r/onguardforthee 2d ago

Many of the Conservatives’ crime policies would be unconstitutional, experts say

https://www.ctvnews.ca/federal-election-2025/article/many-of-the-conservatives-crime-policies-would-be-unconstitutional-experts-say/
406 Upvotes

62 comments sorted by

124

u/TheCaMo 2d ago

It's not even just that, it's fucking expensive. Dude wants to lock so many people up for life sentences, which cost over $3M each. This is on top of all the tax cuts while also claiming he will fix the national debt and boost military spending.

But how will he pay for it? Obviously by cutting the programs that actually work to reduce crime by reducing poverty, like the child care programs and others that save families money. 

The link between crime and socioeconomic status is very well documented and researched but he expects his voter base to be uninformed because they're too busy actually working to read up on the literature, so he peddles easy solutions to complex problems. 

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u/snotparty 1d ago edited 1d ago

i dont want to get too tinfoil hatty, but I could imagine him proposing private prisons at some point (if he was friendly with American lobbyists)

edit: I was just assuming they might suggest this since theyre so in sync with the GOP, but apparently they are actually trying to do this.

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u/outremonty 1d ago

Why is that tinfoil hatty? The Canadian right salivates at the notion of locking up those they deem undesirable and would vastly prefer to sell contracts to corporations than to propose spending billions on new federal institutions. First it's for "violent offenders", then it's the unsightly homeless, then they get what they really want: a jail to throw leftists in anytime we hold a protest.

9

u/ptear 1d ago

With reduced sentences for those who provide cheap labour for a few years with good worker behaviour.

5

u/barkazinthrope 1d ago

Nah. Why fire a productive slave?

6

u/ygjb 1d ago

It's not tinfoil hat material, before being voted out, the CPC was actively pursuing privatization of prisons. https://thetyee.ca/News/2011/04/29/HarperPushesPrisons/

13

u/Themightytiny07 1d ago

Well he also wants to cut funding for 'woke' research like showing how socioeconomic status and crime are linked

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u/TheCaMo 1d ago edited 1d ago

It would be so hard to do that with how deep the research goes, not that he wouldn't try. 

There are statistics of course, showing the link between poverty, wealth disparity, inflation and crime. But it even goes down to the very structure of our brains. Low socioeconomic status has been shown to affect brain development in areas like the prefrontal cortex associated with decision making. The link has been shown even in-utero. Increased stress can strengthen amygdala responses like fear, or the insula that controls disgust (including moral disgust from seeing other cultures). 

The research on this and other factors are so overwhelming that it boggles my mind that someone involved in government for so long wouldn't know. 

I really can't help but feel that it's intentional. He is willfully playing ignorant because he either doesn't care or expects his base to be uninformed and he is exploiting them. 

"For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them." -Utopia, Thomas More 1516

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u/Themightytiny07 1d ago

I agree with this so much. Love the Thomas Moore quote (wish I could give you another upvote just for that). I was commenting on PP's promise to cut funding for 'woke' research. Sounds a bit to Trump like. Also who decides what woke research is. He will definitely try, look at the brain drain that happened because of Harper's stance on science

30

u/jjaime2024 2d ago edited 2d ago

Where is he going to put them all of our Federal jails are full.

28

u/Zomunieo 2d ago

PP’s notepad

  • Axe the Prisoners?? 🪓 Jenni said no death penalty this election

  • House the Inmates Houses for wrong people

  • Lock Them Up doesn’t verb the noun enough

  • Build the Prisons

  • End the Crime??

3

u/fredleung412612 1d ago

My fear is as things get worse for the Tories in this campaign he might decide to go radical. Openly state he will use the Notwithstanding clause to bypass the Charter for his crime policy.

6

u/Rad_Mum 2d ago edited 1d ago

Expensive , very much so, $314 per day, and that was in 2016/17 costs . Per federal prisoner. More if in isolation.

3

u/Dividedthought 1d ago

314 per what? Day? Per day sounds right.

3

u/Rad_Mum 1d ago

Yes per day. Oh I will fix that. Thank you

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u/Dividedthought 1d ago

Yeah, i work at a prison so i was like "that better be daily, because even weekly that ain't covering overhead."

1

u/Rad_Mum 1d ago

No exactly . People really do not understand the costs of incarceration. Just out of sight, out of mind.

1

u/Rad_Mum 1d ago

So many that shouldn't be in the jail system, but in the mental health system. In Ontario, we closed down all the phych hospitals, and overflowed the jail system .

4

u/NotEnoughDriftwood Elbows Up! 1d ago

Yes, to your last point, especially. I also note what the ex Harper minister said in the article:

Benjamin Perrin, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, was an adviser to Harper’s Conservative government and one of the architects of the tough-on-crime policies of the Harper era. He’s since changed his mind about mandatory minimum sentences.

“We saw an explosion of mandatory minimum penalties, including through the Safe Streets and Communities Act in 2012, where the number of mandatory minimums in the Criminal Code almost reached 100. There used to just be nine mandatory minimum penalties in 1987,” Perrin said.

He called mandatory minimums a “failed policy.”

Research shows they’re not effective at reducing crime and may actually increase recidivism, Perrin said.

"They increase delays in an already overburdened system, and they perpetuate disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous and Black people,” he added.

2

u/TheCaMo 1d ago

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/ccs-ajc/rr02_1/p5_3.html

Just to add to the above for further reading, from Canada's own justice department 

5

u/Sorryallthetime 1d ago

Not enough jails? Privatize incarceration like the Americans did. We can have privatized medicine and a privatized criminal justice system. The private sector always does it better.

I mean we used to have socialized housing in the country and we got rid of that to rely on the profit driven private sector for our housing supply - look how well that turned out.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/federal-social-housing-1.6946376

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u/TheLinuxMailman 2d ago edited 2d ago

The Cons would rendition citizens to El Salvador and ignore judges' direct orders too?

What's the difference between Conservative crime and organized crime, other than one is organized?

11

u/thatirishdave 2d ago

It would be pretty unfair to mob bosses anywhere to describe the Conservatives as organised.

2

u/Same_Potential_4864 1d ago

The Cons and Republicans have gas-lit us into accepting their corrupt, mafia-adjacent behaviour to be justified.

Unfortunately, we are now seeking human suffering and cruelty as entertainment in the form of ‘memes’.

23

u/JumpyTrucker 2d ago

Reading this article just reinforces my opinion that we need to get rid of the notwithstanding clause .

5

u/Lildyo 1d ago

Unfortunately it was also the reason we managed to get the Charter passed in the end. I agree wholeheartedly though

15

u/Mental_Cartoonist_68 2d ago

Thats the thing with Conservatives, theyre not democratic. They dont believe in following laws. Just look at what the Trump administration is doing.

13

u/Maleficent_Count6205 2d ago

Pierre needs to go. I’m so tired of his argumentative lying face. Hearing him constantly “we need to verb the noun” is no longer funny, just old and ridiculous. His economic plan is in 3 parts. Hear it? 1. We need to have an immediate plan. 2. We need to have a plan after the election. 3. We need to have a long term plan. Then we can build back better! UGH! How can anyone see/hear that plan and think “man, this guys smart. He definitely know what he’s doing” 🙃

3

u/bringoutyourdead5 2d ago

I hear ya. The other day I was talking to my sister and asked her what makes her want to vote for someone like PP and the Conservative party, and the very first words out of her mouth was, "because polievre has a common sense plan, and he's gonna...." and I was just like 😳, you're not seriously regurgitating his tag lines as if they are your own original thoughts?!? I chose to stop engaging at that point. She's mainlining the kool aide and nothing i say is going to change her mind at this point, so shrug.

2

u/barkazinthrope 1d ago

The plan is to cut taxes back until government is small enough to drown it in a bathtub.

1

u/Fun-Poem2611 1d ago

Reducing taxes isn’t gonna help anyone if you don’t have a job…. Who are all these people who pay so many taxes …. I work FT make decent living and have never owed cra a dime in fact I always get money back….. biggest taxes I pay are municipal to the city I live in for my house and services from the municipality The feds can’t change that !

4

u/PopeKevin45 1d ago

Just...like...Trump.

3

u/danby999 Ontario 2d ago edited 2d ago

There's no place to put anyone now.

The jails are full and the courts are backed up like an old man's colon.

Unless he gets the provinces to start building jails this is all just bluster like everything else.

Sadly it works on conservative voters.

0

u/hardnuck 1d ago

Jails are not full. If they were full they wouldn't be able to facilitate the continuation of the revolving door. Source: I work in them.

1

u/danby999 Ontario 22h ago

Literally the top result from googling "Ontario jail capacity"

8,889 people As of Sept. 30, 2023, there was an average of 8,889 people in provincial jails, well over the then-7,848-person capacity.

Anecdotal experience is not reality

5

u/Eli_1988 1d ago

Are we going to make it easier for folks to escape their intimate partner violence scenarios?

Are they going to have housing in place for these people?

Financial and legal support so they can make these reports?

No? Just making sure after these victims are dead, their partner will go to jail.

Nice. Very helpful and will totally stop the issue.

3

u/50s_Human 2d ago

Hmmmm...many of Trump's crime policies are unconstitutional.

3

u/NotEnoughDriftwood Elbows Up! 2d ago

Never dealing with the problems that cause the issues. Upending legal principles instead - a conservative tradition.

3

u/jjaime2024 2d ago

I was just on Liberal/R the amount of people that said they will vote for PP if he brings gun rights back scares me.

2

u/_LKB 2d ago

I am shocked.

2

u/Glory-Birdy1 2d ago

This "crime" that we keep hearing about is a Conservative manufactured election issue. The only crime I know about is the crime committed by the UCP Party in running the AB gov't.

2

u/RottenPingu1 2d ago

They don't care. They'll blame "left wing terrorists and activist judges" when they get taken to court.

JSYK.. Harper wanted up privatize our jail system.

2

u/Clayton_Goldd 1d ago

I'll bet that PP has a slogan behind the leaf, that only he can see.

2

u/NorthernBudHunter 1d ago

Do people really think PP cares about crime? If he was concerned with the welfare of Canadians he wouldn’t oppose every health and social program that has been introduced.

2

u/beached 1d ago

They know, they've talked about using notwithstanding to explicitly violate peoples rights. We know that the police are not always correct, the courts get it wrong sometimes and making that easier is not justice. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-notwithstanding-clause-1.7188964

1

u/JDGumby Nova Scotia 2d ago

Always have been, always will be.

1

u/Odd-Kaleidoscope8863 2d ago

That’s the point

1

u/Automatic_Tackle_406 2d ago

Poilievre knows this, which is why he said he will use the notwithstanding clause for judicial reform (and who knows what else). 

This should be terrifying to anyone who believes in the rule of law and separation of judicial powers.

1

u/Bigchunky_Boy 2d ago

So many promises no real change. We need a new approach to leadership.

1

u/Simsmommy1 1d ago

I always hear from conservatives how we are “too lenient” and how all these people need to be locked up….where? Are we gonna start our very own for profit prison system too? To be honest with all the maximum sentences for drug crimes Pollivere wants to keep his “monsters” off the streets it certainly seems like he’s gonna have to…..I mean heck drug treatment and rehabilitation or social programs to prevent poverty? Nah, just lock people up who get to a desperate point in their life and end up in the drug trade, for as long as possible. We couldn’t possibly attempt to model ourselves after Scandinavian systems, who have higher social supports, higher social welfare systems, lower crime as a result and when people do end up in prison there is a focus on rehabilitation and education and not just punishment, and this system reduces recidivism by 50% compared to our prison system.

1

u/anemic_royaltea 1d ago

Weird moment, when the US is actively disappearing people, to try and push draconian measures as cool and good, but I guess their target demographic of scared rural voters get off on the ‘right’ people being punished

1

u/A-Wise-Cobbler Toronto 1d ago

They’d just override the charter don’t worry and their freedom loving base would cheer it.

1

u/Bind_Moggled 1d ago

Performative politics is performative.

1

u/Bind_Moggled 1d ago

Conservatives hate the Charter.

1

u/thedoodely ✔ I voted! 1d ago

For those too young to remember the Harper years, this is how the party operated. Basically they make some "super tough on crime" legislation which just amounts to putting people in jail for as long as possible, then the Supreme Court declares it unconstitutional after 6-12 months, then wash a repeat.

A plan that gets shot down isn't a plan, it's just a sales pitch from a snake oil salesman.

1

u/Jeds4242 1d ago

So even their lies are not plausible, in that they could not come to fruition.

1

u/HelloBeKind4 1d ago

What a surprise. The Conservatives and this particular “leader” really suck.