A rchive Date
[ 01-11-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/harris.html
One felon, one vote
By MICHAEL HARRIS - For The Ottawa Sun
November 1, 2002
In a country where no one seems to be in Kansas anymore, the Supreme Court of Canada has taken us the rest of the way to Oz.
Yesterday, the High Court ruled that the law denying voting rights to our most dangerous criminals violates the fundamental rights of prisoners. By a 5-4 vote that may or may not have been worked out in advance, the Supremes struck down the Canada Elections Act, saying that the federal government hadn't produced any good reasons for denying the vote to anyone convicted of a crime.
Did they really expect that Department of Justice lawyers ever would?
This, after all, is the government which has given the public a prison system that is more like an air-miles program for felons than an exercise in crime and punishment. This is the government that has cooked the books on the recidivism rates of Canada's federal offenders. This is the government that allows killers to face the consequences of their crimes in healing circles or conditional sentences served in the community. And this is the government that gave us Section 718.12 of the Criminal Code which required judges to consider, "all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances."
As out of step as I believe this decision is with public opinion, no one should be surprised. The Supreme Court merely reinforced the philosophy that dominates this country's justice system, from the courts themselves to our prisons and parole boards - all of which are stocked by partisan appointees of one kind or another at the most senior levels. Nowhere in our public life is political patronage in more complete disguise than in the justice system, a place where those who subscribe to the program prosper as much as any grazing senator.
That program is the notion that federal prisoners ought to retain every right of a taxpaying and law-abiding citizen except the ones that the courts expressly took away. Usually that comes down to "liberty" - a view, by the way, that flows out of a fundamental misreading of the Solosky case (Regina vs. Solosky, 1980) where the Supreme Court in fact ruled that a convicted offender does not have all the rights of an average citizen.
The only place where federal inmates are given every right that normal citizens enjoy is the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the piece of legislation that regulates Canada's federal prison system. According to Section 4, "offenders retain the rights and privileges of all members of society," a provision that is long overdue for reform.
'RESTORATIVE JUSTICE'
The current experiment goes under the name "restorative justice," a self-serving description of an approach that actually rewards criminals for their crimes and is embraced by the organized and anything-but-impartial industry that has grown up around prisoners' rights. Its advocates have turned cheering for the wrong team into a religion and yesterday the Supreme Court gave them yet another tool with which to browbeat the people who have to foot the bill and face the consequences.
Yesterday's decision is dead wrong. In the wake of this ruling, Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson will now be exercising what is supposed to be a privilege in this country - the right to vote. I don't think that the men and women who fought and died in world wars for Canada gave their lives to preserve the democratic rights of killers and rapists. And this is no theoretical quibble. Now that we know from the Florida vote in the last U.S. presidential elections that the outcome of a huge national election can come down to a few hundred votes, do we really want the prison vote, a weighty rump of 22,000 felons, to one day decide who will be prime minister of Canada?
Nor does the Supreme Court's ruling do much for a democracy on its sickbed. Canadians have been steadily losing their stomach for going to the polls because too many generations of politicians have convinced them that their votes don't count. Will voting be any more lustrous an act with the knowledge that while you are marking your ballot, Karla Homolka is marking hers? One felon, one vote is hardly the rallying cry to restore our ailing democracy to health.
Nor is the injustice of this decision restricted to our national prison system. As the federal government so often does in its arrogant and nation-wrecking ways from Kyoto to medicare, the Supreme Court decision will be used against those provinces who currently don't allow provincial inmates to vote.
I doubt that the Supreme Court justices who voted to extend the vote to federal convicts gave much thought to the victims of crime in Canada. Again, no surprise there: No one in the federal system ever does. If they had, they would have realized that they have extended the vote to people who have, in many cases, permanently disenfranchised their victims. I wonder, did any of them consider what Debbie Mahaffy might be thinking today, as she realized that her daughter's sadistic killers will be going to the polls like any other ordinary citizen come voting day? How easy it is to forget, let alone disenfranchise the dead, to normalize the monstrous.
For my money, the Supreme Court has given us not just a bad decision, but another reason why this august body of political appointees should be subject to public confirmation hearings. If their political and social views got a full and open vetting before they started fiddling with our lives as the unacknowledged legislators of the federation, many of them would continue their illustrious careers in private practice, where they belong.
Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard Monday to Thursday, 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA.
Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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