Skip to main content
verbatim

Never once mentioning his name, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson provided a weak defence of Stockwell Day's controversial assertion - meant to bolster case for building costly new prisons - that crime in Canada is going unreported.

"Our role is to stand up for victims in this country," he said Wednesday when asked about the Treasury Board President's remarks of a day earlier.

In Montreal making an announcement on measures to combat organized crime, the Justice Minister's first answer about Mr. Day's statement was off point. Mr. Nicholson spoke instead about having the support of his colleagues, both federal and provincial, for his tough-on-crime agenda.

The reporter asked a follow-up question in an effort to pin down Mr. Nicholson: "What types of crimes is Mr. Day referring to that are going unreported."

The Justice Minister replied: "There are some unreported crimes in this country and statistically they tell me it's related to a number of property crimes in particular, but again we are governing on the basis we have an obligation to victims in this country. We have an obligation to make sure law enforcement agencies have the tools to properly control crimes in this country and we have an obligation to make sure the punishment fits the crime."

As clear as mud, but that's all he said.

Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland, meanwhile, held a news conference in Ottawa calling on the Harper government to provide better rationale for the $10-billion to $13-billion price tag on new prison spending. "They've got to do a lot better job than using some obscure thing from 2004 to justify justify spending potentially tens of billions of dollars on new prisons," Mr. Holland told The Globe afterward.

Mr. Day cited a 2004 victimization survey, conducted by Statistics Canada, that found 28 per cent of respondents reported they had been the victim of a crime - a 2-per-cent increase from a 1999 survey. However, the increase was mostly in theft and vandalism related crimes; the percentage of those who reported they had been victims of violent crimes remained the same from the previous survey.

"I just think the argument isn't there," Mr. Holland said. "What they are doing is essentially chasing policies the Republicans fomented with disastrous effect in the United States that crushed their budget and actually made crime rates worse."

The Liberals argue that spending this kind of money while the government is running a $54-billion deficit just doesn't make sense. The Conservative plan, Mr. Holland added, is based more on ideology than anything else.

"If you just lock people up long enough all your problems will go away," he said sarcastically. "… And they think it is good politics to be hard on criminals."

Interact with The Globe