The Toronto Sun is absolutely correct today:
Sat, March 5, 2005
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Our laws go to pot
The Liberals’ suck and blow approach to enforcing our marijuana laws, quite frankly, sucks.
Suddenly Jean Chretien’s jokes about taking up pot smoking once the Liberals decriminalized it don’t seem so funny, do they?
Remember what our former prime minister said — while he still had the job — as the Liberal faithful laughed with delight?
“Perhaps I will try it when it will no longer be criminal. I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand.”
Terrific. How the hell were the police supposed to crack down on grow-ops when the leader of the country was making “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” jokes about the illegal product they produce?
This isn’t about the morality of smoking pot.
It’s about the contradictory messages the Liberals stuck our police forces with, which continues under Paul Martin.
And it’s about the Liberals’ soft approach to all crime.
On the one hand, they say the want the police to crack down on illegal grow-ops, without giving them either the financial or legal resources they need to do the job. On the other, through their plan to decriminalize marijuana, they’re telling the public it’s no big deal to buy the product those grow-ops produce.
We warned the Liberals these mixed messages would lead to disaster. A disaster that, as it turns out, has broken Canada’s heart.
In a six-part series last December, we pointed out that for all the Liberals’ jokes about smoking pot, grow-ops were a multi-billion-dollar business run by vicious criminals and gangs.
That Canada’s proximity to the United States would always generate a huge demand for illegal pot, regardless of whether it was decriminalized or legalized here.
We produced 10 specific, doable measures that all levels of government could immediately enact to eliminate grow-ops.
We argued for mandatory minimum sentences with no chance of parole for growing and trafficking offences, not a maximum sentence of 14 years which the Liberals have proposed. Maximum sentences don’t work because judges don’t impose them.
We quoted experts who warned grow-ops were a “ticking time bomb” in terms of the risk to public safety and human health.
We noted as few as one in 100 grow-op operators goes to jail.
The Liberals went right on laughing .
Which brings us to our final point.
There are many disturbing aspects to the murder of these four young RCMP officers that have nothing to do with grow-ops.
They have to do with why James Roszko, a gun-loving, sadistic maniac described by his own father as “the devil,” with a long history of violent, criminal and drug-induced behaviour, was even walking the streets. Neighbours living close to his Alberta farm described him as “dangerous,” and “on the edge.” He shot at passersby. He had spikes at the end of his driveway.
He was known to police. He was also known to hate the RCMP, which raises the question of why four young cops, one of them with two weeks on the job, were sent to deal with him.
In short, Roszko was just the kind of thug who routinely takes advantage of our lax justice system, headed up by a Liberal government for whom law and order has never been a priority.
A Calgary cop — Staff Sgt. Birnie Smith of the Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigative Team — said it best yesterday.
Maybe it takes something as terrible as the cold-blooded murder of four young policemen to finally wake us up.
To finally make us angry enough to hold this Liberal government to account for its woeful record on law and order, and to finally — finally — finally, make the Liberals pay a price for it.