Scanned, recopied or Internet copy, if there are errors, please e-mail me with corrections:
Opening comments: More at the end.
The Liberal Leader Stephane Dion unveiled the Liberal platform for Law & Order and personally promised me to look into the matter I raised. The sound clip of the promise is on this page.
I wonder why the Toronto Star did not note my question to Stephane Dion, it was a good one with a local interest - maybe they have a right-wing or Troy BIAS?
Toronto Star - Mar. 14, 2007 - By Susan Delacourt, Ottawa Bureau Chief.
Liberals back gun crime bail crackdown
But Dion rejects longer sentences
{NATHAN DENETTE/CP}
Opposition leader Stephane Dion said a Liberal government would get tough on crime
by giving more money to the provinces to hire police officers and Crown attorneys in a speech in Mississauga March 14.
MISSISSAUGA - Liberals will help Prime Minister Stephen Harper if he wants to make it harder for people arrested on gun crimes to get bail, says leader Stephane Dion.
But the Liberals are drawing the line at longer jail sentences as a way to get tough on crime, Dion said this morning as he unveiled a long list of measures intended to underline his party's commitment to public safety.
Dion has offered to help the Conservatives pass a measure that would require accused gun offenders to justify why they should be released on bail -- the so-called "reverse-onus" provision.
But this is only one part of what the Tories have proposed as a tough law-and-order package and one of Harper's famous "five priorities" of his first year in power. Conservatives would also like to see tougher and longer minimum sentences for some crimes.
"At the end of the day, it will not be effective," Dion said this morning, speaking to a crowd in an old brick building that used to serve as a courthouse in Streetsville -- a building that still has prison cells in the basement. Using harsher sentences these days, Dion said, "will have a higher incarceration rate but not a lower crime rate. And a lot of experts are saying that as well."
Dion is in the midst of an busy tour through Southern Ontario today and over the next few days, in what well may become a rehearsal for an election campaign. The law-and-order platform released by the Liberals yesterday, which also included promises for hundreds more police and RCMP officers and a crackdown on identity and Internet crime, is also in part a reply to Conservative charges that Dion and his party are "soft on crime."
Over the next few days, Dion will be in London, Kitchener, Mississauga, Welland, St. Catharines and Milton -- areas identified in this week's census as prime population-growth spots and therefore rich in potential votes for all political parties.
Home Page - Main Table of Contents - Back up a page - Back to Top
[COMMENTS BY DON B. - ]