and get tough on dangerous criminals. Michael Ignatieff needs to explain to Canadians why his own unelected Liberal senators gutted this special measure and he needs to tell his Liberal senators to support it when it is reintroduced and Canadians expect nothing less," Sen. Runciman said at the time.
Nova Scotia Liberal Senator James Cowan, leader of the opposition in the Senate, recently sent a lengthy letter to Mr. Nicholson in which he accused the Justice Minister of being dishonest with the Canadian people by blaming the Liberals for holding up the government's justice legislation, pointing out that it was the Prime Minister's decision to prorogue Parliament that stopped most of the bills in their tracks.
The letter also noted that, considering the government said the legislation was urgent, it has been slow to implement the bills that have already been passed. Once a bill is given Royal Assent it can be implemented immediately, but the government can also put a provision on a bill so that the coming-into-force date is set by order of the governor in council (the Cabinet), which has been the case with much of the government's crime bills.
At a press conference in January Prime Minister Harper implied that a member of the so-called Toronto 18 terror suspects was able to get out of jail earlier because the Liberals held up the government's changes to the two-for-one sentencing act, even though it was his government that waited four months to implement the bill. Bill C-25 received third reading in the Senate on Oct. 21, 2009, but will not come into force until 2010. Additionally, Bill C-14, dealing with organized crime, received third reading in the Senate on June 22, 2009, but was not brought into force by the Harper government until Oct. 2. Bill S-4, which was started in the Senate and strengthens laws around identity theft, received third reading in the Senate on June 11, 2009, and in the House of Commons on Oct. 20, but wasn't implemented until Jan. 8, 2010.
Once the reintroduced C-15 makes its way through the Senate this time around it will then have to be sent back to the House of Commons. In the last session of Parliament the NDP and the Bloc voted against the bill, while the Liberals voted with the government. Liberal MPs have said publicly they are uncomfortable with aspects of the government's crime agenda, and that they were in part motivated by a fear of being labeled "soft on crime" by the Tories.
But since then a new team has been put into place in the opposition leader's office, and the party has been taking steps to try and distinguish their policies from those of the government. In an interview last week with The Hill Times, Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering, Ont.) said the prorogation period, during which the Grits have been holding roundtables on a plethora of policy areas, has allowed the caucus to take a "careful second look" at the government's crime legislation.
Mr. Holland said the party agrees with certain aspects of the government's crime bills, but expressed concern that other measures, such as mandatory minimum sentences, would do nothing to deter criminals and would only swell the prison population, as has been the case in many U.S. states. He said his party would finalize its position in the "near future," and left the door open to the Liberals withdrawing their support for the government's law and order agenda.
"When you start looking at the whole package, the whole picture, the whole thing that's starting to emerge of where they're going you start to say, 'We saw this picture, it was California, it was a disaster and we don't want to be that.' And I think that's what this pause is allowing, is an opportunity to consider the totality of the impact of what's happening here," he said.
Mr. Holland has asked Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page to examine how much the government's changes to the justice system would cost in terms of increased expenditures for prisons, and Mr. Page is expected to release his report sometime in March. The annual budget for "corrections infrastructure" has grown from $88.5-million in 2006-07, to $195.1-million in 2008-09, and is projected to reach $211.6-million this fiscal year. The average annual cost of keeping a Canadian inmate incarcerated is $93,030.
hmacleod@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
By HARRIS MACLEOD, The Hill Times
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