If you’ve ever thrown up your hands in frustration thinking that the justice system across our country is more focused on helping criminals than protecting law-abiding citizens, know that you are not alone.
I just got back from the recording of the weekly TV show of my friend, David Berner. This week he was interviewing retired Justice Wallace Gilby Craig. To say that Justice Craig “gets it”, while so many other justice officials do not, would be the understatement of the century!
Though there are some specific Vancouver references, what Craig says will hit chords with Canadians from coast to coast. You can view the show here: Part 1 and Part 2.
Robert, this interview reminds me of what the guest speaker, a provincial court judge in Saskatchewan in the 1980s, said about Trudeau’s charter. He called a unemployment insurance program for layers.
I forgot to add he was a guest speaker at our oldest daughters high school grad.
Just makes me so glad I moved out of Vancouver. It was a nice place and 30 years ago thought I’d finally found a place I could settle down in but just hadn’t counted on every moonbat in the country migrating there. Sorry you have to put up with this Robert.
Wow 37 views. Poor Judge Craig will never sell books like that 🙁
Love hearing Berner’s views on the way drugs are dealt with in this country, particularly in Vancouver.
Vancouver is my hometown and I’ve been back here since 2004. But it’s run by morons who think that endlessly chanting Kumbaya is the answer to all our problems.
I often wonder what would happen to the city and the province if an alien spacecraft flew down and somehow eradicated every marijuana plant and made it impossible for any more to be grown. I’m convinced the bottom would fall out of our economy and housing market overnight.
The most pressing problem in Vancouver is getting the Art Gallery a new $350M building isn’t it?
Everything else is just noise.
Yeah it is run by idiots and bicycle lane freaks.
I stopped watching when he said crime and addiction were getting worse, which is demonstrably false. Canada’s justice system has problems, but our problems are still preferable to the ‘solutions’ in the states that absurdly oversentence minor crimes and noncrimes like drug trafficking. This approach of ‘MORE COPS MORE JAIL’ is being abandoned because it is financially unsustainable and the justice system exists to minimize crime at the lowest cost, not to indulge in the sentiments and emotional reactions of ‘Law ‘n Order’ types.
libertariansaresmarter – decriminalizing drugs would probably have little effect in Vancouver as they are essentially legal now. Where I live in the interior, nobody would dare walk down a street downtown smoking a joint unlike Vancouver where people stroll down Robson street smoking weed when it’s packed with people.
After having my vehicle broken into 5 times and my apartment once in the last 5 years I lived in Vancouver, I’m quite ready to bring back amputation of thieves right hands as punishment for theft. (One thing that islam got right probably by accident).
The only thing I can see changing things in Vancouver is people being allowed to enforce their property rights with deadly force. Most people who live on E. Hastings belong in jails or psych hospitals. I support decriminalization of most psychoactive drugs, but think that people should be completely responsible what they do when they take them. We’ve seen what happens when the “victim” concept is carried to ridiculous extremes as has happened in Vancouver.
Robert is right about the massive fraction of the BC GNP which is the result of artificially high cannabis prices as a result of it being illegal. It wouldn’t surprise me if politicians just find keeping cannabis illegal enhances the size of their bribes to look the other way for certain organizations businesses. Most cannabis users I see in the interior of BC function quite well and the moonbattery one sees in Vancouver is probably as a result of living in a large city with little exposure to reality.
I read justice Craig’s memoirs. I have spoken to acquaintances. An outstanding gentleman. We need more like him as judges in this country.
Interestingly enough, Wallace Craig now works for the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal:
http://chrt-tcdp.gc.ca/NS/about-apropos/cb-lp-eng.asp
libertariansaredumber: “I stopped watching when he said crime and addiction were getting worse, which is demonstrably false.”
Have you been to Toronto lately? Hamilton? Even Kitchener? Or any emergency room in the province, ever? If so, did you take the bag off your head?
What works is Giuliani’s Broken Windows policing and the Castle Doctrine. What we have is a sinecure for lawyers and bureaucrats, where catch-and-release ensures a nice steady flow of cases.
These patterns are very well established, to the point where they physically changed the geography of cities. You have your busted downtown drugs-and-crime part and your 98% crime-free suburbs. It couldn’t be more obvious if they put up signs.
Libertariansarekindofsilly—In Vancouver, we have criminals who have well beyond 100 convictions roaming the streets,as was stated, the catch and release policy probably got its start here. If these people are in jail, they aren’t stealing my motorcycle(which they did),breaking into our cars(which they did, and attempted), prowl my back yard(which I see on the rare occasion we get snow here, twice this year, prowled both times.. People with your views are enabler’s.. Hell maybe you are my prowler. I live in a community where we had the bad luck to have a mayor who felt sorry for the homeless. He put in place programs to feed and house these lovely people..Crime has gone through the roof, property, muggings, etc.. So you can take those soft on crime ideas, and put them where the sun don’t shine.
@loki: you are right about ‘victim disarmament’ aka gun control being a serious impediment to crime-fighting. However, being able to do drugs downtown is not the same as the full out legalization we need. I used to buy into the ‘Law ‘n Order’ crap until I read Reason magazine and saw the damage it did. More Cons in the US agree they have formed a focus group called “Right on Crime” that focuses on serious responses to crime rather than the unaffordable and civil-rights unfriendly MORE COPS MORE JAIL Neanderthal approach. Your crappy anecdotal emotional arguments only serve to vindicate my position. There is no evidence that downtown TO or Hamilton or wherever is getting worse, with the possible exception of Winnipeg which is just awful.