This is my first attempt at a blog, so I trust that the reader will bear with me.  I’m a Canadian Lawyer, and (for now) will be writing mainly about politics, the economy and (to a lesser extent) law.  For the next month or so, I’m going to be dealing with election issues.

In the interests of Full, Fair and Frank disclosure, I’ll also state that I have (more or less) decided to vote for Mr. Trudeau (*spits at mention*).

On fiscal and monetary policy, I’m generally a pretty right-of-center person, although I don’t naturally self-identify as either Keynesian or Neo-Liberal.  Notwithstanding this,  I’ve basically decided to not vote for Mr. Harper this time out.  Very broadly, I think Mr. Harper has made some positive policy decisions over the past ten years.  Notably, he got ride of the Canadian Wheat Board, got ride of the gun registry and generally left provincial matters to the provinces.  Moreover, notwithstanding the fact that we are currently in a recession, I think his management of the economy has basically been sound (this is actually somewhat debatable, but I think a fair generalization).

Having said that, why would I not vote for him?  This article makes the point well:

http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/08/31/opinion/harpers-war-law

I’ll be expanding on these points in later posts, but the short version is that Mr. Harper has been BRUTAL on the issue of civil liberties.  I don’t think this gets a lot of play in the mainstream media, but over the past 10 years this guy has done a total hatchet job on basic due process, immigration and many of our core civil liberties.

Quoting from the article:

“Canada doesn’t have an activist court at war with the prime minister.

It has a prime minister who is at war with the law.”

This really is it in a nutshell, and (amazingly) the examples given in the article aren’t even the worst thing I could think of.  Time and time again, over the past 10 years, I’ve seen massive “Omnibus” bills with Orwellian names like the “Protecting Freedom While Putting Scumbags In Jail Act” (I am paraphrasing).  It’s as if he read “1984” as nothing more than a fucking “How-To” manual.

For example, I recall distinctly, sitting in court several years ago while a very young lawyer plead a client guilty to some non-violent drug offences.  This isn’t a common part of my practice, but I instinctively “knew” that it should be a non-custodial sentence.  The client was an elderly, female, newcomer Canadian, with limited English, who had come from a relatively “high conflict” part of the world.  She had no criminal record.  The crown and defence offered the sentencing judge a joint submission for a federal sentence.  A “federal sentence” means it’s two (2) years, and a “joint submission” means that the crown and the defence are  basically asking for the same thing.  As a practical matter, judges almost always follow joint submissions, unless they are completely from mars.

I’d known the judge in question for over 15 years, and had appeared in front of him many times.  I knew that he was very experienced and well versed in the law.  Before he was called to the bench, he was universally regarded as one of the “top” lawyers in our area of Canada.

Basically, I assumed that he was going to reject the joint submission, because it was too high, and it looked like the (very) young defence lawyer had made a mistake.  This particular judge also generally doesn’t suffer fools lightly, especially the defence bar, so I also thought that there would be a great deal of entertainment value.

I was wrong.  The judge in question, correctly, noted the recent amendment to the relevant section of the Criminal Code, noted that this was the lowest sentence possible, and followed the joint submission.  And the little old immigrant lady went through the door to prison 10 seconds later, having never harmed a person in her life.

This is something that is often lost in “tough on crime” rhetoric.  When the general public thinks of “violent criminals,” they often rely on the images found in movies and TV, which deal with sensational murders and rapes. As understandable as this is, it is far removed from reality.  While thoughtful people can disagree that (say) a murderer should get 20, 25, 30 years, or even life, these are not the laws that Mr. Harper has (for the most part) targeted.

Using the example above, Mr. Harper has (essentially) used criminal law to limit judicial discretion.  He doesn’t trust the bench to make these kinds of decisions, which is exactly why we have a bench in the first place.  Judges exist, in part, to say things like “Hey, why are we putting this elderly women in jail for years for a non-violent offence?  WTF?” (again, paraphrasing).

As such, I shan’t be voting Tory this time out.  And I don’t care what tax bracket you’re in, you shouldn’t either.