Letter to the Editor
The following letter was sent to the editor of the Vancouver Sun:
I am writing in response to Kim Bolan’s article published on July 23rd concerning the so called Senate hold-up of Bill C-15, which would impose mandatory jail terms for drug producers and traffickers.
The Conservative government has a field day every time a bill they introduce arrives in the Senate. Instead of allowing the Senate do it’s constitutionally mandated job of studying legislation to ensure its worthiness and effectiveness, we are constantly forced to defend our work to the general public. Maybe the “hold-up” in the Senate reflects hesitation on the part of Canada’s chamber of sober second thought to pass a Bill based in ideology rather than fact. Or maybe it comes from a desire to think carefully about the consequences of changing our laws based on partisan thinking.
Bill C-15 received 1st Reading in the House of Commons on February 27th, and took 49 sitting days to be passed on to Senate. The Senate received the Bill on June 9th, and had only 6 sitting days to do what the House of Commons accomplished in 49 days. Ms. Bolan’s article quoted Minister Nicholson as admitting that he “had a hard enough time getting that bill through the House of Commons” and that with three times the number of parliamentarians and resources.
In its current form, if Bill C-15 was to become law, the financial burden of the majority of the prison sentences (less than two years) contained within the Bill would fall on the provincial government and not the federal government.
Provincial courts are already dealing with backlogs; this Bill will only worsen the strain on the system. If this bill is really designed to target “gangs and organized crime activity,” why does it include six month sentences for individuals growing as few as six plants? Instead of quickly and efficiently convicting organized criminals, traffickers, and dealers, the courts will be backed up with the influx of people caught growing a few plants in their backyards.
We in the Senate have an obligation to the Canadian people to properly and thoroughly study all legislation, and come the fall, when parliament resumes, we will do just that with Bill C-15.
The Conservative Government should not be playing politics with people’s lives – we, as Canadians deserve better
- Senator Larry Campbell
September 13th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
please vote no on bill c-15, all this will do will fill up jail cells with honest living people, and will break up loving familes. I find it crazy that Marijuana is treated like a hard drug, considering that in all of recored history no one has every died of marijuana use, it just cant hurt you, and is the greatest natural resourse we have left in this world. IF IM A CRIMINAL FOR USING IT, MOTHER NATURE IS CRIMINAL FOR MAKING IT.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Senator Campbell,
I read this letter in the Vancouver Sun this summer and felt a rush of relief that we have someone with some good sense watching over the bizarre decisions being made in the House of Commons. Of course we all want to see the gangsters behind bars, or at least with less lucrative business opportunities. But to not only take away our good judges discretion in sentencing, load the financial burden of skyrocketing incarceration on the provinces, further criminalize those addicts who should be treated as patients, this bill, as extensively consulted to by American criminology experts, will INCREASE organized crime activity, and actually DECREASE the amount of violent offenders in prison, as the statistics of the last 30 years in the United States show. The fact this this was flatly ignored and passed by the House baffles me, but makes a great example to exactly why we have the “Chamber of Sober Second Thought”.
Keep up the good sense, Senator Campbell!
December 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Hi Larry, you came up last night during a round table talk we have amongst a group of friends. We had people from across Canada, and from over seas. Please keep up the good work. Worries are that in 6 months the conservatives will have a senate majority and then what? Anyway thank you very much for your efforts here in BC and in Ottawa.
Regards
Joel