On June 27, a column by Tom Brodbeck in the Winnipeg Sun called out the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and myself for allegedly “[trying] to scare Canadians.” He said we were wrong when we predicted higher numbers of prison inmates and higher costs as a…
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Late yesterday afternoon, by a vote of 44 to 28, the Senate approved the government’s overkill anti-terrorism legislation, Bill C-51, without amendment. (You can see who voted which way at this link.) By doing so, Senators ignored an almost airtight consensus in Canada’s legal community that the security and information-sharing reforms…
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Like university students cramming for an exam, last night the parliamentary public security committee (SECU) finished the last of nine hearings (over only six days) into the government’s anti-terrorism bill (C-51). It’s now up to the committee to perform a clause-by-clause review of the omnibus legislation and draft recommendations to the…
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The Charlottetown Guardian reports today the RCMP has arrested a Prince Edward Island man they suspect might carry out a terrorist offence. It’s somewhat awkward for the government: it could be a good news story (depending on what the case looks like), but it could also undermine the Conservative’s position that Canada’s security…
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The government has stacked the public safety committee’s schedule this week, hoping to get through all remaining witnesses and approve Bill C-51 before Easter. Meetings resumed last night (see CBC’s good summary here) and continue today with morning and evening sessions. As the public mood shifts against the legislation (support…
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Tonight’s hearing into Bill C-51, omnibus anti-terrorism legislation, began as this morning’s, with witnesses expressing their opposition to all or parts of it. It ended with Conservative MP Diane Ablonczy accusing one presenter–yes, the group representing Muslims–of supporting terrorism. But hey, where logic fails, try deflection. The news tomorrow (or today, depending…
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“The question is not, are we sorry? The question is, what lesson have we learned? The question is, what are we going to do now that we are sorry?” – J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace. Penguin Books, 1999. Women in Canada are speaking. They are speaking about the violence that one in…
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In the United States, prisons and privatization have become as American as apple pie. Today, approximately 130,000 people are incarcerated by for-profit companies in the United States, an 1,664% increase over the last 19 years. Even those prisons that remain state-run have sought to turn over almost every conceivable service –…
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Next week, the federal government will unveil its budget for the coming year. With projections pointing towards a $3.7 billion surplus in 2015-2016, there is every reason to believe that the Harper government will be able to face the electorate sticking its chest out. With pockets that full, it will…
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On this past 5 December, we learnt on the front page of the daily Devoir that college-level instruction provided to inmates was now in jeopardy because of the federal cuts in Flaherty’s last budget. At Collège Marie-Victorin in Montréal, these cuts could bring an end to forty years of inmate…
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