Tuesday April 15, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Locking up convicted mass murderers — it’s a gritty topic that most people might have an instinctual response to.
Fighting crime in Canada is a topic that the Conservatives have been highlighting more frequently than other parties in this federal campaign period.
Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre announced this week that his party’s stance is that persons convicted of multiple murders should serve consecutive sentences.
In most if not all cases that would see a prison term extending beyond the number of years of a natural lifespan. But Poilievre points out the benefit to families of the victims of those crimes, preventing them from having to re-experience the trauma during any parole hearings that come up.
On CTV’s Power Play yesterday, Conservative incumbent Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill) was fully supportive of the Conservative position to ensure that serial killers are never released from prison, highlighting in particular the case of six worshippers being killed by one shooter while praying in a mosque.
The Liberal candidate on the panel — Najam Naqvi (candidate for London-Fanshawe) — referred to the proposed use of the Notwithstanding Clause. He said that outdated unconstitutional ideas to fight crime would not solve the problem. The Liberals are focused on organized crime, he said, including repeat gun violence.
NDP fires both ways:
NDP incumbent Alistair MacGregor said of the Liberals and Conservatives: “Both of these parties in different ways have let Canadians down which is why we’re having this conversation right now.”
Yesterday, MacGregor supported NDP party Leader Jagmeet Singh’s criticism of the use of the Notwithstanding Clause to alter the justice system approach to dealing with sentencing. MacGregor said it is a weighty subject and that Canadians deserve to feel safe in their communities.
For about the past year until the writ dropped on March 23, MacGregor was the NDP Public Safety Critic in the House of Commons.
Yesterday he referred to “half-measures of the Liberals and the ideologically rigid and evidence-free policies of the Conservatives”. He said that the Conservative announcement today is about “recycling old failed policies”.
“It is a bit rich from both of these parties to talk about this when they both share some responsibility for where we’re in,” said MacGregor, noting that the NDP position is that the Notwithstanding Clause is a slippery slope.
“It is a fact that within the Criminal Code judges already have the tools that they need. There is a section of the Criminal Code that lists aggravating factors and we have to put our trust in the justice system and in judges to look at the circumstances before them for each individual case and they can apply the appropriate sentence for that.”
“We need more resources in our justice system — I don’t think anyone is going to argue against that,” said MacGregor. “We cannot go down these rabbit holes which have been proven not to work in the past. And we also have to be bold and recover from the half-measures of a Liberal government from the last 10 years,” he articulated.
“This is a very weighty matter,” said MacGregor. “The consequences of the decisions we make as policy makers as legislators have profound consequences for the communities that we serve and for the criminal justice system as a whole. Canadians deserve to have an honest conversation about this,” he said.
“They need to see to see a justice system that is more resourced,” said MacGregor, citing examples like having more officers at the border and the RCMP being better resourced to interrupt criminal organizations.
“We also need to be bold with policies and with funding that help our communities and provide them with the crime prevention programs that were previously cut under Conservatives,” said MacGregor. “We’re still suffering that deficit from Conservative cuts with the CBSA.”
===== RELATED:
- Coming up April 18 in Langford: coffee chat with NDP incumbent Alistair MacGregor (April 12, 2025)
- NEWS SECTIONS: CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTION 2025 | CANADA-NATIONAL | LIBERAL PARTY of CANADA | CONSERVATIVE PARTY of CANADA | FEDERAL NDP
- CAMPAIGN CALENDAR: Who is where | How to Vote