All Canadians deserve to live in safe neighbourhoods.

Parents in Yorkton-Melville should not have to worry about letting their kids outside to play and seniors should not be afraid to venture out of their homes at night. In recent years, a lot of media attention has focussed on the rising scourge of gang, gun and drug violence that can paralyze neighbourhoods in cities and towns of all sizes.

While I don’t subscribe to the politics of fear-mongering, I do believe that there are some real problems that deserve real action. The previous federal government insisted on wearing rose-coloured glasses and ignored the trends. Our government is cracking down on gun crime with tough, new mandatory minimum sentences and tighter bail rules to keep the worst offenders behind bars. The only practical way to reduce gun crime is to target the criminals behind it.

Our government is going to take down other kinds of criminals as well. Canadians have long complained that our old drunk-driving laws had too many loopholes, particularly when it came to drivers impaired with drugs. Drivers who abuse alcohol or drugs pose a threat to innocent people. We put in place tough legislation that now makes it possible to catch drug-impaired drivers and hold them accountable for their actions.

We are also taking drug dealers to task with changes to Canada’s drug crime laws. The government will ensure that those who produce or sell illegal drugs face mandatory jail time. We are investing in more police so that grow-ops, meth-labs and other drug producers will be busted before they do more harm.

The criminal gangs who run car-theft operations are also in for a surprise. Under our new vehicle theft legislation, it will be a crime even to tamper with a car’s vehicle identification number. We are making it much harder for criminal gangs to resell stolen Canadian cars.

This government believes that too many violent or dangerous young offenders are acting as if their tender age leaves them above the law. We are changing the Youth Criminal Justice Act that will toughen the consequences for these kinds of crimes and send a clear message to criminals of all ages – you will be held accountable for your acts.

Many vulnerable Canadians, including seniors, have been victimized by credit card fraud and other forms of identity theft. Canada’s old laws were out of date and could not keep up with the sophisticated organized crime rings behind identity theft. We are modernizing Canada’s identity theft laws to make these con-artists easier to convict.

Some political parties choose to believe that crime is merely a social problem, and we shouldn’t hold people accountable for the choices they make. Some opposition politicians have gone so far as playing political games by trying to obstruct many of these badly needed new laws from ever seeing the light of day. This approach is misguided and leaves thousands of vulnerable Canadians at risk for no good reason. Our government is determined to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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The audio version of Garry's August 4, 2008 op-ed column can be heard by clicking here