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Cabinet Shuffle- (Wednesday 26 July).

Prepare to build more jails. The US rate of incarceration is 629 per 100,000 while Canada's was 109. I won't blame all of that difference on elected judges and crowns who know where their bread and butter comes from, but ...



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Maybe we don’t have to go full US, but how about we maybe crank the incarceration numbers up to at least OECD average?
 
I’m guessing once a few judges get “Law Abiding Citizen’d” by irate parents, it may alter their viewpoint…

That's the natural evolution if things don't change. Eventually the complacency wears off and the people will reestablish the Gov and Rule of Law.

Our courts and politicians often seem to forget they exist at our pleasure. And we are becoming less and less pleased.
 
I still say we should vote for our judges and crowns.
I'm not fond of that idea - either feast or famine depending on the demographic of the area. In Toronto you will still have the same issues, and perhaps worse. In Alberta I am guessing its the other way - too much incarceration.
Prepare to build more jails. The US rate of incarceration is 629 per 100,000 while Canada's was 109. I won't blame all of that difference on elected judges and crowns who know where their bread and butter comes from, but ...



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Agree with this and having the idea of building "private prisons" that are mandated to be full while government prisons have empty cells. I really do not think prisons for profit are ethical nor corrective - not that we do any better. What it will get you is the lowest paid bunch of staff and zero rehab efforts.
 
I'm looking for a way to make and keep judges and the crown responsible for their actions. If voting them out doesn't work, what does? I'm not hearing any suggestions from those that say voting isn't the way to go. Changing governments and changing laws doesn't work.

The status quo is broken, but nobody wants to fix it. At least offer up your own way to deal with it.
 
I haven't seen any studies so anything I say is purely guess work. There is the issue of likelihood of conviction which is cited above but I think in most of these cases its more of a question of costs of processing these crimes. Like the military, governments like to save money on the judicial process, from the costs of prosecutors to judges to the incarceration system. When the only two real punishments that the system can impose is fines - which most of these offenders can't or won't pay - or incarceration - which is expensive; the justice bureaucracy just shrugs its shoulders and says - "What the hell; let's just go for violent crimes." The problem goes right up the chain though. It's not just shoplifters that get a bye, serious high end white collar crime is poorly investigated and prosecuted because the system generally doesn't have the talent to deal with complex fraud operations. The number that do get prosecuted is tiny compared to the number actually committed.


Neither do they deserve to be re-elected., and yet...

Remember that I'm a fiscally conservative; social liberal guy BUT - there is a point where if you do not enforce social responsibility and an overarching safety of society in order to cater to either costs or extreme social liberality then you risk that your society might react in ways that you can't imagine or stop.

I'll go off the shoplifting issue for a second and go to the example of eco-protestors and the numerous examples of the police doing nothing to clear major roads of sit-in protestors. The times where citizens are going to take their own actions is getting closer. Police need to police. Prosecutors need to prosecute. Judges need to judge. Too many people think they can do whatever they want with impunity - whether eco-protestors or sovereign citizens or shop lifters.

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Quick question.

How well does the likelihood of conviction correlate to the quality of the Bench?
 
Maybe we don’t have to go full US, but how about we maybe crank the incarceration numbers up to at least OECD average?
People fail to mention that during that period of high incarceration in the US, the crime and homicide rate was on a good decline. Almost as if the two were somehow related.......
 
Quick question.

How well does the likelihood of conviction correlate to the quality of the Bench?
I don’t think it’s generally about the quality of the judge. It’s far more likely to turn on the quality of the prosecution and investigation, both of which in turn are linked to resources, prosecutorial and police. It’s not unusual in a lot of routine and relatively minor criminal cases for prosecutors to have barely any time to look at the file h til just before court. In contrast, where crown can look at a file early, they can recommend certain further investigative steps by police to close evidentiary gaps.

Sometimes police make errors that really no quality of crown can save, if the defense is at all competent.
 
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I don’t think it’s generally about the quality of the judge. It’s far more likely to turn on the quality of the prosecution and investigation, both of which in turn are linked to resources, prosecutorial and police. It’s not unusual in a lot of routine and relatively minor criminal cases for prosecutors to have barely any time to look at the file h til just before court. In contrast, where crown can look at a file early, they can recommend certain further investigative steps by police to close evidentiary gaps.

Sometimes police make errors that really no quality of crown can save, if the defense is at all competent.

Are judges impartial though? No malice involved in the question.
My sense is that there are no people without bias and that those biases will inevitably skew results.

The Prosecutor and the Police can be just as competent as the Bench but if they come to understand that the local Bench will skew a certain direction in its judgements isn't that going to enter into the calculus of whether or not it is worth spending effort on a particular case?

This question assumes that everyone is acting honourably and with the best of intentions.
 
I'm looking for a way to make and keep judges and the crown responsible for their actions. If voting them out doesn't work, what does? I'm not hearing any suggestions from those that say voting isn't the way to go. Changing governments and changing laws doesn't work.

The status quo is broken, but nobody wants to fix it. At least offer up your own way to deal with it.
that is why Harper put mandatory minimums in. The only way to eliminate do gooders is to set a standard. If they don't conform, fire them
 
"Children might die."
Well. Blew right through any attempts to argue the point substantively and went straight to hysterical fearmongering.
At least some of the floated policies have a mandatory report to parents built in: not sure that noting the edge cases (violently controlling/bigoted parents) is hysterical.
It is uncontroversial that people - including kids - ought be called by whatever form of their name (or a nickname) they choose. Sometimes a kid is just sensitive about what might be an odd name (rare, archaic, whatever). No need to categorize and examine the kids' reasons.
So much of the up-to-adolescence interaction with gender identity is what should be good parenting: let the kids play with externally trivial stuff unhindered. Names, clothing, toys, haircuts... none of that actually matters except to the kid figuring out who they are. Good core ethics. The ability to dig in and work and the self-respect and judgment to pull pin and say not worth it. Opportunities to excel at things. Broad life skills. A modicum of physical fitness. Those are crucial.

The kids for whom it's a phase, or who it turns out are intrigued by some specific traditionally gendered act, thing, or activity, will pass through it or refine that interest. The remaining tiny percentage with a specific, deep identity at odds with their physical nature can then sort themselves out in an environment where the first decade or so of their lives hasn't been repressive or restrictive about those things that're deeply wounding to the individual but of no particular significance to anybody else.
 
But they didn't hold the standard and they didn't get fired. So that doesn't work.

Next!
 
But they didn't hold the standard and they didn't get fired. So that doesn't work.

Next!
Mandatory minimums were struck down in several cases by appeals courts. That’s not people failing to do their jobs; that’s precisely the different parts of the system counterbalancing. Harper’s government could have chosen to use the Notwithstanding clause to prevent such an outcome, but they made a political decision not to. Suggesting judges ought to have been ‘fired’ because of this is absurd.

The legislature retains supremacy over the laws it passes and, with enough political will, can buttress them against being struck down on the most common Charter grounds. To not do no means the government intends to allow the judiciary to continue operating independently. That’s a feature, not a bug.
 
Mandatory minimums were struck down in several cases by appeals courts. That’s not people failing to do their jobs; that’s precisely the different parts of the system counterbalancing. Harper’s government could have chosen to use the Notwithstanding clause to prevent such an outcome, but they made a political decision not to. Suggesting judges ought to have been ‘fired’ because of this is absurd.

The legislature retains supremacy over the laws it passes and, with enough political will, can buttress them against being struck down on the most common Charter grounds. To not do no means the government intends to allow the judiciary to continue operating independently. That’s a feature, not a bug.

I'm sure that'll be great comfort to the people that have had loved ones killed by a gangbanger that's been released, by a judge, on zero bail for already having killed someone else.
 
I'm sure that'll be great comfort to the people that have had loved ones killed by a gangbanger that's been released, by a judge, on zero bail for already having killed someone else.
Sorry, who’s getting released on zero bail for murder and then going and doing it again? Bail in homicide cases is rare, and almost always comes with very strict and numerous conditions (the usual exception to that being police charged with homicide offences for killing someone in the course of duty.)

If we’re changed subjects from sentencing to bail reform, I’m all for an informed and mature discussion on that- I would like to see bail tightened myself. But we can have that discussion without making things up.
 
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And here’s a steer to our last segue into bail reform:
Reviving this as the most recent relevant thread covering bail reform in the context of firearms offences:

Last Friday, a shooting in Toronto left a 44 year old mother of two dead, an uninvolved innocent murdered by a stray bullet. Toronto police today announced the arrest of Damian Hudson, charged with second degree murder.

Hudson is already out on two release orders and subject to three firearms prohibitions. He was already before the court on outstanding charges of assault causing bodily harm, and breach of probation. He was previously convicted of aggravated assault and weapons possession in 2018.

Usually we see these revolving door offenders killing other members of criminal organizations and the street gang ecosystem. This time they killed a no-shit innocent bystander; a mom just going about her day. I think we can expect this to pick up some traction.

 
A few people are responsible for an awful lot of crimes. Incarceration numbers don't have to escalate dramatically in order to reduce crime, if the identification of people suited for incarceration is efficient.
I’d generally agree with that- prolific offenders. And we know who they are. One of the challenges is there are so many repeat offenders with active arrest warrants out, and barely any capacity in the system to actively try to scoop them on the warrants rather than simply waiting for them to get caught doing something else stupid. With few exceptions, there aren’t teams of police whose job is simply to track down people with warrants out. You’ve gotta be a REALLY squeaky wheel to get that grease.
 
A long-time repeat offender in Kelowna is back behind bars once again, less than two months after his most recent release from custody.
John Aronson has a lengthy criminal record dating back to 2006, and he was arrested yet again Thursday afternoon in Kelowna and handed new criminal charges, including five firearm charges, a driving while disqualified charge and two breach of probation charges.
The firearm charges are alleged to have occurred Thursday, while the driving charge is alleged to have occurred on Aug. 24. Details about the incidents that led to the new charges are not known at this time.
Aronson has had less than two months of freedom, after he was handed a 17-month sentence back in early July for prior firearms offences. But with credit for time already served, he was released from custody.
During sentencing, the court heard he's collected 46 convictions over the past 17 years.
Justice Steven Wilson noted during sentencing that Aronson had a place to live and a job lined up upon his release in July, and Aronson told the judge he was committed to changing.
“I’ve never had a plan like this. I’m driven right now. I’m sorry for what I have done in the past,” Aronson said.
But he had made similar comments to a judge back in 2019 when he was sentenced for a handful of charges: “I'm sorry for what I did and you are not going to see me back in here.”
During a May 2021 sentencing for fleeing from police, Judge Clarke Burnett called Aronson's words “meaningless.”
Aronson was released from custody in July on a probation order, an order he's alleged to have now breached. He's scheduled to make his first appearance in Kelowna court later Friday afternoon.
Aronson had been well-known to the police for many years. He was previously arrested in two “high-risk" takedowns in Rutland, in connection with a violent break-and-enter in West Kelowna in 2017, and he was shot by police and bitten by a police dog during a takedown outside the CIBC branch near Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna in 2019.
The very same day he was released from custody after serving time for that 2019 arrest, he fled from police in a vehicle and crashed into oncoming traffic on Highway 97 in West Kelowna, seriously injuring himself.
In February this year, Aronson escaped from a halfway house in Surrey, cut off his electronic ankle monitoring bracelet and was found asleep in a car in Peachland with a female passenger and a quantity of drugs.
At the time, police in Kelowna said they had taken “a very dangerous individual off our streets.”
 
BUT he is misunderstood and a family man!!!
A long-time repeat offender in Kelowna is back behind bars once again, less than two months after his most recent release from custody.
John Aronson has a lengthy criminal record dating back to 2006, and he was arrested yet again Thursday afternoon in Kelowna and handed new criminal charges, including five firearm charges, a driving while disqualified charge and two breach of probation charges.
The firearm charges are alleged to have occurred Thursday, while the driving charge is alleged to have occurred on Aug. 24. Details about the incidents that led to the new charges are not known at this time.
Aronson has had less than two months of freedom, after he was handed a 17-month sentence back in early July for prior firearms offences. But with credit for time already served, he was released from custody.
During sentencing, the court heard he's collected 46 convictions over the past 17 years.
Justice Steven Wilson noted during sentencing that Aronson had a place to live and a job lined up upon his release in July, and Aronson told the judge he was committed to changing.
“I’ve never had a plan like this. I’m driven right now. I’m sorry for what I have done in the past,” Aronson said.
But he had made similar comments to a judge back in 2019 when he was sentenced for a handful of charges: “I'm sorry for what I did and you are not going to see me back in here.”
During a May 2021 sentencing for fleeing from police, Judge Clarke Burnett called Aronson's words “meaningless.”
Aronson was released from custody in July on a probation order, an order he's alleged to have now breached. He's scheduled to make his first appearance in Kelowna court later Friday afternoon.
Aronson had been well-known to the police for many years. He was previously arrested in two “high-risk" takedowns in Rutland, in connection with a violent break-and-enter in West Kelowna in 2017, and he was shot by police and bitten by a police dog during a takedown outside the CIBC branch near Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna in 2019.
The very same day he was released from custody after serving time for that 2019 arrest, he fled from police in a vehicle and crashed into oncoming traffic on Highway 97 in West Kelowna, seriously injuring himself.
In February this year, Aronson escaped from a halfway house in Surrey, cut off his electronic ankle monitoring bracelet and was found asleep in a car in Peachland with a female passenger and a quantity of drugs.
At the time, police in Kelowna said they had taken “a very dangerous individual off our streets.”
 
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