The Harper Conservatives: Soft on murder?

In a bold and courageous move yesterday, Conservative minister Rona Ambrose ended years of ambiguity in the government’s position on this key issue by making it clear: the Conservative Party thinks murder is wrong:

"Killing or mutilating anyone, least of all a family member, is utterly unacceptable under all circumstances," Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for the Status of Women, said Monday.

Ambrose went on to announce bold legislative action would be forthcoming to make murder a crime under the law:

She also said the government is “looking at” adding honour killing as a separate charge to the Criminal Code.

Except Ambrose immediately had the rug pulled out from her by a spokesperson for the justice minister:

But Justice Department spokeswoman Pamela Stephens said that the government has no plans to add honour killings to the Criminal Code.

“An intentional killing is murder, regardless of the motive,” she said late Monday evening.

“The expression ‘honour killing’ is not listed in the Criminal Code nor is ‘domestic violence. Rather, the two are addressed through the existing offences in the code such as assault, criminal harassment, murder, and related aggravating factors.”

Well thank goodness that’s settled: murder is already illegal. Good to know. Let's get the word out.

Meanwhile, in related crime news, the government that with great fanfare made street racing illegal (well, even more illegal than it already was, like Rona wants to do with murder) is spending tax dollars advertising with video games that glorify street racing:

The online description of one of the games reads, “Compete at the highest level of street racing with Need for Speed ProStreet. It’s no longer good enough to simply rule your local neighborhood; you need to dominate on a global stage.”

The government placed ads in a number of video games during February and March of this year. The ads were part of an attempt to encourage young people to complete their apprenticeship training and alert them to grants of up to $4,000.

A spokesperson for the department of whimsy and caprice confirmed that, thankfully, irony is not (yet) a crime.

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Musing on Van Loan's honour killing musings

When I read Peter Van Loan's musings this morning that maybe, but maybe not, that he'd consider, but he's not sure it's necessary but maybe, there should be harsher sentances for so-called honour killings...

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan opened the door to tougher penalties for honour killings yesterday, saying it is a crime Canadian society cannot accept.

“This notion that it is appropriate to kill a family member because of your disapproval of their lifestyle or choices like that is simply unacceptable in our society. I have a very serious problem with that.”

... I can't help but think of the arguments that his conservative brethren use to argue against hate crime legislation: murder is murder, period. They tend to argue strongly that crimes based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation should be treated any differently than any other murder.

So I find Van Loan's musings on "honour killings" to be interesting. I'll refrain from speculating on the reasons for his public musings, although I certainly have my suspicions. I'll be interested though to see the reaction of the conservative blogsphere.

Why own feelings on this? While I do agree generally that a murder is a murder, there are cases where hate crimes legislation should clearly be applied. But is should be used sparingly, because it is a difficult thing to prove, what was in a killer's mind.

Should we extend the hate crimes concept to include honour killings? I do find them abhorrent; although, of course, all murder os abhorent. I think the challenge would be in defining the term, and when and how it would be applied. I'd want to consider the legislation and its implementation before coming down either way.

Without ruling it out though, and while I'm not convinved this is a burning crisis in Canada, I think there may be other, non-judicial ways of preventing this kind of cultural violence before it occurs. Perhaps we should be exploring them too.

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