MP Rob Moore leads attack on crime;
Date: Oct 30, 2006 8:40 AM
PUBLICATION: New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal
DATE: 2006.10.30
PAGE: A1
BYLINE: Rob Linke Telegraph-Journal
SECTION: NEWS
WORD COUNT: 757

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Moore leads attack on crime; Legislation MP stickhandling tough approach
on criminals

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Rob Moore is one of Parliament Hill’s busiest up-and-coming MPs. As the
Conservative government gets tough on crime, the Fundy Royal MP is
logging long hours as the justice minister’s right-hand man in the House
of Commons. Moore, 32, a lawyer first elected in 2004, is parliamentary
secretary to Justice Minister Vic Toews.

For his constituents, his most visible role occurs when he provides
answers on the rare occasions the minister is not in question period.

But he’s spending far more time on the justice committee, which meets
for six hours a week to hear witnesses and examine legislation. And he’s
made at least six speeches in the Commons on the bills.

Nearly a third – 11 of 34 – of the bills the Harper government has
introduced are related to reforming the justice system.

The Conservatives have targeted several hot-button crime issues, from
tightening up house arrest to beefing up laws against street racing.
They are also beefing up mandatory minimum sentences for firearms
offences. And they’re going to a ‘three-strikes, you’re-in-prison’
approach for dangerous offenders.

“It’s a heavy workload when in the last election we said we were going
to get serious on tackling crime,” said Moore. “We’ve brought forward
a
number of measures to do just that – make Canada safer.”

Whether the Conservative measures will achieve that is doubtful, argue
opposition critics and many criminal justice experts.

“Mr. Toews is just about headlines,” said Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe
Liberal MP Brian Murphy, who’s logging the same hours on the justice
committee and also speaking on the bills. “At the end of the day, when
these bills go through the minority Parliament system – yes, they’ll
make society safer. But not the overreaching, grandstanding,
unconstitutional, hastily put together bills presented by this
government.

“We want bills that stand up in the courts and protect citizens.”

“Stiffer sentences have traditionally not been, according to the
research, much of a deterrent to criminal behaviour,” said Prof. Mary
Ann Campbell, director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies at the
University of New Brunswick Saint John.

The justice bills Moore is working on are also at the centre of a
fascinating tug-of-war in the minority Parliament.

Last Monday, the opposition MPs on the justice committee forced through
amendments on bill C-9, which prohibits the use of conditional sentences
or house arrest for serious crimes.

As amended, persons convicted of crimes such as auto theft, robberies
and break and enters would still be eligible for house arrest.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the opposition was being
irresponsible.

“Canadians elected this Parliament, not just the Conservative party,”
he
told reporters Wednesday as he left question period. “They expected all
parties to be tough on crime.”

All week, the Conservatives and the opposition continued to spar over
the fate of the crime bills. The Liberals offered to speedily pass six
bills, five of which began under their watch. Toews saw that as only a
partial victory, slamming the opposition for being soft on gun crimes
and dangerous offenders.

Moore concedes that the stiffer sentences the Conservatives are trying
to pass won’t deter every offender. But he argues criminals can’t
reoffend while in prison, and that makes the public safer.

“In some cases, yes, it will prevent a crime from being committed,” he
argued. “If a sexual predator is in jail instead of in the community,
yes, crimes will be prevented.”

He says tougher laws are what Canadians want.

“There’s a legitimate sense that crime has not been treated as seriously
as it should be,” said Moore. “There’s something that had been lost
-
and I’ve heard this from constituents and from victims’ groups at
committee – and that’s a sense of justice.”

Campbell counters that Canadians’ impressions of crime are often formed
by intense media coverage of the minority of cases where the system
didn’t work.

Crime rates have been decreasing “so we must have been doing something
right. ”

The Conservatives know their justice reforms will result in more inmates
in prison. Each inmate costs an estimated $82,000 a year. Public Safety
Minister Stockwell Day has said $245 million over five years will pay
for more prison space.

Provincial ministers of justice met in Newfoundland earlier this month
to argue for help with the costs they’ll bear in provincial jails – a
meeting Moore attended.

Campbell argues that may not provide the long-term relief from crime
that Canadians may expect. Rehabilitation often works better under
supervision in the community than in a prison, she said.

“You also end up with prisons that are stocked up with criminals. That
creates a very nasty environment inside for people who may not be
continually repeating criminal behaviour in the long term.”

Moore says there’s another way to calculate costs.

“There is going to be a cost if more individuals are incarcerated – but
what is the cost to Canadians of allowing repeat offenders to go right
back into the community to reoffend?” he said.

“We’ve had sexual offences against children where people are not taken
out of the community to jail.”

Murphy says he respects the role Moore is playing as parliamentary
secretary, even if he disagrees with him on several aspects of the
legislation.

“Rob is steering the ship,” said Murphy. “He’s a very intelligent
guy -
but he has the religion of ‘we’ve got to put these guys away and all
crimes are very serious.’ Well, they are. We care about victims too.

“But we want to look at the actual laws and see if victims are going to
be safer with laws that are hasty and possibly unconstitutional and
certainly costly.”

Moore counters that the Liberals and NDP were talking tough on crime
during the last election, but changed their tune on these bills.

He’s undeterred.

“We were elected on a strong platform of among other things being tough
on crime,” said Moore. “It’s personally very satisfying working on
such
an active file.”

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !