PUBLICATION:        The Calgary Sun 

DATE:                         2004.05.14

EDITION:                    Final 

SECTION:                  Editorial/Opinion 

PAGE:                         15 

BYLINE:                     LINK BYFIELD 

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ALBERTA INJUSTICE

QUEBEC HAS LESSON TO TEACH ABOUT DEFENDING OUR RIGHTS

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Some time ago, the government of Quebec informed Ottawa it will no longer prosecute certain first-time Criminal Code violations.

Last year, this provincial policy of non-prosecution saved Quebec trial costs for 834 pot-smokers, 1,876 petty thieves, 307 mischief-makers, and 807 physical assailants. Instead, they were all sent stern letters warning not to do it again.

Whether a letter is enough to scare most first-time law-breakers straight, as Quebec claims, is not the point I wish to pursue here.

Quebec has claimed the right not to prosecute the Criminal Code on four grounds. According to a National Post story (May 6), it's the only province that does this.

National Justice Department spokesman Sylvain Beaudry conceded: "While the Criminal Code is federal law, the provinces are responsible for implementing it. Therefore, there is leeway in the implementation, if so desired."

I wish he'd explain this to Alberta Justice Minister David Hancock. He's been insisting for months that Alberta must prosecute people who violate the Criminal Code section forcing us to submit to Ottawa's boondoggle gun registry.

I suppose his bureaucrats have told him this is the law, and he believes them.

Hancock has sent out thousands of letters (and other MLAs have sent out thousands more) stating that Alberta MUST enforce all sections of the Criminal Code, whether it agrees with them or not.

"Without exception," the Hancock letter has claimed, "case law has established that 'blanket exemptions' or 'suspending or dispensing with the law' is not an available option for an Attorney-General."

OK, Dave, tell us why 3,824 Quebecers got letters from their provincial Justice Department last year stating, in effect, that as first-time offenders they have a blanket exemption from certain Criminal Code charges.

Why won't Alberta take the same approach to the gun registry? Why did it prosecute 75-year-old gun registry protester Oscar Lacombe, who was found guilty and sentenced to five months probation yesterday.

Instead, it could have sent him a Quebec-style letter:

"Dear Mr. Lacombe, you appear to be technically in breach of a new section of the Criminal Code that our province opposes. It forces you to register your Cooey squirrel rifle with an incredibly wasteful and inefficient national bureaucracy, and we suggest you comply when you can get around to it."

Or words to that effect.

To date, Alberta cabinet ministers and MLAs have received 114,000 individually signed e-mail letters asking them to stop prosecuting the gun law, and Hancock's excuses are starting to wear thin. 

In fact, he was heckled by his own party in the legislature on April 28. He stood up to brag about what a great job his department is doing, and Tory members (even cabinet minister Mark Norris) kept yelling, "Free Oscar! Free Oscar!" 

Maybe they should shout, "Read some history!" Sole discretion over Criminal Code prosecutions is a provincial right dating back to Confederation. Quebec is exercising its constitutional responsibility, and Alberta is not.

The Confederation compromise was this. Centralists such as John A. Macdonald did not want each province continuing to pass its own criminal statutes, as in the U.S.

However, most of our constitutional framers were elected premiers of colonies that had already become largely self-governing, and they strongly supported provincial rights. Provinces therefore retained exclusive discretion over the prosecution of criminal charges. That was the deal.

The point of having a federal system is to empower regional minorities to protect themselves from central majorities.

But it doesn't work if the regional minorities themselves don't understand and exercise the rights they were given.

For example, if any major province like Alberta, supported by one or two smaller ones, stopped enforcing the Criminal Code gun registration section, the thing would wither on the legal vine.

Any criminal law that is not evenly prosecuted is struck down as unconstitutional.

The reason Quebec's rights are respected by the federal government and ours are not is quite simply that Quebec cares enough to defend them and we don't.