Stop Bill C-26

The odour is pronounced.
Bill C-26: End it, don't mend it!

Latest News | Listen up, Canadians | Introduction to Bill C-26
Links of Special Interest | Stop the Americanisation of our laws

Listen up, Canadians

“The Conservatives have been in office for two years now so they cannot claim to be the new government. If we had socks that old, we would not call them new socks. That is an old sock over there. The odour is pronounced. This says to me that the Conservatives have not really come to terms with how to make society safe.

There is one non-partisan point that binds all parliamentarians here. We all want safe communities. Try as it might, the Conservative government, the old sock government, wants to paint those of us in the opposition ranks as people who do not care about safety and society... To suggest parliamentarians do not want to save society stinks like the old sock justice program that the Conservative government has introduced.”

Introduction to Bill C-26

Bill C-26 was last debated in the House of Commons on February 4, 2008. It proposes minimum penalties for the production, possession, trafficking and importing/exporting of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and other drugs.

“This enactment amends the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide for minimum penalties for serious drug offences, to increase the maximum penalty for cannabis (marihuana) production, to reschedule certain substances from Schedule III to that Act to Schedule I, and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The Conservatives claim this bill is tough on organized crime and big time traffickers. The reality is that mandatory minimums do not deter organized crime. Instead, they affect almost exclusively the small dealers, street traffickers, and non-violent offenders while leaving the door open for organized crime to step in and fill the void created at the lower levels. Mandatory Minimums for drug sentences increase enforcement costs exponentially, and the burden on the criminal justice and prisons systems is great.”

Links of Special Interest

• CPAC's live feed
• Stephen Harper speaks to the CPA about the "Tackling Violent Crime Act"
• National Anti-Drug Strategy speech by Stephen Harper
• Educating Harper
• Bill C-26 flyers: Flyer 1, Flyer 2
  Tories under fire for flyers
• PDF copy of Bill C-26
• Bill C-26 information online | online
• April 15, 2008 debate | Video (starts at 27 minutes in)
• February 4, 2008 debate | Video (starts at 6 hours and 24 minutes in)
• Proposed new mandatory sentences for serious drug offences, and the aggrevating factors list
• Cannabis Facts for Canadians: Bill C-26
• The Pot Law Has Fallen
• Our National Anti-drug Strategy
• Ms. Olivia Chow's statement on Bill C-26
• Libby Davies explains Bill C-26 on Redeye Radio
• Kirk Tousaw's vlog created May 22 about his latest work and Bill C-26, his updated discussion on Bill C-26 (old one here) and the myth of dangerous grow-ops.
  He also wrote this informative article on Bill C-26 (old article here) and the Tackling Violent Crime Act.
• More links...

Stop the Americanisation of our laws

Bill C-26 takes a page from American policy by imposing mandatory minimums and harsher penalties for drug crimes. A person could be jailed for at least 6 months for the crime of growing as little as one marijuana plant, were this legislation to pass. We have seen how badly the drug war has failed in America, so why adopt a similar approach? Why should we move away from the four pillars approach in favour of more imprisonment?

“Evidence from the United States bears this out. The U.S. began implementing mandatory sentences ostensibly targeting drug kingpins in 1986, yet according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission only 11 per cent of federal drug offenders are high-level dealers.

Further, according to the U.S. Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, mandatory sentencing regimes -- which the U.S. has begun dismantling -- increased the number of Americans imprisoned for drug offences from just 38,000 in 1986 to 458,000 in 2000. The total price tag for housing American drug offenders now stands at $9.4 billion.

This is what awaits us. Yet the Conservatives last year promised only $102 million over two years in new prison spending, which isn't even enough to remedy current defects. Indeed, the Conservatives better be ready to earmark billions more dollars per year to the prison system, in perpetuity, if they wish to follow the U.S. example, which the U.S. itself isn't even willing to follow any more.”

“If all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put Humpty together again, then why call for more horses and more men?”

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