Canadian House Passes Anti-Crime Bill With Mandatory Minimums for Pot, Other Drug Offenses
The Canadian House of Commons today passed the Conservative government of Prime Minister Steven Harper' C-15 crime bill, which will institute mandatory minimum sentencing for some marijuana and other drug offenses. The vote, in which after dilly-dallying for days, the opposition Liberals joined in, came despite hearings in which no witnesses favored such a tough on crime approach north of the border.
It's not a done deal yet. The bill must still be approved by the Canadian Senate, which issued a report several years ago calling for the government to head in the opposite directoin. But the Senate, which is appointed, is not known for bucking the government and the House of Commons.
That the Liberals buckled for fear of being "soft on crime" and supported the Conservatives in this giant step backward is disappointing but not surprising. Oh, Canada! Once we looked to you for a progressive example on drug policy.
I will be writing about all this for the Chronicle later this week, as well as focusing on our other border with a feature article on the Obama administration's new initiative to thwart the Mexican so-called drug cartels.
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redditBooo! Canada!
Comment posted by Teamster on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 2:32pmHere in the US, we were looking to you for inspiration. All this time I was praying to see Canada lead the way to reform the drug policies regarding Marijuana, and you failed! You now become more like us now :( I am disgusted!
Sad i voted steven bush
Comment posted by Karl on Tue, 10/06/2009 - 10:45pmSad i voted steven bush cough i mean harper. For the people my butt im a successful business man and everyone i know smokes seems funny they dont know their voters. cant wait till next election time to become politically active!! They keep saying get the younger generation active well this bs will deffinatly help!
Its kind of sad when the
Comment posted by Ted on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 5:03pmIts kind of sad when the rest of our country actually is more for legalization, while this BS somehow gets waddled through. I have no idea where this money is going to come from to enforce this. Our finance minister just claimed 50bill in debt and everyone was up in arms and saying he should be fired.