canada

By Joe Fiorito, Toronto Star

The omnibus crime bill is a freight train of unintended consequences. Here are some examples:

By increasing the penalties for the production of marijuana, many small-time growers — people who are unlikely to take a bigger risk — will get out of the game.

The unintended consequence?

When the small fry leave, the field becomes bigger and more profitable for the hard-core growers, the professional gangs who know how to protect themselves, and who are thus in a position to reap big financial rewards when the price of pot rises.

The bad guys get richer?

I’d say that’s an unintended consequence. Read more »

ALEX DOBUZINSKIS, Reuters Published: Toronto Sun

Efforts to legalize marijuana for recreational use are gaining momentum in Washington state and Colorado, despite fierce opposition from the federal government and a decades-long cultural battle over America’s most commonly used illicit drug.

Officials in Washington state on Friday said an initiative to legalize pot has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in November. In Colorado, officials are likely this week to make a similar determination about an initiative there.

Supporters are prepared to possibly spend millions of dollars ahead of the November ballot, when they hope a strong voter turnout, particularly among youth, for the U.S. presidential election will aid their cause. Read more »

By: KIRK MAKIN, Globe and Mail

Canadians are finally getting the message that crime rates are falling.

New poll results show the public is abandoning a stubborn belief that crime is on the rise, bringing public opinion into alignment with a 20-year trend of declining crime rates.

The long-standing disconnect between public fears and reality has confounded criminologists and fuelled federal get-tough policies.

However, the Environics Focus Canada poll – obtained by The Globe and Mail and scheduled for release Thursday – shakes conventional wisdom even more by finding growing support for the use of crime prevention rather than punishment. Read more »

The Canadian Press, Published Globe and Mail

Provinces hoping to get some signal that Ottawa is considering their calls to foot the costs of implementing the omnibus crime bill were disappointed on Thursday after a meeting of justice ministers in Charlottetown.

Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told his provincial counterparts that Ottawa has already committed to increase transfer payments by $2.4-billion.

Earlier this week, the Ontario government said the legislation would add more than $1-billion in increased police and court costs, and reiterated its calls for Ottawa to pay.

During a news conference wrapping up the three-day meeting, Mr. Nicholson made it clear Ontario wouldn’t get what it was asking for. Read more »

BY JEFF DAVIS, POSTMEDIA NEWS

OTTAWA — Canada's prison population is not growing as fast as expected in the wake of Tory tough-on-crime legislation, prompting Corrections Canada to abort plans to hire 4,000 new prison guards.

According to the most recent data, Canada's federal prison population stood at 14,893 at the end of 2011, significantly fewer than the 17,189 prisoners Corrections Canada predicted would be locked up by then.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said he never believed predictions that the prison population would grow significantly when the government passed legislation that increased mandatory minimum sentences and repealed the two-for-one time served provisions.

Toews said he now feels vindicated. Read more »

By Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star

Ottawa is stiffing Ontario with the $1 billion cost of implementing sweeping crime changes, the provincial government says.

The new federal omnibus crime legislation will add another 1,500 prisoners in the corrections system, force the building of another prison and put pressure on parole officers, according to the ministry of community safety and correctional services. Bill C-10 received third reading in Parliament last month and is now before the Senate.

Prisons are already crowded and operating at 95 per cent capacity with 8,500 inmates, said Community Safety Minister Madeleine Meilleur. Read more »

BY CHRIS COBB, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

OTTAWA — Ontario taxpayers can’t afford the more than $1 billion that new federal crime legislation will cost the province, Community Safety and Correctional Minister Madeleine Meilleur said Monday.

In a pointed “you want it, you pay for it” message to the federal government ahead of a two-day justice ministers meeting in Prince Edward Island, Meilleur said the Bill C-10 legislation will add a huge load to an already overburdened provincial justice system.

“We expect Ottawa to do what’s right and provide additional funding to help Ontario to deal with the consequences of Bill C-10,” she said. “It is unacceptable that Ontarians are expected to bear the cost of federal anti-crime initiatives.” Read more »

By donalee Moulton, The Lawyers Weekly

A controversial report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) slams private prisons and mass incarceration in the U.S. for harming imprisoned individuals and the government’s bottom line while making companies extremely wealthy.

Legal experts in Canada say that the same jailhouse problems — ​escalating violence, increased costs, and overcrowding — ​exist in this country, and the federal government’s new omnibus crime bill may sow the seeds for private prisons here. There is, however, a constitutional issue that may make this impossible. The federal government is also saying private prisons are not coming to Canada. Read more »

By: Layla Cameron, Xtra News Read more »

By: Ben Christopher, The Tyee

The way that North Americans think about drug addiction is "mistaken, nasty, and stupid."

That's the key message of a new book by Dr. Peter Ferentzy, a Toronto-based addiction specialist with over twenty years of experience studying social attitudes surrounding drug use. A self-proclaimed "crackhead" himself who has been "to hell and back," he claims to bring a special kind of expertise to the topic.

This Sunday, Ferentzy will be touting his book and speaking about Canadian drug policy at a lecture in Downtown Vancouver.

In Dealing with Addiction: Why the 20th Century Was Wrong, Ferentzy calls for a radical change in the way that North American society views addiction and for the foment of a political campaign among drug users akin to the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Read more »