Angry Old Men

Last week, in The Globe and Mail, Brian Topp  wrote that a little discussed part of the government's Omnibus Crime Bill represents a significant change in policy at Canadian prisons:

To be specific, the Tories want to amend article 4(d) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (1992). The relevant clause establishes the principle “that the service use the least restrictive measures consistent with the protection of the public, staff members and offenders.

Apparently that change had been recommended in a report to former Public Security Minister Stockwell Day back in 2007:

The panel believes that this principle has been emphasized too much by staff and management of CSC, and even by the courts in everyday decision-making about offenders. As a result an imbalance has been created that places the onus on SCS to justify why the least restrictive measures shouldn't be used, rather than on offenders to justify why they should have access to privileges based on their performance under their correctional plans.

Anyone who has followed this government over the years should not find this bit of information surprising. In fact, it is entirely consistent with the worldview of the present powers that be. But as a former senior official of Corrections Canada told Topp:

I've had meetings with prison administrators, and then I've explored every corner of our prisons right down into the hole. I know what's going to happen if they take that clause out of the Act. What's going to happen is that guards are going to feel free to use more force, a lot more force, to control inmates. There's going to be an enormous rise in violence in our prison system. 

All of this confirms what should be perfectly obvious by now. The Harper government is a government out for vengeance. Topp writes:

In all of this, the Conservatives are demonstrating the real character of their government. This is rule by angry old uncle. A character in many families, not without his charm and soft side, who shouts his angry views for the hundredth time, demanding firm measures and an end to many abuses, even if the facts all point the other way.

These folks aren't simply grumpy old men.They are angry old men. Even Minister of Labour Lisa Raitt, when she muses about declaring the economy an essential service, sounds like an angry old man. The Prime Minister of Canada -- at the ripe old age of fifty-two -- is an angry old man. One gets the impression that he was an angry old man when he was in diapers.

The Righteous Are In Charge

Someday, historians will cite what Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said this week as the Harper Government's Mission Statement. Nicholson declared that, "We're not governing on the basis of the latest statistics. We're governing on the basis of what's right to better protect victims and law abiding citizens."

Never mind what statistics tell us -- that crime has been falling for decades. The government is convinced that crime is going up -- and, even though governments in Britian and the United States are backing away from the remedies they propose, the Harperites insist that their omnibus crime legislation is necessary -- regardless of the cost. Strange behaviour for a government whose advertised expertise is about controlling costs.

This kind of behaviour is not an aberration. As Jeffrey Simpson writes in today's Globe and Mail:

The Harper government has this weird contempt for solid evidence. It pops up from time to time when, in the face of expert evidence, the government just barrels ahead in another direction. Recall the government’s abolition of the long-form census, a move opposed by statisticians and groups that rely on the most accurate statistics possible. Recall the government’s insistence after the 2008 recession had begun that no recession was under way. Recall in the matter of criminal justice the parade of judicial spokesmen, lawyers, criminologists and prison experts urging, even imploring, the government to cease and desist.

How does one explain this complete contempt for facts, something -- which Gerry Caplan wrote last week -- makes Stephen Harper "inscrutable?" There really is no mystery. First and foremost, the Harper Conservatives see themselves as righteous. Deep down they are convinced that God is on their side. And that is why they are truly dangerous.

Much harm is done by those who are convinced that their mission is to do God's work.