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Conservatives Threaten Election over Tough on Crime Bill
Feb 15, 2008
Stark Raven Media Collective
The Conservatives have threatened to call an election if the Senate fails to pass the tough on crime omnibus bill by March 1.
They introduced a highly unconventional motion in the House of Commons last week making the tough on crime bill a matter of confidence. The motion passed in the House of Commons with Conservative and Bloc support. The Liberals walked out of the house, in essence abstaining from the vote.
The Conservatives claim that if the Bill doesn’t pass in the Senate by March 1st, then they will ask the Governor General to dissolve parliament and call an election.
Although the House of Commons has no constitutional authority over the Senate, the motion essentially asks members of the elected chamber to put pressure on their counterparts in the Senate.It is unclear how the Senate will respond to this motion. While the Senate committee studying the bill has agreed to extend its hours and sit through a planned break, some Senators have said that it would not be possible to pass the bill by March 1.
Critics are accusing the Conservatives of trying to engineer an election on a law-and-order issue. The Conservatives consider their tough on crime agenda one of their strong points.Bill C-2, the tough on crime omnibus bill, passed in the House of Commons in November.
It consists of a number of re-packaged American-style justice bills that died when the last Parliament was cut short in September. The bill includes mandatory minimums for several gun crimes, three strikes and you are a dangerous offender unless you can prove otherwise, automatic refusal of bail to those charged with gun crimes and changing the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14.Community groups and criminologists have spoken out against these bills saying that the evidence shows that mandatory minimums and other tough on crime approaches don’t actually work to deter or reduce crime and will send more people to jail for longer.
Sources & Further Articles:More on Bill C-2 and the calls to stop the Bill
www.thestar.com
cbc.ca
nationalpost.com
cnews.canoe.ca
thestar.com
ctv.ca