Tough on Crime? Hardly.

Stephen Harper was in Vancouver yesterday, and aside from his announcement of federal funding for a rapid transit line known as the Evergreen Line, there was nothing else that his visit provided that appeared remotely useful to the people of the Lower Mainland.

Metro Vancouver has been gripped by a massive wave of gang violence over the course of the past month, with 18 people having been killed thus far. This bloodbath is showing no signs of slowing down, and what's most shameful is that the Prime Minister chooses to play politics while the bodies are piling up. What is disturbing is that the Prime Minister used an ongoing crisis to try and score some cheap points. Don't believe me? Here are his own words:

The truth of the matter is, those who say that the tougher penalties on perpetrators will not work don’t want them to work because they don’t believe in his kind of approach. We know that we’re going to hear these critics, and we know that we’re going to hear the opposition parrot some of these critics because they all believe in soft-on-crime policies.

What's shocking here is that both the Liberals and the NDP had already indicated their support for the sort of legislation that was being tabled, and after Harper spoke, both parties reiterated their support for the measure, but these so-called "soft-on-crime" parties indicated that they didn't feel that the measures went far enough. I'm inclined to agree.

BC Attorney-General Wally Oppal was in Ottawa to meet with the Justice Minister to suggest some solutions of his own. These proposals would actually do something about the problem. Mr. Oppal pointed out that increased sentencing on its own is meaningless. This isn't a bleeding-heart belief; in this case, it is a simple matter of fact. Our police are not catching these criminals. When they do, they are not getting the evidence needed for the Crown to secure a conviction. If you can't catch someone, or convict them, then sentencing is meaningless. Now, don't get me wrong here. I am not criticizing our police, nor am I criticizing our prosecutors. They are being denied the tools that they need to actually catch these people. For years now, provincial Attorneys-General have been lobbying this Conservative government to change our laws to make things more streamlined. Our wiretap laws are so antiquated that they do not make provision for e-mail, cellular phones, PDA's, etc. Our disclosure laws are now so onerous that police departments have to pull officers off the street to satisfy the requirements of those laws. Those are officers that could be out there keeping us safe, but who have to waste months, and sometimes years, doing paperwork. Something is very wrong here.

Then, of course, there is the utter joke of 2-for-1 sentencing. For those of you who do not know, 2-for-1 is the name given to a sentencing credit system, whereby those who spend pretrial and/or trial in detention are given double credit for time served. If you spend a year in lockup, they'll knock two years off your sentence. Sometimes, that number can go as high as 3 to 4 times the time actually served. Every single one of Canada's provincial Attorneys-General has fought for an end to this travesty, and yet our tough-on-crime Justice Minister isn't interested.

It's time to face reality: the Conservatives don't care about keeping us safe. They care about two things: staying in power, and attacking their opponents. If there is widespread opposition support for a measure, odds are that the Government will do anything they can to kill it, even as people are slaughtered in shopping mall parking lots, in the middle of the street, and all in broad daylight. A Prime Minister who acts with such reckless disregard for public safety has no place holding his office. Canada deserves a Prime Minister who actually cares, and it's high time we had one.