A really interesting article in this week’s New Yorker by Adam Gopnik examining the reasons why crime rates drop and the utter futility and wrong-headedness of mass incarceration.

As we move closer to February, a month I do not normally relish, I realize how crappy this January has been.  On the positive side, the days were noticeably longer after Christmas, which was not unexpected but nevertheless very welcome.  On the negative side, we have had very mixed weather – just enough snow to make woods work difficult and unproductive and the driving miserable, but not enough (because of the intermittent rainstorms) to let us snowshoe more than two or three times.  Snowshoeing is one of our winter diversions and we love it.  Too bad.

Also on the negative side,  for me at least and no doubt for Susan vicariously, is my bizarre arm injury, which has caused me a lot of pain and puzzlement, neither of which I enjoy as a rule.  On January 8, I was up on the mountain hacking out a trail along the top of the gully and I cut the top of a fingernail off with my pruning saw.  A fair amount of blood, but no real pain.  Came down to the house all messy (did you know blood gets very slippery as it congeals? I didn’t), washed up my hands, and called the Nova Scotia nurse line, 811, for advice on how to dress it.  The very helpful RN I talked to suggested I get a tetanus shot within 72 hours if I hadn’t had one in the last ten years.  I was pretty sure I had had a shot sometime not too long ago, but of course I couldn’t remember.  (Small rant here: why don’t they keep track of such information centrally, along with all the other medical information that is attached to your health card? When is the last time you had a polio booster, or a tetanus shot, or Hep A or B? And your children? How many of those hopeful little yellow vaccination cards are lost in your house somewhere?)

The cause of it all

So the next day, when I was at the Regional Hospital in Sydney, on someone else’s business, I had time to kill and wandered over to Emergency.  Explained to the receptionist then the triage nurse that I wouldn’t mind a tetanus shot if it didn’t take too long and wouldn’t put anybody out.  Eventually, not too long afterwards, another nurse called me into triage and gave me some elaborate code language meaning that Emerg was all about seeing a doctor, but if she gave me the shot and then several hours later they called me in to see the doctor and I had left, that would be OK.  So I rolled up me sleeve, and she pulled out a needle and stuck into the very top of my shoulder.  It immediately hurt.  A lot.  Like the needle had hit a nerve.

It continued to hurt, first in the shoulder itself, then down the arm to the elbow.  Sometimes it was OK if I held the arm absolutely still, but for some reason when I was lying in bed holding it still would cause it to slowly throb with increasing intensity.  Sideways movements of that arm can be very painful indeed.  I have the feeling it is getting slowly better, but it hasn’t been any fun at all.  The good news is that the finger hardly hurt at all after a few days, and is healing well.

I hate medical mysteries, but since I am pretty healthy overall most of the things I worry about in my body turn out to be mysterious in some way because they are not serious enough to be clearly one thing or another.  I read something the other day about emergency rooms, and how much of the doctors’ time there is taken up with counselling “the worried well”.   A good phrase, I think.  One that should be borne in mind if we ever get around to redesigning our medical system in a way that rewards prevention and good sense – like assigning a group of families to a health care centre that is set up to keep them healthy, not just to deal with their problems after they have become serious enough to screw up their lives.

And as if that was not enough, a couple of weeks ago I finally arranged to have my new lens put into my old frames.  Since I was still using the old frames, this meant that I had to be there while the technician installed them.  He does this on Mondays and Thursdays, at night, in New Waterford.   After several weeks of cancelling appointments due to weather etc., we bit the bullet and booked it for a Monday, even though that is crib night at the fire hall.  Susan and Honey and I got into our CR-V and headed for town in the fading light.  Followed the pages of instructions (Lingan Road to Plummer, lots of little turns, look for the Royal Bank parking lot: of course there’s no street number, just look for the sign).  Found the door, at the back of a little strip of offices now all defunct, to match the rest of New Waterford, which must have been a nice little town when there was still industry there.  Lots of coal smoke still polluting the air, though.  Waited ten minutes at most for the new lenses.  Put them on, and said “The right eye is very blurry.”  He said, wait a week and if there’s still a problem go see the optometrist.  (Or is it optician? Or opthalmologist, a word I’m proud to spell but don’t understand the meaning of?).  So we drove home, and my right eye is still blurry, two weeks later.  Bugger.  Now I have to call Dr. Brooks and book and appointment to see one of his many staff to see if there is anything to be done or if I just have to let my brain adjust.  I hope I don’t drive into anything in the meantime.

So January has been not great.  We have read lots of good books, though, are enjoying each other’s company and the occasional company of others, have had lots of great meals, and are not too broke although we need a second car at some point.  Plans are in the works for Susan to visit the Yukon in March, and I’m signed up for a week of manly golf in Florida in April.

Sometimes I envy my dog, Honey.  Like today, for instance, as we went for a snowshoe hike on frozen crust.  We turned back early because it started to rain, but not before I noticed that she was scampering around on top of the crust, only occasionally putting a paw through, whereas I was forced to wear snowhoes because every step without them meant breaking through.

Furthermore, I make lists pretty much every day of things I need to do or at least  think about doing.  Honey, like most dogs and certainly all Labs, does not make lists.  A walk makes her happy, a drive in the car makes her happy, the sight of a gun makes her very excited and happy, but I don’t think she is making lists of these things in her pretty little head.  If there is any kind of list in there, it is under the category of FOOD.  Graze under the bird feeders, sniff out old windfalls under the apple trees, check out those interesting moose Glossettes we come across in the woods, hope for a treat now and then.  And, of course, breakfast in the morning and supper at 5 p.m.  But no shopping lists, no menu planning, no recipes, no cleaning up or doing dishes.  That cup of dry kibble in the morning and its partner in the evening are as attractive and welcome as she nears the age of 6 as they were when she was 8 weeks old.

Another reason to envy dogs is their ability to enjoy the moment, utterly.  Lying in front of the woodstove for hours, lying upside down on the rug for hours, lying under the poker table on two or three pairs of feet (for hours).  The list goes on.   

And dogs have a musical ability that eludes me entirely.  Watch this little video of Honey howling to a moose call.

I hope February is a better month.  I hope my arm stops hurting and the snow comes back.  I hope I can cut down on my lists a bit, at least until springtime arrives.

Well of course the boat is put away for the winter, but I had the delightful surprise last week of an email from Stewart Brown of Churchouse Boats, in England, and head of the Drascombe Association.  Turns out a Coaster owner in Canada had sent him a reference to my blog, and he was following up by sending me advice on refurbishing the topsides and decks.  He asked me for my hull number, and when I sent it to him he said he thought that meant the boat was built in 1984 in Devon, not in 1986 in Maine as I had thought.  But he’s making further inquiries.

Always lovely to be in touch across the ocean, especially with someone as enthusiastic and dedicated as Stewart.  It’s going to lead to more work for me, I know, because he will kindle my desire to make the boat look better.  I’ll have to set some priorities, but number one is to fix the leaking forward portlight – Stewart has asked for a photograph to see if he can identify the make so we can find a new rubber gasket.  Maybe in March when the new fire truck arrives and I have to move the boat out of the shed where it now rests.

It has been interesting watching the site stats for this blog – by far the most consistent and persistent views have been for the Drascombe.  This bodes well, no doubt, should I ever decide to sell (I am open to generous offers…), but it is also nice to know that there’s a large fan club out there (for the boat, not for me).

Have a look at Alex Himelfarb’s latest post on Bill C-10, the omnibus criminal law bill and scroll down through the comments to read the outstanding, eloquent and perceptive speech by Senator Tommy Banks.  Or read the speech here  (but then you’ll miss all the other good stuff in Alex’s post).

Too bad Senator Banks had to retire because he turned 75 on December 17.  Also too bad he wasn’t appointed a lot sooner (he was appointed in 2000).  A fabulous speaker, for a musician and TV star… Confession: I thought I remembered Tommy Banks from my youthful says watching CBC TV on Friday nights, but of course he isn’t THAT old.  I was thinking of Tommy Common (who I found way too bland, preferring the somewhat weirder Tommy Hunter).

A few years ago, one of my friends decided to run for the Liberal nomination for MLA, so I signed up with the Liberal Party of Nova Scotia in order to be able to vote for him at the nomination meeting.  He didn’t sign up enough others, though, and lost to an almost completely obnoxious politician who got the numbers out (then lost the election, as he should have).  Since then, I’ve been receiving regular communications from the provincial and federal organizations. Lately, they have been getting very interesting, particularly as the federal party contemplates its future.  (Although perhaps contemplation is too contemplative a term for what the Liberal Party is doing – it feels more like outright panic.)

I was invited, along with everyone else on their mailing list I suppose, to put my name forward as a delegate to the biennial convention in Ottawa in January.  What the convention is supposed to achieve, I’m not quite sure – the agenda seems pretty evenly divided between consideration of a complete mish-mash of policy resolutions, on the one hand, and consideration of the process for renewal, including how to select a leader, on the other hand.  The underlying themes of the barrage of emails about the convention seem to be (a) send us money, right now and (b) let’s start a huge conversation using Facebook, the website, and Twitter.  I’m not going to Ottawa in January, at least not for the Liberal Party convention, but I have at least been prompted to think about what I might want to see happen to the Liberals in the next couple of years.

I was struck by the tribute to the late Tom Kent by Sandra Martin in the December 2 Globe and Mail.  (I should say by way of disclaimer that I always had an uneasy feeling about how Tom Kent was moved about from senior position to senior position on the basis of, as far as I could see, his reputation with a few key people in government.  I’m not sure how his record as deputy minister or head of DEVCO looks to those who study such things.  I do remember a well-known and fairly senior English remittance man telling me that all you needed to get ahead in Ottawa was “a first-class education, impeccable manners and a big bag of bullshit”.  Not that I’m suggesting Kent was a remittance man or that he doesn’t deserve his reputation; I’m only saying I had a vague sense of unease about the veneration in which he was held by some).  But I digress: the point of mentioning Tom Kent is that he was an integral part of a much different way of doing policy in this country.  And I’m not sure it wasn’t a better way than the big conversation, let everyone have their say (in 140 characters or less), social media grass-roots let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach that the Liberal Party seems to be at risk of falling into.

What we need in this country (and even more in the US) is a party which is capable of bringing forward a few big, important proposals for dealing with the most serious problems we face.  In one of my early posts, I cited an article by Andrew Coyne on what needs to be done to insert some grown-up discussion into Canadian politics at the federal level.  I encourage you to have another look even though I’m not ready to accept his conclusion that we need a brand-new party to do it. I would prefer that one of the existing parties change its ways by speaking truth, treating voters like adults, and acting honourably.

In a later post, I cited a post-election post by Alex Himelfarb (here) which I commend to you all, and quoted a comment in which he argued for dropping the notion of “middle” or “centre” and just press for substantive issues that matter for our future:

how to create jobs and opportunity, not just wealth concentrated in the hands of the few

how to ensure universal access to health care and health regardless of income and in the face of an aging population

how to green the economy, seriously address climate change and preserve our environment

how to combat the unsupportable levels of inequality that make democracy and common purpose impossible

how to rejuvenate our democracy, starting with electoral reform.

I think this basket of issues would make a good start for a reinvigorated Liberal Party, or for any party in fact. I would add food supply (how to grow food sustainably and how to get people to stop killing themselves and the health care system by eating processed food), and “sweet water”, which I agree with Ben Emery we need to deal with now even if it is more urgent in places like the United States.

I have hopes for the Liberals (as I have hopes for Prime Minister Harper, fading slowly).  I hope they can find a way to become a party that is not afraid to provide leadership on the important issues, not afraid to explain its policies, eager to debate them honestly, and willing to try to persuade people to back them.  A party that is rigorously honest, and as upright and brave in the conduct of public affairs as the late Jack Layton.

Whether the LPC can get there I don’t know; perhaps Andrew Coyne is right in saying that the existing parties are too locked into the old ways.  And there are huge obstacles even if the Party finds the nerve to try a new way, not the least of which are the press’s predilection to analyze everything political in terms of strategy not substance, the extremely low expectations that Canadians have of the political process, and their cynicism about the actors; and the non-stop spin that all parties engage in now, exacerbated by their preoccupation with the instant comments through social media.

I do belive, though, that people care enough to respond to an honest attempt to do better.  Politics is necessary and politicians are not necessarily worst than the rest of us – in fact, they are often better than many of us, and willing to work hard and thanklessly for what they believe in. Let’s hope for the best.

A while ago, I posted a little rant called “Hoax emails and the value of truth”.  I really didn’t say much in it about the value of truth, being more concerned to plead for people just to check their facts before they forward things on to others.  But the underlying concern I had – and what baffles me about the blitheness with which lies get passed on unchecked – is what effect the continual spreading of falsehoods might have on how society sees things.

Three things have happened in the last few days that make me want to be more explicit about the effects of  treating the truth as basically worthless;

1) A few days my friend Megan kindly referred me to this opinion piece by the Globe and Mail’s Bruce Anderson, in which he pointed out some of the wider implications of the fact that the Government House Leader, Peter van Loan, had defended some organised, underhanded, intentionally misleading phone calls in Irwin Cotler’s riding that suggested Cotler was going to step down as an MP.  Mr. Van Loan, according to Anderson, said that trying to rein in the callers would be worse than the calling campaign itself because it would deprive them of free speech.  I think that’s carrying sensitivity to human rights a bit far, to say the least.

2) Our  Minister of Defence, in his peregrinations around the real story behind last year’s helicopter flight out of the fishing lodge, is baldly ignoring the inconsistencies in his own explanations.  It leaves you breathless, almost.

3) A mass email went out in our local area forwarding a warning about the danger of drinking from pop cans.  The email suggested that one should always wash the top of the can first – sound advice, no doubt – but went on to say that someone in the USA had contracted some rat disease from drinking from an unwashed can and had died.  Now here’s the thing that gets me going: when I told the originator of the forwarded pop can message that in fact no one had ever been proved to have died from anything contracted from drinking from a pop can ( I didn’t tell him the warning has been circulating since 1998), he replied by saying that he assumes that all such Internet messages contain some element of “exaggeration”, but he thinks that just makes the message more effective. I could cry, really.

It is dark and dismal here in Cape Breton in early December.  I try hard not to get depressed.  But I find it very hard to accept lying unless it is in the very best interests of those lied to, and otherwise harmless.  I know people have always lied, and I know that if we are honest enough to analyze our own daily interactions we can identify the odd skating over unpleasant truths and fudging of facts that might, if acknowledged or expressed, make our life less pleasant.  But the fact that we all lie a bit does not excuse the deliberate, widespread assault of lies that we see every day in what we used to call the press.

It seems to me that, setting aside all the possible justifications for political obfuscation or, at the international level, diplomatic hedging, there are at least two serious consequences of a barrage of public lies.  The first is that once it has gone on for a while, people expect it.  As a result, no public figure is wholly believed; our “leaders” become incapable of leading on important issues, and the country as a whole becomes incapable of reasoned debate on those issues.  The second consequence is a pervasive lack of respect for politicians, the news media and public spokespersons (for business, police, etc.).

If you think no one is telling you the truth, why should you listen?

(Nice little piece here in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, by the way, though I wouldn’t call Gerald Caplan a disinterested observer of Conservative politics…)

Yikes! It has been almost a month since my last post, and I’m at risk of becoming a Bad Blogger again.  No excuses this time.

I had a birthday earlier this month – my 63rd.  Not a huge number, with life expectancy the way it is nowadays.  But somehow it seems bigger than it should.  Maybe it is because it is very dark here in Cape Breton in early December. Maybe it is because several of my friends and neighbours died in the last few years at the age of 62, some suddenly and others slightly less so.  We live in a very sparsely populated place, and we haven’t been here very long, so I am a bit surprised when I check off in my head our friends here who have died suddenly at the age I’m now at: Dennis Player, Gilbert Bordillon, Jeremy Frith, Dennis Smith, Kenny MacLeod, John Graham MacInnes.  All of them extremely vigorous, active, and (with one exception, apparently healthy) men.

Or maybe it is because Susan and I both have siblings struck by terminal cancer, and we are getting way too familiar with the medical system.  Myself, I feel pretty good physically, but with all that illness around there is a little tendency to expect the worst from your own body.  I even went to the library the other day and brought home some books on the aging body and what to expect.  Two were not helpful, being aimed more at those in their 50s.  The third, Aging Well, we both liked for its clear and practical explanations of the changes we can all expect to encounter (and of course lots of changes that one would hope not to encounter, and which sound like a VERY BAD TIME when they do show up).  I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived two days later (along with a very pleasant David Bromberg CD, although his picture on the cover made me feel even older).

My own parents died relatively young – my mother when her artificial heart valve gave out at 64, my father sadly at 77. The first unavoidable, the second a miserable shame.  I remember writing to Dad when our kids were young, telling him of my revelation about parents: I had always thought that he had life figured out, and that I would too once I became an adult with a family of my own; but when I got there, I realized that we are all just feeling our way along and we are all going through life for the first time.  (He never replied).

Hitting your 60s is like that, too.  You expect wisdom and serenity to arrive, like the first snowfall, but they don’t.  It is true that my temper is more even, I deal much better with the inevitable and frequent setbacks in handyman projects and so on.  I may even be more sensitive to the needs and feelings of others, although you’d have to ask them.  But I am still judgmental, still impatient, still capable of wrecking myself on the reefs of a bottle of good rum.  I can almost never enjoy a round of golf that takes more than three and a half hours (nor should I have to, I argue).  I am locally famous for bursts of ill temper at our wildly over-long and under-organized Fire Department meetings.  When Mackenzie was here in September, I did find I was able to relax more into the zen of grandparenting than I would have expected.  I’d like to practice more of that.

I’m hoping that having made it past 62 I may have a few more years of good health.  I want to see my children and grandchildren as they make their way, I want to travel with Susan, I want to enjoy our lives together.  I want to see the next season of Boardwalk Empire.  For all of that, I’m ready to make adjustments: work a bit less hard around the property, hike more slowly, relax more; even drink less alcohol.  But in the end it is all a matter of luck, I suppose.

Susan and I have been watching a moose all year – first as a calf, with its mother, then alone after the mother got hit by a truck. At one point we thought it had the “brain worm”  - parelaphostrongylus tenuis,  if you really need to know – because it was acting very strange, but the DNR biologist came to check and said it was probably drunk on apples.  (I have a quite wonderful short video of the moose staggering in the rain, falling to its knees, dancing in a tight circle, trying to scratch its ears with its front hooves).

Last night I was awakened at midnight by people talking on the Cabot Trail in front of our place. A big pickup truck with one headlight, and a little car. They drove away, slowly. I went to check and found the little moose dead beside the road.

This morning there was a Tim Horton’s cup beside the carcass.

That makes about 15 vehicle-moose collisions this year that I know about, so far, between St. Ann’s and Smokey.

Today is stormy here on the North Shore.  The temperature went up overnight to 15 degrees, it is raining hard and blowing to 90.  A good day to hunker down and remember.  It is particularly gloomy and reminiscent around our house this year, because Susan’s beloved sister Bernadette died on Hallowe’en (her fifty-eighth birthday) after a shockingly brief illness.    We are all struggling to absorb the loss.

Susan and I usually make a point of going to the Remembrance Day ceremony in whatever place we happen to be on this day of the year.  It is a good time of year for remembering those who made sacrifices for their country – low light, crappy weather, a long winter looming up ahead.  Generally, I am a bit uncomfortable with groups of people in uniforms, because armies are no smarter than the rest of us and can use their strength and fortitude in the wrong way sometimes.  But there is no denying the reality that the individual who serves is doing so in our place and in some way for us, and we should respect that whatever we may think of the specific cause in which they might be engaged.

My favourite Remembrance Days were in Ottawa.  Huge crowds, still and devoted; lots of veterans of all shapes and sizes; good military bands.  And when the ceremony was over, the stores open and Susan and I could (it being a day off work but not off school) have lunch and do our Christmas shopping.  I also enjoyed the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Whitehorse when we were living there – very small, a great turnout, a highly Aboriginal flavour to the whole thing.  And our local ceremony is also moving, though like all such events it has become more and more a reminder of how many of the older veterans we have lost to old age.

At today’s ceremony in Indian Brook, the minister read a poem written a few years ago by Ashlie MacInnis of Breton Cove, in which she put the question “whose memories are these?”.  A great question, I think, and one that deserves more thought than I am up to today.  I have lots of memories of the Second World War, though I was born well after it ended (well, a little bit after it ended…).  I certainly have strong memories of the people who served in that war, because they were all around me when I was growing up.  That war must seem pretty remote to today’s young people – they think I am old, and I’m a baby boomer.  Probably they think of the Second World War in much the same way as I think of the Crimean War, or the War of Jenkins’ Ear, or the Thirty Years’  War.  And are they being taught history in school at all, or do they rely on the Legion advertising and the CBC documentaries that spring up at this time of year?

Well, anyway, I’m going to stay inside by the fire and think about things that aren’t gloomy.  Like the warmth and concern that our family and friends have shown us, the love among Susan’s family and Bernadette’s friends that helped see her out, and the fact that a complete lack of faith in any kind of divine intervention or a life after death need not prevent us from being kind to each other while we are all together on this earth.

Last May and June, Alex Himelfarb posted a couple of incisive pieces here and here on the newly-elected Conservative government’s promise to introduce an omnibus bill to amend the Criminal Code.  These impassioned posts offer a fascinating and somewhat depressing take on the proposed legislation and what it may mean for Canada.  Don’t stop after reading Alex’s piece – go on to read all the comments, most of which are thoughtful and knowledgeable.

I decided at the time to wait and see what the omnibus bill would finally look like.  Ever hopeful, I kept my heart open to the possibility that the Harper government in majority might be more reasonable, less doctrinaire, and more willing to consider policy advice and evidence before bringing legislation forward.  Well, in some ways they might be, but certainly not with Bill C-10 (The Safe Streets and Communities Act), nor with the abolition of the long gun registry and the puzzling proposal to destroy existing records.

Just to remind you, Bill C-10 rolls nine previous criminal law bills into one. Some of the provisions may make a little sense from the point of view of public policy; most are window dressing.  The really scary provisions relate to tougher sentences for the production and possession of illicit drugs for the purposes of trafficking: the bill would require judges to impose minimum prison terms for people convicted of certain drug offences, the most ludicrous of which is a 6-month mandatory term of imprisonment for someone growing more than 5 marijuana plants.  There is plenty of evidence that mandatory jail terms for drug offences do not make the streets safer (hello Texas!).

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has published a paper called The Fear Factor which, despite a somewhat stridently anti-government tone, makes a convincing case against the crime agenda on two main grounds.  First, because what the Government is proposing is not going to make things better but instead will make them worse (and cost lots of tax dollars to boot).  Second, because it is based almost entirely on pandering to a public that has been made afraid of crime by the Government’s own publicity machine – while crime rates are falling significantly in Canada, the Conservatives have been loudly proclaiming that crime is growing by leaps and bounds , that we should all be very very scared, and that they are the only party that is prepared to save us all.

I’m not against strict criminal laws or strict enforcement of the laws.  For instance, I share, to some extent, the discomfort of the Conservatives with sentencing practices that leave the public feeling baffled about the disconnect between the formal sentence and the length of time served. I also share their sense that the courts have been too lenient on sexual abuse of children, partly because I have the sense that there is little hope of reform for those poor folks (usually abused themselves when young) who are compelled to act the way they do.

I do object, though, to laws that are based on false assumptions and bad policy.  Canada is lucky enough to have a close-up view of how the United States criminal justice system works, and one would hope that we would have learned to avoid their worst mistakes.  Our present government seems to have gone the other way, for some reason, and appears to want to emulate the worst practices of the Americans.  The paranoid in me fears that this is part of some grand plan to curry favour with the USA in order to keep our borders open to business.  I sure hope not.

There are four main things I object to in the Government’s overall approach.

First, the lying about the facts of criminal activity (see the CCPA paper above). This is classic fascist propagandic strategy (hmmm, if I can string together those four words maybe I can get a position as an academic).  The police aren’t going to argue, with some brave exceptions, because it relates directly to budgets.

Second, continued softening of the protections the law offers against invasion of our privacy by law enforcement agencies.  This goes hand in hand with the huge increase in law enforcement and anti-terrorist budgets since 2011, and is a self-feeding extravaganza which we should be very afraid of.  We haven’t gone as far as the Americans yet – we are not actually justifying torture or murdering our own citizens – but we are on the same path. It leads pretty directly to the spectacle of the G20 security fiasco and all those shiny new black vans transporting protesters down the 401 from their secret holding cells to their secret courtrooms.  I also have a sense, without evidence, that it is related to the shameful decline in standards and morale in the RCMP, including the force’s resort to using “personal privacy considerations” as an excuse for not saying anything at all about bizarre killings such as that of John Simon in Waycobah.

Third, the war on drugs.  A US expression, yes, but fairly applied to the Canadian law enforcement scene.  Yes, there is a problem with drugs in Canada, both legal and illegal.  The effects of drug abuse are enormously pernicious, and there is a clear need for more education and control of all dangerous drugs.  But we really have to ask, given the way things have been going in the last hundred years or so, whether the criminal law is the answer for whatever evils we may ascribe to the use of drugs.  Our attempts to limit the supply of certain drugs have created two costly and socially dangerous empires, one being based in organized crime and the other in our police forces, courts and prisons.   At the same time, our efforts to regulate the supply of dangerous prescription drugs seem to be a failure, at least here in Nova Scotia where whole communities are wracked by violent crime and property offences based on addiction to drugs prescribed by doctors.  What we do NOT need is any further criminalization of the use or even the sale of marijuana.  That is just ridiculous, and all it does it add to the scorn young folks have for a legal system they will see as hypocritical, and at the same time increase the number of people whose lives are ruined for no good reason.  What is the goal that is hoped for in the proposal to impose mandatory prison terms for growing as few as six plants?  Since no one alive could possibly argue that prison terms produce better people, it must be intended as a deterrent.  But who will it deter? Certainly not the people who are in the business of producing dope for a living, the real criminals.  And, based on my observation of youngsters growing up, it won’t deter young men, the majority of whom haven’t yet developed a sense of self-preservation or consequences.

The problem with the war on drugs is that the drugs themselves are usually not the problem.  The problem is the inability of those who want or need the drugs to obtain them legally.  Some drugs are a medical problem, in that they are addictive or harmful.  Others, like alcohol or marijuana, can be harmful if badly used, but are capable of being used in a positive, recreational way.  Criminalizing drugs of either category creates a whole new level of issues, and should be done sparingly, to say the least.

Fourth, the whole issue of minimum sentences.  I can see why a minimum jail sentence is attractive to policy-makers who feel exasperated by society’s apparent inability to deal with some issues.  Handguns,  for example:  whether or not violent crime is growing in Canada, it is certainly of a different character than it was when I was growing up.  I did see a handgun at a social club in Halifax in the 60s, under a table in the hands of the furtive guy sitting next to me, but I don’t recall very many cases of a gun actually being used in the commission of a crime.  Now Halifax is like Washington, DC, with drive-by shootings, gang killings (or, more often, attempted killings because they don’t shoot straight), muggings and murders.  You don’t need to analyze statistics to understand why people here worry about crime.  But do our policy makers know whether  mandatory prison sentences work to deter the possession or use of handguns? And have they worked out the cost to society of throwing everyone who uses a gun into prison?  Unless we can be honest about the effects of imprisonment, and the purposes for which we imprison people, we cannot have a real debate about what it is we want to do with our criminal law.

I had a bit of contact with the idea of “restorative justice”, particularly when I was working in the North.  It was a controversial concept, partly because it meant different things to different people.  As I understood it, the goal of restorative justice was to try to find a way to bring the offender’s community into the process of deciding how to deal with his or her actions.  Ideally, this would not only help the court fashion a set of consequences which had the best likelihood of preventing future criminal behaviour by that offender, but also make the offender realize the effects of his or her actions on the community and provide if possible a sense that the community cared and had support to offer.

Restorative justice is easiest to understand in the context of young offenders, where there is presumably a long life left to be lived and more likelihood that the offender can leave youthful indiscretions behind.  It is easier to deal with when it involves minor crimes; much harder when someone has been physically assaulted.  The roles of the victim and the community are subjects of much debate, and there is a special set of problems related to ingrained dysfunction either in the community or in the offender.

But, practical issues aside, the idea of restorative justice sheds some light on the purpose of the criminal law, and on the fundamental question that faces us all when we think about criminal law:  how can we best protect society against behaviour that is so unwanted we are ready to call it “criminal”?  There are those who argue that retribution or punishment are of themselves a worthy goal of the criminal law.  I confess I have some sympathy for that.  I remember doing a review in law school of Karl Menninger’s book The Crime of Punishment, in which I said that while Menninger had made a good case that most straight-up punishment had consequences that were only bad for society, I thought that he ignored the possibility that the people who came into contact with the criminal law might be capable of exercising free will, and that they might therefore see that being punished was something to be avoided.

If you read the comments following the second of the Himelfarb posts I mentioned at the beginning, you’ll see a fascinating discussion of the tension between “free will” and the underlying causes of criminal behaviour.  That discussion also deals with the sometimes conflicting imperatives of (a) dealing right now, today, with bad behaviour and (b) doing what we can as a society to ensure that our laws, governments, families and communities encourage people to be law-abiding and responsible.  I’m not going to go there in this post, but I hope we can help our government, and those of our friends and neighbours who think Bill C-10 makes sense, to focus on the importance of both imperatives