Victim's rights. . . . WTF?. . . . .

So you have no doubt seen and been nauseated by our Minister of Public Safety going on about what he calls "victim's rights.' This phrase is almost entirely meaningless but the Minster continues to use it ad nauseum n ever interview and public appearance. As I said yesterday it doesn't take a genius to understand that a 'right' is something that the state 'allows' you to do, the word applies to a choice that you can take advantage of like the freedom of speech, or movement etc. Thus a victim of a crime has very few possible 'rights' in relation to a crime committed against him or her. You could claim that victims should have the abstract right to see justice done but really the only technical 'right' a victim could have would related to retribution in  some way; like the right to make a victim statement, to speak as a witness against the person who committed the crime, or even the right to financial restitution whether from the state or the perpetrator of the crime. Outside of this, you it is difficult to imagine what 'rights' the state could bestow upon victims of crimes.

Yet you will constantly hear Vic Toews and other right-wingers talk about 'victim's rights.' Why is that? The answer is, of course, politics. One of the primary political strategies of the Right in general is to foment fear and animosity in society. Thus they love to talk about crime because there is a certain segment of society that wrongly believes that crime is out of control and that people are out there getting away with murder. Thus you will hear Vic Toews say crap like "unlike liberals and socialists, I am in favor of victims rights and not criminals rights." A completely meaningless statement, particularly given that Mr. Toews and his government have actually made no attempt to expand the few rights that victims actually could exercise. Rather, this is part of a strategy to further foster fear and keep people's attention focused on a meaningless political ploy that will not change crime rates and will cost billions of dollars.

As a society we can, if we choose, erode the rights of people who are accused or convicted of a crime. Given the startling number of wrongful convictions that have taken place in the past generation, I for one, think people who are accused or convicted of a crime need to have certain very clear rights which are well protected. And by all means, we can have a rational discussion about bringing the victims of crime into the process in much the same way that traditional justice systems have like those used by our First Peoples. As long as that discussion is not driven by the politically motivated 'tough on crime' nonsense which will only serve to cost billions and do nothing to crime rates.

If you want a justice system to actually reduce crime, every serious professional will tell you that you need a genuine system of rehabilitation and reform. Instead Harper and Toews want to take us down the road of California which has an unbelievably high rate of incarceration, very high rate of recidivism, and is helping to bankrupt the state. But the present government is actually reducing rehabilitation efforts and looking to just throw as many people in jail as possible with minimum sentences. This may satisfy people desire for revenge but is poor social and fiscal policy.

What do our Politicians stand for.

In the lead up to the Liberal convention conservative pundits are ratcheting up their rhetoric against Ignatieff in an effort, one supposes, to stem the growing tide of his perceived popularity. Thus far, however, with few obvious targets on which to centre their negative rhetoric, the reoccurring theme of Conservative talking points has been the simple claim that Mr. Ignatieff doesn’t seem to stand for anything. “Sure, he’s smart,” they concede, “but what does he actually stand for?” They ask. And then comes the inevitable reply that he doesn’t stand for anything and that he is all show. Now here is a monumental irony in action. In the lead up to the  2006 election the cornerstone of the Conservatives campaign added up to little more that “We aren’t the Liberals!” On the heels of the Sponsorship scandal the Conservatives estimated that this is all they had to do to get elected. In the next election they stood for so little that they even tried to avoid publishing a platform and only did so a few days before the actual voting day under the pressure of media scrutiny. The platform, by the way said little of any substance. In the end the Conservative Party under Harper’s tutelage has centered almost all of their electoral efforts on attacking the Liberals rather than defining themselves. This  has led to the continual display of irony in which whenever they are embroiled in a problem or scandal their only defense seems to be the refrain that “The Liberals used to do that, and usually worse than we.” The only issues that the Conservative have consistently pursued have been ‘Crime’ and ‘Taxes.’ In the case of crime, this is a typical right-wing scare tactic. The system of law enforcement in Canada, the one that is so woefully lax according to the rhetoric of the Conservatives, has ushered in a gradual decline in Crime over the last thirty years. In this case the media helps to inadvertently promote the Conservative rhetoric that  the country is about to fall into chaos of gang-violence and murderous rampages. However, given the decline in crime, we must conclude that overall the system is working more or less the way it is supposed to. (One could, of course, make a more profound critique of the system’s emphasis on incarceration and lack of preventative social policies. But the point here is simply that the Conservative critique is based on an entirely false premise that crime is rampant and on the increase. ) Somewhat ironically, one of their only actual legislative efforts on crime is to eliminate the long-gun registry, a move that is strongly opposed by police forces across the country. The other issue that the Conservatives have tried to make theirs is taxes. They have tried to represent themselves as the party that has and will decrease your taxes, trying to benefit from the widespread perception that Canadians pay an exceptionally high rate of tax. The main part of their tax policy has been to lower the GST by two points. This is a move that most economists disregard as, at best, totally irrelevant to most people, and at worst, entirely wrongheaded. Even a number of Conservative Party insiders have admitted that the decision to lower the GST was not based on sound economic policy but on a public relations effort. The Conservative also attempted to portray themselves as tax fighters in other sectors like personal and income taxes. Anyone who has filed taxes over the past couple of years knows that in most income brackets taxes have stayed the same or even increased.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that while the Conservatives are trying to portray Mr. Ignatieff as little more than a tweed blazer with no genuine political ideas, the Conservative are even worse than bereft of ideas and that their only idea is to misrepresent themselves, their opponents, and the state of the country. Harper himself cannot even rise to the level of being a tweed blazer; he is only a sweater-vest with a disturbing grin. Next time someone asks what their political opponent stands for, whether Liberal, Conservative, or otherwise, ask them what they really stand for.