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December 21, 2011 - No. 18
Demands for "Austerity Measures"
Stop Paying the Rich;
Increase Investments in Social Programs!
Public Right, Yes! Monopoly Right, No!
- Steve Rutchinski -
Demands for "Austerity Measures"
• Stop
Paying the Rich; Increase Investments in Social Programs! Public Right,
Yes! Monopoly Right, No! - Steve Rutchinski
For Your Information
• Misrepresentation of the Facts -- Lies
About
Ontario Government Spending
• A Word About Moody's
Toronto Municipal
Workers on the Front Line
• Ford Regime Continues Push for "Showdown"
with Toronto Workers and Residents
• Toronto Needs a Pro Social Aim -
David Greig
Public Child Care Is a
Right
• Government Supports Privatization of Child
Care by
International Monopoly - Pritilata
Waddedar
Harper Omnibus Crime
Bill
• Impact of Crime Bill on Ontario - Philip Fernandez
Demands
for
"Austerity
Measures"
Stop Paying the Rich;
Increase Investments in Social Programs!
Public Right, Yes! Monopoly Right, No!
- Steve Rutchinski -
 Not unexpected but
nonetheless unacceptable. The international financial oligarchy is
ending the year with a stepped up demand for the government of Ontario
to impose "austerity measures" in the New Year, or face increased
borrowing costs. On December 14 the so-called investor service,
Moody's, declared
that if Ontario "does not take serious steps in the next budget to deal
with the multibillion dollar deficit," it will downgrade the province's
credit rating.
Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan immediately
declared "Moody's action shows that the government must be 'relentless'
in meeting its targets to eliminate the province's deficit by
2017-2018." Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak said, "The Moody's warning is a
further wake-up call to Dalton McGuinty
that this job [turning the province's finances around] needs to start
now." TD Bank chief economist Craig Alexander agreed. What markets need
from governments around the world right now are credible
commitments to deal with their deficits in the medium term, Alexander
said. The Globe
and Mail said Moody's was
ratcheting up pressure for the province to take more aggressive action
to rein in spending and "get its fiscal house in order."
One would think that having paid more than $150 billion
in interest alone in 10 years on a provincial debt, which in 1992 stood
at $49.4
billion, and despite not incurring any new debt in six of the last 10
years, Ontario should have a five star credit rating, not a second rate
Aa1 bond rating. The people of Ontario do not
even know how the government spends their money, transferred as it is
through secret deals such as the written off loans given GM and
Chrysler, but the international financial oligarchy credit rating
services are certainly going to tell them what to do with the rest! The
more the rich manage to swindle, the more
they demand. It has now become the fashion to blackmail countries with
the downgrading of their credit rating, which results in higher
borrowing costs, unless they restructure to meet all the claims of the
rich, while the claims of the people are to have no standing.
Moody's threat to downgrade Ontario's credit rating and
its repetition by representatives of government, big business and the
monopoly media is PR to add fuel to the fire that Ontario has no choice
but to cut spending on social programs, attack public service workers
and privatize delivery of public services under
the hoax of "saving money." Moody's pronouncements are not based on
facts. Facts and truth do not matter to the hired guns of the financial
oligarchy which is on a mission to wreck the existing social
infrastructure of all the societies, privatizing whatever is lucrative
in the delivery of public services and resources
so as to plunder the public treasury.
 By capitulating to this
blackmail, the Government of Ontario and the Opposition are permitting
gross interference in our sovereign affairs. The PR spin seeks to
perpetuate the lie that the people of Ontario are being sustained by
the rich so as to justify cuts to the funding of social programs, cuts
to public services
and privatization of delivery of public services under the hoax it will
"save money."
The fact that Moody's is privately owned, makes its
money doing the bidding of the financial oligarchy, has little regard
for truth or that its principle owners are suspected of insider
trading, corruption and blackmail has no bearing on the character of
its pronouncement, according to them. Moody's is to be taken
as the word of god!
Why is this when Moody's assertions contradict the
published public accounts? Why do Ontario government officials not
stand by their published accounts? Do they have a guilty conscience
that their accounts are not accurate? Or is it that they are
capitulating to the credit rating agency of the international financial
oligarchy so as to blackmail the people of Ontario that they have to
tighten their belts? Why should the people of Ontario tighten their
belts rather than the government of Ontario stop paying the rich? Far
from permitting the demand that the people of Ontario should be taxed
more to pay for social services, or that
social services should be privatized, the working class should demand
that governments do their duty to uphold the public interest which must
start by refusing to put all the assets of Ontario, including its
government, at the disposal of the dictate and blackmail of the
financial oligarchy.
Stop Paying the Rich!
Increase Funding for Social Programs!
Say No! to Austerity Measures!
For Your Information
Misrepresentation of the Facts --
Lies About Ontario Government Spending
The Ministry of Finance 2010-2011 Public Accounts shows
that provincial revenue exceeded provincial program spending every year
from 2002 through 2008. Only in 2009-10 and 2010-11 did spending exceed
revenues and that was due to spending to bail the rich out of the
crisis, not to increase funding for
social programs for people in need due to the upheaval caused by the
financial crisis.
These are matters of fact published in the Ministry's
own Public Accounts statement: "From 2003 until the start of the global
recession, average growth in program spending was held below growth in
revenues." It continues: "In response to the global economic downturn,
the Province collaborated with the federal
government, municipalities and other organizations on a program of
additional stimulus spending that started in 2009." A total of $16.3
billion was committed by the provincial government, of which $15.2
billion was spent by the end of 2010 fiscal year. (See Table 1 below)
Stimulus spending is rolled into "program" spending in
the Ontario Financial Accounts statement. If the $15.2 billion in
stimulus spending is taken out of the $106.3 billion "program"
expenditures for 2009-2010, program expenditure was actually only $91.1
billion, less than provincial revenue and in fact a decrease
from the 2008-09 fiscal year. (See Table 2 below)
Table One: Ontario Ministry of Finance Public
Accounts 2010- 2011
Table Two: Ontario Program Expenditure
A Word About Moody's
 
Protests in Portugal
(left) and Spain this past July, following credit downgrades by
Moody's.
The following excerpts regarding Moody's are taken from
Wikipedia.
***
[Moody's] is one of the big three credit rating agencies
and has a 40 per cent share of the world market, as does its main
rival, Standard & Poor's. Fitch Ratings has a smaller share.
Starting in the early 1970s, the "Big Three" ratings
agencies (S&P, Moody's, and Fitch) began to receive payment for
their work by the securities issuers for whom they issue those ratings,
which has led to charges that these ratings agencies can no longer
always be impartial when issuing ratings for those securities
issuers. Securities issuers have been accused of "shopping" for the
best ratings from these three ratings agencies, in order to attract
investors, until at least one of the agencies delivers favorable
ratings. This arrangement has been cited as one of the primary causes
of the subprime mortgage crisis (which began in 2007),
when some securities, particularly mortgage backed securities and
colleralized debt obligations rated highly by the credit ratings
agencies, and thus heavily invested in by many organizations and
individuals, were rapidly and vastly devalued due to defaults, and fear
of defaults, on some of the individual components
of those securities, such as home loans and credit card accounts.
Moody's have been subject to criticism in the wake of
large losses in the asset-backed security collateralized debt
obligation (ABS CDO) market that occurred despite being assigned top
ratings by the credit rating agencies Similarly, large companies such
as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had AAA and AA
rating until they went bankrupt in 2008.
Moody's has been accused of "blackmail". In one example
the German insurer Hannover Re was offered a "free rating" by Moody's.
The insurer refused. Moody's continued with the "free ratings," but
over time lowered its rating of the company. Still refusing Moody's
services, Moody's lowered Hannover's
debt to junk, and the company in a few hours lost $175 million in
market value.
Portugal's foreign debt downgrade to the category Ba2
"junk" has infuriated the European Union and Portugal alike. Moody's
has been accused of fueling speculation and bias towards European
assets. Furthermore the legitimacy of US based rating agencies has also
been put in question. State owned utility and
infrastructure companies were also downgraded despite claims to having
solid financial profiles and significant foreign revenue
[...]
[Raymond W. McDaniel, Jr. chairman and chief executive
officer of Moody's Corporation, the parent company of Moody's Investor
Services and Moody's Analytics] has also been the subject of
significant scrutiny for the timing of his stock sales. "If you look at
his major sales in 2007, 2009, 2010, they are
all around price peaks and followed by large declines. The likelihood
that this is just 'lucky' is very low -- it appears he is using inside
information to time his trades, said Jesse Fried, a Harvard University
law professor who studies stock trading by CEOs." [...]
[E]fforts by company employees to report improperly
evaluated financial products (sub-prime mortgage scandal) were handled
slowly, and little publicity was drawn to subsequent revisions of
financial models on which the evaluations were based. Moody's, and Mr.
McDaniel personally, were named in a civil
lawsuit alleging employees who reported such actions were subjected to
"defamation, injurious falsehoods and tortious interference with
business relationships" through "malicious, false and/or scandalous
statements"
In December, 2010, Mr. McDaniel's terms of employment
with Moody's were changed. "According to a Dec. 20 regulatory filing,
Moody's said that it amended its "change in control" plan so that in
the event of a sale, Mr. McDaniel would get a lump-sum payment equal to
three times his base salary and "target
bonus." Based on his pay for 2009, the most recent year available, the
change would make Mr. McDaniel eligible for a payment of $6.9 million,
which is about seven times as much as he would have received under the
former arrangement. [...]
Toronto
Municipal Workers on the Front
Line
Ford Regime Continues Push for "Showdown" with Toronto
Workers and Residents
On Wednesday, December 14, negotiators for the Ford
regime presented CUPE Local 416 with a plan to expand use of part-time
workers across city operations, and then moved immediately to call on
the provincial government to appoint a conciliator under the Ontario Labour Relations Act. This
provocation
is another step in the administration's push for a "showdown," as Ford
has put it, with inside and outside city workers and their unions. The
city employees' main collective agreements expire December 31st.
The "showdown" this regime seeks is an abuse of power
against municipal workers and all residents of Toronto, and negates a
modern conception of society itself. The municipal workers are on the
front lines of this battle over what kind of city and society are to
be, because the Ford administration needs to smash
the job security provisions in the workers' collective agreements in
order to continue rapidly handing over public services to private
monopolies.
Job security provisions in the existing contracts with
Toronto municipal workers are an important impediment to privatization
because the city is required to redeploy rather than lay off permanent
workers whose jobs are contracted out. However, about one-third of the
5,500 CUPE Local 416 members covered
by these contracts are temporary employees not covered by these
provisions. A significant portion of the "inside" workers in the larger
Local 79 are in the same situation.
Applying for a provincial conciliator is a legal
prerequisite to locking out the workers with the aim of imposing
conditions of work dictated by the Ford regime. It truncates
negotiations and even mediation for settlement of bargaining
differences and would hasten the issuing of a "no board" report by the
conciliator,
17 days after which the city could lock-out its workers. The Ford
regime wants to continue implementing its agenda as rapidly as
possible, and considers a winter lock-out (or strike) to be to its
advantage rather than one in warm weather.
 Mayor Rob Ford told the
media his administration is "bargaining in good faith." These
manoeuvres for the purpose of imposing the regime's will on city
workers are nothing of the sort. And Ford has already lied about
balancing the municipal budget without imposing new taxes, cuts to
social services and lay-offs
of municipal employees. As for the pledge to sell off or privatize
anything that isn't nailed down, the Ford regime is proceeding in the
face of the broad and growing resistance of the people of Toronto.
There is nothing "in good faith" about anything the Ford administration
is up to.
In the same vein, Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday told the
media that "all we are trying to do is come up with a reasonable
agreement that allows management to manage." There is nothing
"reasonable" about trying to destroy the security, well-being and jobs
of thousands of workers who provide public social programmes
and services, or leaving them subject to the unrestricted will of the
regime and its management. This assault on the city workers is an
integral part of this regime's whole anti-social agenda of cuts,
privatization and increased user fees etc., and is an attack on the
people of Toronto as a whole.
Toronto Needs a Pro Social Aim
- David Greig -
  
Throughout 2011 thousands of Toronto residents time and
again, at official venues as well as demonstrations, have confronted
the Ford regime to reject its cuts and privatization agenda. Their
demands have been largely ignored or rebuffed on the basis that the
funding for public social programs, services, and
the pay and benefits of the workers who provide them, must be reduced
and many jobs eliminated. This comes in various ways: "taxpayers" must
be respected; the city's supposedly difficult fiscal situation demands
these measures; the city must save money by imposing upon its workers
the insecurity and low wages
that are the lot of so many others and, in general terms, there is no
money.
In a modern society, the state's duty, and that of its
various levels of government, is to guarantee the rights, security and
well-being of the people. The Toronto city government, among other
governments, is in violation of that principle. This is evident in its
approach to its finances, spending and the rights, security
and well-being of city residents. How else can the city government plan
to eliminate or degrade public day care, homeless shelters, transit,
nutrition programs, libraries, access to recreation, etc. or deprive
those who provide public services of their standard conditions and
jobs? Why is it these things are threatened
or attacked rather than guaranteed and improved? Why does the regime so
blatantly abuse its power and stubbornly dismiss people's demands that
public services and jobs be preserved and even increased?
The inescapable conclusion is that this regime has
another aim, an aim that violates its duty to human society. Instead,
the aim which it pursues relentlessly, puts public services and assets
in jeopardy or in the wrecking yard. Its aim, like that of other levels
of government, is to fulfill the demands of big private
capital, the rich and their monopolies, to increase their profits and
put what has remained public directly in the service of those interests.
When a public service is cut -- subsidized day care, for
instance -- it increases the market for private companies selling
daycare; what was formerly provided in part according to need using tax
and user fees, now will be available only according to ability to pay.
When a public service is privatized, for instance
garbage collection or water and sewage, the public monies and user fees
that formerly paid for the service (inputs, wages, etc.), will have to
provide a guaranteed profit to the monopoly involved as well as pay the
costs of the service. In spite of the rhetoric, provision
of this private profit is the main purpose of the privatization. And
since the purpose of the privatized services is private profit, a
decline in quality is one way of achieving that end.
In many cases, public jobs at modest but standard pay
and benefits will be eliminated and a smaller number of workers paid
lower wages and who receive fewer benefits will be employed, providing
more room for private profit. Such destruction of a standard for
workers' remuneration and security also represents
removal of a socially valuable restriction on the "free" labour market
and its tendency to drive down the pay and conditions of all workers
toward bare subsistence. Wealth diverted from the claims of workers to
the pockets of the rich distorts the economy towards meeting their
demands to the extent that increased
profits may not even remain in the local economy.
 The imposition and increase
of many user fees underway is restricting certain public services to
those able to pay instead of providing them on the basis of need. This
puts the burden of financing more directly on workers and the poor, and
opens a market for profit making by selling the same service.
To the extent the above measures may reduce the city's
expenditures, more is available to the regime to "pay the rich" by
other means, debt servicing for the financial oligarchy, contracts of
various kinds and further reduction of whatever claims are still made
upon the rich for public finance. The Ford regime's
declared intention is to eliminate the city's land transfer tax worth
around $200 million, an irritant to real-estate speculation interests
(and less so to those residents buying or selling a home).
So, the Toronto city government's onslaught against
public services and the workers who provide them does not arise from
some unavoidable necessity, any lack of real or potential wealth, or
some benefit that will indirectly trickle back down to society. Its
anti-social, city wrecking offensive arises from its equally
anti-social aim of putting what has remained public at the disposal of
private capital and its pursuit of profit, thus ignoring its duty to
guarantee the rights and well-being of the people. Toronto needs a new
pro-social aim and we need to carry forward the struggle to achieve it.
Public
Child
Care
Is
a
Right
Government Supports Privatization of Child Care by
International Monopoly
- Pritilata Waddedar -
On December 12, the Edleun Group Inc., an international
child care services monopoly, announced that it has purchased seven
child care operations in Ontario, four in Toronto and three in Windsor.
Edleun says that these purchases are part of its plan to buy 80 more
child care operations across Canada in
the near future. Edleun has a $40 million fund provided by Canadian and
international banks for this purpose. The purchases in Ontario bring
the total number of child care spaces operated by Edleun to 4,711 in
the three provinces. It already operates 2,539 spaces in Alberta and BC.
According to media reports,
a number of other consortiums are being organized by the international
financial oligarchy to penetrate Canadian child care services. Canada
is considered a prize market because 75 per cent of child care spaces
are operated by government or not-for-profit organizations. The
expansion of
this aggressive monopoly in Ontario is being facilitated by the
continued underfunding of child care by the provincial and municipal
government. This crisis is being compounded as governments cut funds
for child care in the name of deficit reduction. The Toronto City
budget tabled last week proposed closing three
child care centres and cutting low-income fee subsidies.
 Edleun Inc. is very
explicit about exploiting the child
care underfunding crisis to push its aggressive expansion plans. "We
understand there are a number of non-profit operators who worry they
will need to vacate their space and this creates an opportunity," said
chief executive officer Ty Durekas in a press conference
on the Ontario expansion.
Increased privatization in the child care sector is
being opposed by child care workers and their organizations. They know
that when the financial oligarchy inserts itself into child care the
profits have to be squeezed out of child care centres and this can only
come from driving down child care worker wages and
from a deteriorated service. They point out that child care worker
wages are only $13 per hour at many private child care centres even for
the Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) whose certification requires two
years of college.
Edleun's entry into Ontario
has also been denounced by
researchers in the field of early childhood learning. "From the point
of view of children and families, this is one of the worst things that
could possibly happen in Ontario. The bottom line is this is a business
and a business exists to make money. Any
money that is considered profit is money that is not being spent on
children," said Martha Friendly in response to the announcement by
Edleun Inc. Friendly is the Executive Director of the Childcare
Resource and Research Unit at the University of Toronto (CRRU).
Considered one of the leading early
learning research institutes in Canada, CRRU cites study after study
that shows deterioration of service when child care is run for profit
and that this has negative impacts on young children.
The rich though are putting
the full weight of their
media and political representatives behind Edleun's Ontario expansion.
Ontario Minister of Education Laurel Broten defended authorizing the
expansion of Edleun in Ontario, saying "We have always had a balance
between public and private in our delivery
model for child care." A Globe and
Mail editorial said that expansion of Edleun should be
celebrated as a solution to the child care crisis, "With a shortage of
regulated daycare spaces frequently declared to be one of the most
pressing public-policy issues in the country -- estimates put the gap
at up to 165,000 spaces -- one might think the appearance of a new and
energetic operator of daycares would be cause for widespread
celebration."
The Globe
editorial also urges people to disregard the opposition to for-profit
child care by workers and early childhood science: "The alarms raised
against for-profit daycare seem ideological, rather than practical."
This kind of advice to people to abandon their just demands because
they are allegedly impractical is
becoming a hallmark
of the disinformation campaign of the rich pushing privatization.
Its aim is to cover up that the agenda of privatization is the
practical implementation of a narrow self-serving and capital-centred
ideology, and that the alternative is the provision of public daycare
that the people require as the practical solution based on a
human-centred ideology.
 The heart of the child care
problem is user fees that
impose a crushing burden on families using the system and exclude most
families with children from formal services. Workers have a
longstanding demand for user fees to be abolished and for a universal
government operated system. The expansion of monopolies
in child care will not solve this problem. In fact it will further
consolidate the fee-for-service system in opposition to the progressive
trend of abolishing fees.
Workers and their allies must recognize the political
nature of all decisions around the funding of public services and
around all economic affairs and become political themselves. Individual
workers must be political to defend their rights and basic interests.
From individual actions, they must unite with their fellow
workers and allies in a collective political opposition.
Harper
Omnibus Crime Bill
Impact of Crime Bill on Ontario
- Philip Fernandez -
 Ontario's jails are already
overcrowded, even without the expected increase
in prisoners from
changes on the
Harper government's Omnibus Crime Bill, Bill C-10. This is not because
of the number of crimes being
committed but due in part to the failure of the system to process
criminal charges in a timely fashion
and the failure of the Ontario government to provide social support
services for mentally ill individuals as well as the socially excluded,
and the criminalization of poor people and people of national minority
or aboriginal origin, especially the youth.
The 2008 Annual Report of the Office of the Auditor
General of Ontario
documents the number of individuals held in prison on remand, either
because they cannot afford bail or have been denied bail and are
awaiting trial. They are "warehoused" for long periods of time and
deprived of the possibility
to participate in education, work or social programs. They are not
accorded the same programs that are available to convicted prisoners.
The report points out that the main reasons for the increased
proportion of remanded individuals in custody is due to delays in
disposing of criminal cases. For instance, it took 165
days on average for courts to dispose of a criminal case in 1997; it
took 205 days, or 24 per cent longer, in 2007. Over those ten years,
inmates remanded in custody have been incarcerated on average 30 per
cent more days and more importantly "the number of inmates remanded in
custody awaiting their court appearances
has doubled and now represents almost 70% of all inmates."
Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reported on
November 17, 2010
that almost 20 per cent of inmates in Ontario prisons have some sort of
mental illness, and of the almost 600 women prisoners, 31 per cent were
mentally ill. The report notes that the inmate population of Ontario
who has mental illness
is growing by 5-10 per cent a year and the system is unable to cope.
According to the article, "Factors behind the phenomenon include new
Canadians who suffer mental collapses as they try to cope with
relocating, faulty mental health legislation, and police who lay
charges rather than wait for a hospital to find
a forensic bed" because it takes too much time. The Globe quotes
Dr.
John
Bradford,
a
leading
forensic
psychiatrist
who
says
"It's
easier for them (police) to charge someone than hang around for six to
eight hours for an emergency room."
The 2008 Annual Report of the Office of the Auditor
General of Ontario
points out that although the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and
Correctional Services had a strategic plan to reduce the number of
people in prison by 2005; the number of prisoners in Ontario jails has
actually increased,
to the point where many are over-crowded. "Currently, Ontario's
correctional institutions operate overall at 100% of inmate capacity,
with 11 institutions operating at up to 135% of their capacity. Current
facilities are overcrowded and at increased risk of inmate
disturbances, labour-relations issues, and health and
safety concerns for staff and inmates," the report points out.
According to Statistics Canada, on any given day there
are
approximately 9,000 adult prisoners in Ontario and about 700 youth
under 18 who are incarcerated. Over a year, the number of prisoners
approaches 100,000. Those serving sentences of two years or more are
held in federal institutions of which there
are 14 in Ontario. Those serving less than two years are held in one of
the 31 provincial corrections facilities staffed by approximately 6,000
corrections officers.
South Ontario
Detention Centre being built in Etobicoke.
|
It is in this context that the Harper government's Bill
C-10, The Safe Streets and Communities Act,
is being imposed and will have significant consequences for the people
of Ontario. It is expected to result in increased incarceration rates,
especially for the youth. Various estimates suggest that Bill
C-10 will result in an additional 4,000 prisoners per year being
incarcerated in the refurbished jails and super-jails being built
across Canada. Among the super-jails being built in Ontario is the
South Ontario Detention Centre being built in Etobicoke at a cost of
$1.1 billion.
Experts in the field broadly condemn not only the
expansion of these
super-jails, but call for those already in existence to be shut down
because of their inhumane conditions. The John Howard Society describes
the conditions in the super-jails as follows: "The environment in which
provincial prisoners are detained
in these institutions is indeed spartan and no-frills. To the members
of this Committee, there is nothing positive or redeeming about
detaining people in what we would characterize as sterile, harsh
environments that are too big and hold too many people to be
constructive, correctional or rehabilitative in nature. The
environment of the superjail was designed to be a deterrent by being
punitive in its effect and the environments of all of these
institutions certainly feel punitive, with their pods, maze of
corridors, concrete block walls and cement floors, bars, enclosed
yards, metal chairs and tables bolted to the floor. Not only is
a punitive environment contrary to human rights standards with respect
to the treatment of prisoners for both sentenced and remand prisoners
but it also works against any reasonable notion of public safety. There
is virtually no evidence to suggest punitive environments reduce the
likelihood of future criminal activity;
in fact, the evidence would suggest that the opposite is true."
Bill C-10 will impose mandatory minimum sentences for
many crimes
where judges previously had leeway to take factors affecting the
accused individual into account. Bill C-10 also removes the ability of
the courts to use remediation and restorative justice for young people.
These changes will increase the number
of people incarcerated and the length of their sentences.
Bill C-10 will also make it more difficult for prisoners
to obtain
parole, adding to the number of people in jail. According to the
Ontario Parole and Earned Release Board, parole grants decreased from
3,833 in 1993-1994 to a mere 361 in 2002-2003. The Elizabeth Fry
Society, one of the main organizations
involved in assistance and rehabilitation of prisoners argues that "the
decline of provincial parole in Ontario brings significant human,
social, and economic costs considering the damaging effect of
imprisonment on individuals, the lack of community support and
supervision to assist community integration and minimize
recidivism, and the expensive cost of keeping people in prisons."
 Other changes will force judges to ignore the
reality of
the accused
person and the charges against them. For example, the possession of
just six marijuana plants automatically requires the accused to be
identified as a "drug trafficker." Definitions used to categorize
various crimes as "serious" and/or "violent"
have been expanded to include more offenses. For instance, threatening
to commit a violent act will now be considered an act of violence. The
option of judges to use house arrest in cases where they deem it
appropriate is also going to be restricted.
Many people working in the judicial and penal system
have expressed
concerns that the legislation will increase social problems rather than
reduce crime. The Harper Conservatives have ignored these concerns and
have limited debate and used their majority to force the legislation
through the House of Commons.
The legislation reached Second Reading in the Senate when Parliament
adjourned on December 16.
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