Dear Editor:
This letter is in response to Trevor Ritchie's opinion article "Where the right went wrong" (Burnaby NOW, Jan. 27).
If your intention of writing this article was to enrage the right and dumb down the left, I think you were successful. You made bold and sweeping generalizations on the Canadian government but failed to substantiate any of them in your lengthy piece.
First you say that the Harper government is a government that ignores the advice of the educated classes in pursuit of their own ideology of what you call "individual or consumer interests." Fair enough. Most people would agree that it is a good idea for their government to listen to the advice and concerns of the educated folk.
But to suggest that this government has completely ignored the advice of intellectual Canadians is shortsighted at best. Do you honestly believe there are not educated Canadians who supported the elimination of the long gun registry or the passing of bill C-10? Did he not listen to them? Or do you consider anyone who disagrees with you to be uneducated?
You go on to say that the passing of bill C-10 by the Harper government "contradicts the academic evidence regarding the relative uselessness of such tactics." By this I think you mean there are stats out there that prove that spending more money on prisons is not going to deter people from committing crimes, and therefore it is needless for any government to spend tax money on prisons. The problem with this way of thinking is that it ignores the overwhelming statistics or "academic evidence" that suggests that crime is on the rise in Canada and, logically, more money will be required for the Canadian government to deal with the increase of criminal behaviour. This is common sense, people.
I realize that putting people in prison is not the way to stop antisocial behaviour such as rape, murder or drunk driving, but any nation worth its salt understands the need to punish those guilty of such things appropriately.
Jail is a punishment for a social problem, not the answer to it. Don't you believe that criminals should be punished? I do.
Joel Von Hagel, Burnaby
