Crime Bill C 10
In the middle of a major and continuing recession, lay-offs and budget deficits, not to mention crime statistics that have been falling for years, Harper introduces his Safe Streets and Communities Act. This includes more mandatory minimum sentences, harsher sentences for young offenders and a freer hand for jailers in how they treat prisoners. The Tories refuse to say how much this is going to cost and are already trying to download costs to Ontario and Quebec. This aping of policies brought in by Bush-Cheney seems designed to appease the Tory ideological base, even though they have clearly failed in America itself. Even Texan Republicans have spoken about the wrong-headedness of these policies. The CBC cites Judge Creuzot of Dallas County Court: "You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up…And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out." Representative Jerry Madden, a conservative Republican who heads the Texas House Committee on Corrections says, "It's a very expensive thing to build new prisons and, if you build 'em, I guarantee you they will come. They'll be filled, OK? Because people will send them there.

Tories plead guilty of violating election rules.
Canadian Press: “The Conservatives are being accused of buying victory in the 2006 election that brought Stephen Harper to power, after pleading guilty Thursday to exceeding their campaign spending limit and failing to report all advertising expenses. The Conservative party and its fundraising agency both pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Elections Act and agreed to pay maximum fines totalling $52,000. In a plea bargain, the party pleaded not guilty to more serious charges of wilfully contravening the act and all charges were dropped against four top party officials who implemented the so-called in-and-out scheme to finance radio and television advertising during the 2006 campaign. Conservative spokesman Fred DeLorey quickly issued a statement claiming the plea bargain is "a big victory" for the party in its five-year "administrative dispute" with Elections Canada over the legality of the in-and-out scheme”. $52,000 is a cheap price for buying an election!! Again Harper’s Tories get away with wrong doing with no public protest. Maybe Harper’s crime bill should include mandatory sentences for unlawful political dealings!

G8/ G20 debacle
Still no consequences for Tony Clement diverting $50 million to his Muskoka riding and for the security bungling in Toronto.

Tar Sands Pipeline delayed
In response to American environment protests and civil disobedience (it works!), Obama has delayed approving the Keystone XL pipeline which was supposed to run from Alberta to Texas over environmentally sensitive areas as well as over the Ogallala Aquifer, which is a vast but shallow underground water table running right down the heartlands of America. Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star writes: “For Canada’s Conservative government, there are two lessons in Barack Obama’s surprise decision to delay the international pipeline slated to deliver Alberta tar-sands oil to American refineries. The first is that, politically, the environment still matters. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have successfully ignored environmental critics at home. But, as the U.S. president’s abrupt reversal on the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrates, such critics still wield considerable clout in countries that Canada is desperate to do business with. The second is that continental energy integration — a long-standing dream of both the Conservative Party and its allies in the oil industry —is neither as simple nor advisable as it might seem. Throughout his time in office, Harper’s approach to climate change has verged on the contemptuous”.