Letters to the editors

Harper is on the fringe

Re: “Protest interrupts dinner” (January 21, 2011)

Dear Editors,

Malcolm Scott, president of the local Conservative riding association, was quoted in the Journal as dismissing the prison farm protesters at his association’s University Club fundraiser last Wednesday evening as “the Forces of the Left.”  Do these “Forces of the Left” include Newt Gingrich, father of the 1994 Republican “Contract with America?”  Its centrepiece was the original “tough on crime” agenda that the Harper government is now parroting, an incredibly costly experiment in making America safer by vastly expanding its prison population. In a January 7th Washington Post article, Mr. Gingrich admitted that the policy had been an abject failure.

He urged American legislators “… to think and act with courage and creativity” and to “save on costs without compromising public safety by intelligently reducing their prison population.” All of which suggests that it’s the Harper Conservatives, not the protesters, who are the real fringe group. 

As an intelligent man, Mr. Harper obviously knows that the tens of billions of tax dollars he is diverting into his incarceration policies will be utterly wasted.

It’s senseless to borrow money to fund the expansion of prisons at a time when crime is at record lows.

It’s time to question his motivation for ignoring those inconvenient facts and what that says about his leadership.

Sean Torrie, ArtSci ’11

President, Queen’s University Liberal Association

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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