Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Can They Even Hear Themselves?

Our official government position is currently that we need to save money, as a country.

This is why we spent $1b on police officers for the G20. This is why we spent $16 billion on new fighter jets. This is why we have to spend at extra $30 million for a census which is, for all intents and purposes, worthless. This is why we have to spend $10 billion on building new jails for people who have committed unreported crimes.

Uh, what? So we're going to save money by spending more? And we're going to incarcerate people who haven't been reported to police, let alone convicted of any crime?

I sure hope you're enjoying your holiday, MPs, because I think it's high time for an election come September.

3 comments:

Rob (a.k.a. Dad) said...

In the Conservative Party, they believe that the "statistics" based on "unreported" crime justify the building of new prisons - which explains why they think the long form census doesn't need to be mandatory, since they can create whatever statistics they want without any data points :-(

terriblenews said...

But even if there were good supporting statistics about unreported crime, how is building more jails going to help that? Is it that Canadians are not reporting crimes against them because the jails are too full? Like, "Oh, my, someone has murdered my family. But there aren't enough jails, so I guess I'll just suck it up."

The worst part is, there must be someone in Canada (other than the Conservative cabinet) to whom this twisted logic makes sense.

Rob (a.k.a. Dad) said...

Building more jails is the first domino - then comes more law enforcement (who will need to justify their increased cost by arresting more people, à la the G20 nonsense) and a streamlining of the justice system to ensure those arrested are speedily put into those jails (in order to justify the cost of building them in the first place).

And when I say "streamlining the justice system" you can read "eliminate minor roadblocks like due process and civil rights", as far as the Conservatives are concerned.

And yes, there are people outside the Conservative cabinet who think This Is A Good Idea - but you have to be a proctologist to be in a position to talk to them about it. ;-)