Dean Del Mastro and the Barbarity of the Cons

Well I'm sure it's just a coincidence that on the day Dean Del Mastro appeared in court for his sentencing hearing. 

And demanded a mistrial. 

Former MP Dean Del Mastro is asking the Ontario Court of Justice to dismiss his Oct. 31 guilty verdicts related to overspending in the 2008 federal election campaign and declare a mistrial.

After having told the judge that her guilty verdict was just a matter of opinion:

The Cons would choose this day to let it be known that they're all for harsh sentences. 

The Conservative government is developing legislation that would mean some murderers will have no hope of release from prison. 

The new penalty would apply to several categories of those convicted of first-degree murder: killers of police and jail guards, anyone who kills during a sexual assault, kidnapping or act of terrorism and for especially brutal murders.

Even though that makes absolutely no sense. Dangerous criminals can already be kept in jail for life under our existing sentencing laws. 

Even though it would eliminate yet another thing that makes us different from the Americans.

And even though it has been called "the other death penalty" or "death by incarceration" and is yet another assault on our Canadian values. 



Canada does not need automatic life without parole. It is a cruel punishment that risks failing the constitutional test of being proportionate to both the crime and the criminal. It is also self-defeating, in that a person who murders one police officer or one kidnap victim would get the exact same sentence as the person who murders five, or 10, or 20. 

Worst of all, it undoes the progress Canada made when it abolished the death penalty in 1976. Canadians have struggled with the fact that the alternative to the finality of capital punishment is the perpetual obligation created by rehabilitation and parole. But that was our choice, and it was a good one. Since the end of the death penalty, the murder rate in Canada has been cut in half.

But then it does explain what Stephen Harper was really doing at that Mountie' s funeral on Monday...



The departments of Public Safety and Justice, which are working together on the new bill, were told to speed up their work after a man shot two Mounties in St. Albert, Alta., on Jan. 17, killing one. The bill is expected to be introduced within a couple of weeks of a new terrorism bill coming on Friday, the source said.

And it does make it clear that he will do ANYTHING  to win another bloody majority.

Even if that means appealing to the mob, and the lowest and most bestial instincts of humanity... 



Take us back to the barbarity of the Middle Ages, or the Old Testament. And make us less Canadian.

And yes, Ralph Surette is right. The Cons are out of control.

What's going on under the radar -- where it's kept thanks to the Harper government's expertise in propaganda and manipulation -- is the rodent-like gnawing at democratic process and the country's fundamental legal structure. 

Here's merely the latest example. The government has been firing researchers in the Justice Department because the facts they were coming up with didn't square with the party line, especially on their regressive prisons policy.

And we can't get rid of them and their depraved leader soon enough.

The "agenda" is to yoke every important national function -- the law, the courts, the tax system, the civil service, important offices like the Chief Electoral Officer, and every aspect of government policy, notably science -- to make them serve the function of keeping the Conservative party in power. These are the natural instincts of dictators.

But may I suggest that the new progressive government keep the life without parole law on the books for at least a year after the Cons are defeated.

So that we can charge them with crimes against Canada.

And give them the sentences they deserve...



Please click here to recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.