AGAR: What happened to Liberals getting tougher on criminals?

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For international criminals, you couldn’t pick a better place to ply your nefarious trade than Canada.

When someone is charged with a crime — even the most violent ones — it is no longer a surprise to learn he has a long record of criminal convictions and was out on bail awaiting trial for a vicious crime at the time of the new one.

Recently, Toronto Sun columnist Michele Mandel wrote, “Medhani Yohans is a poster boy for the scourge of catch-and-release justice.”

Convicted of violent crimes such as sexual assault, “Yohans has been in trouble since at least 2018. According to one news report in April of that year, Guelph Police had arrested him three times in one weekend for allegedly breaking into vehicles, trying to dine and dash and exposing himself. He’d be released on bail only to be re-arrested hours later,” Mandel wrote.

Sexual assault is one violent crime that has increased in Canada. Why would it not be if it is unlikely to result in a jail sentence?

A recent Liberal election policy promised they’d “toughen the Criminal Code and make bail laws stricter for violent and organized crime, home invasions, car stealings and human trafficking — including and especially for repeat offenders.”

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It’s too early to tell whether Carney will come through and is willing to take on judges who disregard the law in favour of the judge’s opinion.

For example, Superior Court Justice Jennifer Woollcombe said there was “no legal basis” for a lower court judge to impose a conditional sentence on Joseph LeClaire, who had pleaded guilty to his fifth impaired driving offence.

In an exchange between the lower court judge and the Crown during the sentencing hearing in March, the judge suggested a four-month conditional sentence instead of the mandatory custodial sentence.

“That is not permitted by statute,” the Crown prosecutor responded.

“I know, but what if I do?” the judge asked.

Then she did.

Woollcombe said Justice Khatira (Kathy) J. Jalali “fully appreciated what the law required her to do and deliberately refused to apply the law. I view it as an affront to the administration of justice for a judge to choose to knowingly disregard and decline to follow the law that must be applied.”

Jalali is still a judge.

As far back as 2011, Maclean’s magazine reported that “judges are imposing lighter sentences on violent immigrants because they are reluctant to quash their only real hope of remaining in Canada.”

Immigrant Akashkumar Khant received a conditional discharge after trying to hire a 15-year-old as a prostitute.

“A conviction would lead to severe collateral consequences, such as jeopardizing his immigration status, delaying his citizenship and preventing him from sponsoring his wife, which would likely result in their separation,” Justice Paul O’Marra said.

Gaining citizenship is a privilege and when that privilege is abused by breaking the laws of the country before achieving citizenship, shouldn’t we see that as a chance to dodge a bullet, so to speak, by getting a bad apple out of the barrel?

Can we expect this situation to improve?

I am dubious.

So far, this is an excellent country in which to be a criminal.