HARPER TOUGH ON DRUG CRIME

Wants Longer Minimum Sentences

Conservative Leader is hugged by an enthusiastic young supporter
Delenn Giraud, seven-years-old, as he attends a Conservative rally
during a campaign stop in Victoria yesterday. (Fred Chartrand, CP)

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper set out his policy on crime and
punishment yesterday while Prime Minister Paul Martin took a break
from the election campaign.

For the fourth consecutive day, Harper rolled out a key plank in his
platform, this time the drug-control section of his criminal justice
agenda, with promises of mandatory prison sentences, stiffer fines
and an end to conditional sentences.

"I want to talk about the values of a peaceful, orderly and safe
society, and a problem none of the other parties seem to care about
- -- the problem of crime and the threat it poses to our families and
our communities," Harper said at a rec centre in Burnaby, B.C.

Among the Tory promises:

- - Minimum sentences of at least two years for trafficking, exporting,
importing or producing heroin, cocaine or crystal meth or more than 3
kilos of marijuana or hashish.

- - Eliminating conditional sentences, or house arrest, for all
indictable drug offences.

- - A commitment not to reintroduce legislation to decriminalize marijuana.

- - Make it harder to get the chemicals needed to make crystal meth,
such as ephedrine and cold remedies. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have
adopted such a strategy.

Several studies have shown minimum mandatory sentences add an
enormous cost burden to the corrections system without offering any
clear deterrent.

But Harper said he wants to see concrete justice ideas that work. "I
think common sense is that if you're serious about enforcing the law,
you provide real penalties," he said. "And the evidence I've seen
suggests that what works are penalties that are fairly certain, not
penalties that will not in fact be imposed."

NDP Leader Jack Layton said his party is alone in offering a balanced
approach to drug crime.

"We've got to get to the root causes of crime -- despair, poverty,
addiction -- in our communities," Layton said in Vancouver. "That
means we've got to put an equal emphasis on the prevention of crime
in the first place, as we put on dealing with the results of crime at
the end of the day."

Layton said the NDP will come out with its own criminal justice platform soon.