THE LIBERALS ACCUSED THE TORIES OF AWFUL BEHAVIOUR IN THEIR HANDLING OF THE TERRI-LYNNE McCLINTIC CASE. THEY NEED TO TAKE A HARD LOOK AT HOW REAL PEOPLE THINK, WRITES CHRIS SELLEY.
McClintic case the latest debacle in a growing list
So, this is awkward. Remember when the Liberals were aghast at opposition demands that Terri-Lynne McClintic be returned to prison from the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge In Maple Creek, Sask.? Remember when Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale went on CTV News and defended Correctional Service Canada’s expertise, insisting “prison management officials have determined this is the best way to rectify (McClintic’s) bad practices in the past, but also to keep the public safe”?
Remember when CSC Commissioner Anne Kelly defended her agency’s “rigorous case management process” and proclaimed herself “comfortable with the decision”?
Remember when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau scampered out of the House of Commons before a vote on a motion demanding McClintic be returned to prison to hold an impromptu scrum, during which he gleefully accused the Conservatives of “practising ambulance-chasing politics” and exploiting “terrible tragedies for political gain”?
Well, so, here’s the thing. Upon further review by the CSC, it turns out it’s actually not appropriate for a woman who helped arrange the rape of an eight-year-old girl, then claw-hammered the girl to death, then in prison savagely assaulted an inmate and wrote to a friend that she wished she could have done more damage, to be housed in an Indigenous healing lodge that can contain children living with their mothers and where the “guards” don’t even try to stop people from escaping.
Maybe not ever. Certainly not just nine years into a life sentence with a mandatory minimum of 25 years without parole.
Repeat: Not appropriate. On Thursday we learned McClintic is back in the clink, under new, tougher and retroactive admissions rules for healing lodges.
And on Friday, Joely Lambourn, who was serving 30 months for mowing down a cyclist while driving with a suspended licence, escaped from Okimaw Ohci.
The Liberals, having dodged a rocket-propelled political grenade, are suitably chastened.
Har, har, no.
The line now is that the Conservatives behaved abominably, never mind the outcome. They politicized Tori Stafford’s murder. They even read the details of her killing into Hansard. What is wrong with these people?
Furthermore, Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer wanted Goodale to unilaterally have McClintic transferred, and that would have been just terribly wrong. What an awful precedent. Shameful he would even suggest it, really.
Instead Goodale “asked” for a “review” of procedures, and through a very organic and natural process Kelly’s comfort in her agency’s rigorous case management process simply melted away.
This is perhaps a useful fiction. We don’t want ministers literally moving prisoners around like chess pieces when it suits their political purposes. But it is a fiction nonetheless. Everyone knows CSC changed its mind because Goodale distilled all that public outrage into a polite memo, which was dutifully actioned. It had to be done. But if it’s a bad precedent, then the Liberals have set it.
Were the Conservatives “politicizing a tragedy”? Well, yeah. That’s what opposition politicians do with tragedies. For example, opposition parties “politicized” the Lac-Mégantic disaster by blaming Conservative deregulation and the timeline for requiring sturdier rail carriages.
God knows I wish Canadian politics weren’t so bloody loud and stupid. But it’s the only way important things get done, whether it’s safer railways or putting child murderers in jail. As for reading the horrifying details of Tori’s demise on to the record, well, those details are precisely why this decision had to be reversed. If the Liberals couldn’t see that from Day One, they needed reminding.
This wasn’t just about punishing or exacting retribution from McClintic, not that there’s anything wrong with punishing child murderers. It was about public safety. Public confidence in the justice system is essential for a healthy democracy, and you simply cannot expect any society to accept that it’s safe to put someone with McClintic’s record in a facility from which she could literally walk away. You certainly can’t expect that if the public isn’t even entitled to know where she’s been placed or why.
The carceral situation having been rectified, what remains truly extraordinary is that Trudeau and his advisers actually seemed to believe they had a winner issue on their hands: “Can you believe these low-born clods demanding we question CSC’s renowned expertise? Isn’t it awful how hellbent the Conservatives are on punishing criminals?”
A nation stared blankly in confusion.
The Trudeau gang has galaxy-sized blind spots. They continue to do and say objectively bizarre things with supreme, adamantine confidence. A gaggle of people actually signed off on a tweet from Environment Minister Catherine McKenna congratulating Syria for signing the Paris climate change accord. Trudeau said what Indigenous children need most is storage for their canoes and paddles — twice. They made a video in which Status of Women Minister Maryam Monsef asked Trudeau for tips on how to advance gender equality. Goodale, an MP for 30 years, referred to McClintic’s atrocities as “bad practices”!
Basically they all seem alarmingly ignorant of how real people outside the bubble actually think. Especially heading into an election campaign in which they’ll be selling a new and ever-rising carbon tax, they might want to get that sorted out.