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Fight crime, not freedoms

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News stories coming out of Canada this summer sound more like what one would expect from the eastside of Los Angeles or the south side of Chicago.

Home invasions in Saskatoon, a double murder in Regina, and even Toronto the Good is now hunkering down under a hail of gangland gun violence.

The American ambassador to Canada has been hit by a volley of fire -- this time from Canadian premiers blaming the States for playing a disproportionate role in the urban wars by being a primary source of smuggled weapons.

His first meeting with the premiers became a trial by fire for Ambassador David Wilkins, who was not only roasted for the flood of guns crossing the border, but also for the American attitude to NAFTA's latest ruling that the tariffs it put in place to slow the flow softwood into its market were wrong.

But just as Canada must respond to the NAFTA ruling in a measured way, or risk even greater long-term harm, the country's response to the summer of violence must also be balanced and reasonable.

With stories of bat-wielding youths breaking into homes, terrorizing and robbing the homeowners, or punks ganging up on young women visiting Saskatoon, it isn't unexpected that the cry should rise for stiffer penalties and a toughening of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

These measures, after all, are the easiest for governments to develop and agree upon.

When the Western premiers demanded federal action on the crystal meth epidemic, for example, the first sign of it was having Justice Minister Irwin Cotler -- a former human-rights expert -- announce stiffer penalties for those who produce, distribute or sell the drug.

Given the ready availability of the chemicals used in its production, the dramatic debilitating effect it has on those who become addicted (and many succumb to this addiction almost immediately on use) and the amount of money that the industry can draw, lengthy jail terms will do little to stem the tide.

That's not to say that users, abusers and attackers should get off lightly. Clearly society must demonstrate its abhorrence for the criminals who are spreading this poison, and lengthy jail terms are one way to do so.

But those who believe this is the silver bullet that will stop this plague are sorely mistaken.

As we have seen many times in the past, lengthy minimum sentences and draconian punishments are at best ineffective at controlling social behaviour, and all too often become discriminatory in their application or are decried for victimizing the innocent.

The best example of this was the Liberal government's determination to pass the gun registry after a massacre in Montreal and a shoot-out at a Toronto restaurant. Had the money (some estimates put it at nearly $2 billion) been used holistically with programs to deal with gangs, putting more police on the streets and more closely monitoring gun smuggling across the U.S. frontier, rather than targeting lawful hunters and farmers, Toronto's fear of gangland shooting may never have materialized.

Certainly the federal and provincial governments must take a leading role in helping cities deal with urban crime, but that is best done through programs that help train and support more police officers, help immigrants and Natives adjust to the lives in Canadian cities, deal with poverty and cure those trapped by drug addictions.

And those programs must be designed with cities in mind. Ontario's recent decision to fund more police officers, for example, is a cost-shared program that will penalize poorer centres that can't afford to pay their share.

Studies have shown that in those areas where police catch one in 50 speeders, drivers react by slowing down. Similarly, if there are enough police on the streets that perpetrators know there is a reasonable likelihood they will be caught, they are less likely to do the crime.

This is a far more effective means of addressing a summer of violence than proposing to build more jails, or taking away more freedoms.