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Poilievre's 'worst crime wave' rhetoric is political nonsense

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre speaks to the media during a press conference in Montreal, Friday, July 12, 2024. Photo by: The Canadian Press/Christinne Muschi

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Canadian politics has long been thoroughly reduced to sloganeering and sound bites. The decline of whatever capacity we had to sort through issues with an interest in substance has been hastened by turns to microtargeting, deliverology, hyperbole, extremely-online partisans boosting mis- and disinformation, and politicians revelling in all of the above.

All parties are guilty of it, but the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre have taken things up a notch, with the Tory crusade against the Trudeau government’s “reckless Liberal catch-and-release parole policies” serving as the latest example.

If ever there were a time during which you’d think we might want to take a moment to think things through and get policies right, it would be now. Criminal justice policy, for instance, is a good example of a high-stakes file in which the issue quite literally features matters of life and death. But what we get from the Conservatives is a string of emotionally manipulative campaign slogans about terror and the “worst crime wave in Canadian history”, for which a citation would be welcome, but unlikely, from Poilievre.

Last week, Statistics Canada reported that the severity of crime in the country was up on aggregate for the third year in a row, growing two per cent in 2023. This is a problem and it ought to be treated as such, though the data is worth reading in detail. As politicians fixate on headline-grabbing crimes – for instance car theft, hate crimes, and homicide – it’s worth asking what the data actually says.

Hate crimes are, indeed, up. So is fraud, extortion, car theft, robbery, and shoplifting. Breaking-and-entering was down five per cent. And while vehicle theft is a rising problem, it’s roughly 50 per cent lower than it was 25 years ago. The same can be said for robberies – way down from the 1990s and early 2000s. Homicide – one case of which Poilievre exploited last week to target the Liberals – was down 14 per cent from 2022. We are, most certainly, not in the midst of the country’s worst-ever crime spree, whatever that means.

Poilievre's "worst crime wave" rhetoric is political nonsense that won't solve any #crime problems in Canada. #cdnpoli @David_Moscrop writes for @NatObserver

The data doesn’t suggest that crime isn’t a problem, but it does ask us to consider what is a problem, where, and why. But that’s complex — far more complex than a slogan. So we’re unlikely to be indulged with any such reflection. Instead, what we get is the Conservatives misrepresenting crime data for political gain, a cynical if familiar manoeuvre that’s unlikely to produce better public policy. Poilievre is all-in on “jail, not bail” The old school tough-on-crime approach is a classic Tory stand-by, but it doesn’t sufficiently reckon with concerns such as whether the party’s policies would be constitutional, which they may not be, or what the data even tells us about the effects of current bail policy on recidivism and public safety.

Instead of a proper debate or deliberation based on verified information and reasons, we are getting anecdotal interventions from self-interested politicians. If anything, this is disrespectful to the public, to victims of crime, and offensive to anyone who thinks turning a few pages and taking in some information is important before overhauling one the country’s most complex files.

Last year, defence lawyer Michael Spratt took Poilievre to task for his claim that the Liberals and NDP had caused a crime wave, calling it “nonsense” and noting that crime data is “notoriously complex.”

“What is clear is that, historically speaking,” wrote Spratt, “we live in one of the safest periods in history. Canada's Crime Severity Index, a measure of the seriousness of police-reported crime, has decreased by 6 per cent in the last decade and a staggering 31 per cent since 2000.”

Regardless of the actual statistics, the Liberals took the bait late last year and toughened bail conditions. In doing so, they ceded the issue and the frame to the Conservatives in a bid to tackle public threats from repeat offenders with a reverse onus provision that requires the accused to bear the burden of proving they ought to be released. Whether the amendments to the Criminal Code will work? Who knows. Given this country’s incapacity to collect and analyse so much critical data, no one ought to hold their breath.

Writing in The Tyee last March, former Stephen Harper advisor and criminal law professor Benjamin Perrin argued against Poilievre’s promise to introduce potentially disastrous American-style mandatory minimum sentences, calling them “a grave policy failure and cheap politics,” and bringing the data to back up his claim.

Making good criminal justice policy requires that we gather and analyse data, spend time deliberating and debating, and leave aside the cheap politics. We’d be far better off having a sustained conversation about the carceral state, the roots of crime and its social and economic determinants, and how to address these deep and longstanding challenges.

That approach, of course, would be the way if politicians were interested in leading difficult conversations instead of pandering to the basest prejudices and knee-jerk reactions of the population. Instead, we’ll continue to get the same old sloganeering and rabble-rousing rhetoric and, in the end, will be left worse off for it.

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