HUNTER: Poilievre hammers Liberals on decade of murder and mayhem

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A young woman was murdered just 17 minutes from where Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lambasted the Liberals’ sad record on crime.

A stray bullet killed 21-year-old international student Harsimrat Randhawa on April 17. The innocent bystander was waiting for the bus.

Arch-criminals in two stolen cars were settling scores.

Randhawa sadly paid the bill.

And a 16-year-old in Toronto is dead after apparently pulling a gun on cops and squeezing the trigger.

On Wednesday, Poilievre took the Liberals to task for soft-on-crime policies that have made the country a more dangerous place.

The Tory leader tore apart the past decade of easy bail, light sentences, porous borders, and a drug epidemic that has killed thousands and turned many more into zombies.

“Violent crime is up 15%, gun crime up a shocking 116%, extortion and auto theft are up 357% and 46% respectively,” Poilievre said. “Police officers are facing it on the frontline.”

To underscore his point, the Conservative leader pointed to the drive-by shooting in Hamilton that killed Randhawa.

“She was a student at Mohawk College with her whole life ahead of her,” he said. “It was a shocking and senseless tragedy.”

And he noted that 40 minutes away at a court in Hagersville, closing arguments were underway in the first-degree murder trial of Randall McKenzie and Brandi Stewart-Sperry. The pair are charged in the shocking shooting death of OPP Const. Greg Pierzchala.

“Randall McKenzie, one of the accused, had a criminal record a mile long,” Poilievre said. “And as is so often the case, he was out on bail for a violent offence. Imagine where we would be today … if he had not been out on bail.

“Imagine if our Conservative three-strikes-you’re-out laws were actually in place and he had been locked away. What would have happened? And more importantly, what would not have happened?”

He accused the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau of unleashing the violent crime wave now ravaging the country.

“With lax laws like C-75, which requires that judges release offenders, quote ‘under the least onerous conditions at the earliest opportunity,'” Poilievre charged. “Mark Carney wants to keep the Liberal laws in place.”

Poilievre also vowed to end the tent cities that have infested every corner of the country. He called them breeding grounds for violence, crime, drug addiction and human trafficking.

“It’s like something out of the Great Depression … they are a symbol of everything the lost Liberal decade has brought us,” he said.

The Tory leader emphasized that treatment and rehabilitation will be the cornerstone of a Conservative government. Fentanyl will not be dispensed like candy.

Poilievre added that a CPC government would strengthen the border to keep out drugs and guns, and make sure “repeat offenders go to jail and never come out.”

The past decade has also triggered an explosion in violent youth crime.

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“That’s another tragic result of the lost Liberal decade of lax criminal justice laws, weak borders and drugs on our streets,” he said. “Our kids are now more vulnerable to gang recruitment than ever before. Their parents are stressed out and exhausted.”

And if the Liberals are elected to a fourth term? Things will get much worse, Poilievre predicted.

“We will restore law and order, putting murderers behind bars,” he said of a Conservative government. “We’re going to bring in life sentences for fentanyl traffickers so that they never come out again.

“They are mass murderers, and they will be treated like mass murderers when I am prime minister.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun