...Justice Colin Westman, however, agreed with defence submissions that Leo should get house arrest, not jail.
"If I had your background, I wouldn't be sitting here," Westman said. "I'd probably be doing something along the lines of what you did."
...After the sentencing, Knapp said Bryan was scared of being a bad father.
"One day he just snapped," she told the Chronicle Herald. "The only way he could get rid of the baby was to get rid of both of us."
...I cannot work anymore, I can't walk properly, I lost my son (who) was my future. My mother has had to give up her entire life so she could take care of me, because I can't take care of myself anymore."
Tacked on the fridge of the battered green house was an image from a recent ultrasound of Hoeppner's fetus, showing hair, and a photo of her one-year-old son. Hoeppner wanted to regain custody of him from the foster home where he lives.
Imam Shakir is being disingenuous and playing to the cultural/moral relativists, of which there seem to be plenty.
Aqsa Parvez's death was an "honor" killing, and "honor" killings will never be properly addressed if people aren't even willing to admit to what they are. They are a form of domestic violence, but a very specific form, with different roots, different triggers, different modus operandi, and different ways of preventing them...
"... I felt disappointed by the Labour Party. I had joined them originally because, in my mind, social democrats stood for reform. They sought to improve people's lives; they cared about suffering, which I thought should have meant they would care about the suffering of Muslim women. But in reality, the Labour Party in Holland appeared blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, defending the moral relativists..."
...it's clear that Lapierre is "a very troubled young man. I must admit I was a little puzzled to see he was discharged," she said.
She said when mental health legislation was changed, community supports were to be put in place. "I would claim there is not nearly enough," she said.
"Families are in a difficult position because of the current mental health legislation," she said. "They can encourage and support, but they have no capacity to have someone detained."
She said the original intent of changes made more than a decade ago to the Mental Health Act was "to ensure over-containment of people with mental health issues doesn't happen.
"Maybe the legislation, in some cases goes, beyond what was originally intended."
Paul Gillespie, the chief executive of Kids Internet Safety Alliance, said the sentence should have been closer to 10 to 20 years, not four.
"I think this sentence is absolutely disgusting," he said. "The fact that in the real time he will probably be out of custody in less than 12 months is something that even by Canadian standards is absolutely disgraceful."
"I knew he was off the wall,'' a shaken Paul La Pierre said outside court yesterday before his 22-old-son made his first appearance.
"I realized the severity of the situation. He'd been using insane language and acting like he was a victim of everything.''
In the past year and half, he's been hospitalized four times, he said. Three of those times were at the Grand River Hospital psychiatric ward. He was released just five or six weeks ago.
"We fought,'' his father said. "He was always released.
"We said, 'Look, we don't think he's ready.' But he was self-admitted. They couldn't hold him. This is totally unnecessary. It could have been prevented.''
'On Tuesday morning, he had made his son visit his psychiatrist.
"They released him with a different prescription."
He was so worried about his son's recent erratic behaviour, he called a cab to take him to the hospital later that day...
"A future child? NO! It's a CHILD with a FUTURE!"
In short, many Canadians' moral intuition is that "there ought to be a law" -- or laws -- protecting fetuses from some harms, although we don't all agree on what those laws should be, especially in the context of abortion. Presently in Canada, there is no express abortion law.
But willful blindness is not an ethical approach to dealing with abortion.
Seeing the fetus as an unborn victim of crime strips away the medical cloak that abortion places on the taking of its life, a cloak that dulls our moral intuition as to what is involved. It causes us to see the fetus as what it is, an early human life. Those who support abortion must be able to square that fact with their belief that abortion is ethical in certain circumstances.
A "Fetal Pain Awareness Act," similar to those some American states have enacted, could require a physician to inform the woman, before performing an abortion, that scientific evidence suggests that after 20 weeks gestation the fetus can feel pain. Furthermore, she would have to be offered anaesthesia for the fetus, which it would be her choice to take or decline. This type of law would not prohibit abortion; rather, its goal is to try to prevent the fetus from dying in excruciating pain. After all, even jurisdictions that allow capital punishment prohibit certain forms of it on the grounds that they are cruel. Likewise, we have criminal laws that protect animals from brutal treatment.
...There is no rule that says democratic governments must make diplomatic protests every time other democratic governments pursue substantive justice differently, even when the consequences are serious. If one day abortion becomes illegal in Montana, Canadians would rightly be angry were the governor of Montana to ask our prime minister to stop an abortion that a Montana woman was having in Ontario...- Michael Tweyman, Toronto
...In declining, for once, to pervert due process in a fellow democracy on behalf of a multiple killer who has enjoyed over 20 additional years of comfortable life beyond those of his victims, our government has shown a small glimmer of comprehension -- this is what Joe Citizen calls common sense.- David Salter, Stoney Creek, Ont.
This editorial properly belongs in the Toronto Star, where it would sit comfortably alongside all the other human rights caterwauling...
...In the case of a first degree murder conviction, a life sentence should mean a life sentence, and the only chance for release is if new evidence points to a wrongful conviction.- Douglas L. Martin, Hamilton, Ont.
The arguments from Michael Coren, Father de Souza and Thomas Armstrong concerning the rights of fetuses are emotionally stirring, but specious; in all the cases cited, the pregnant woman was attacked resulting in her murder or attempted murder. So whether or not the fetus dies, our criminal endures no greater or lesser sentence with or without any change to the law governing a fetus's status.
According to the Supreme Court of Canada, no one can infringe upon a mother's rights, even to protect a fetus. Yet the law frequently infringes on individual rights to prevent society from paying some bigger bills down the road--i.e., the requirement to wear a seat belt.
Without raising the question of "fetal personhood" setting new legal precedents, it appears obvious that society can and should intervene by legislating against behaviour deemed contrary to society's best interests. Perhaps another kick at this legal can of worms is required-- but from a different angle.
Letter-writer Thomas Armstrong is right that the fetus has no rights. It is his contentment with this that is the problem. The unscientific and anti-intellectual state of Canadian law in this matter leaves us to consider the following conundrum: A premature baby born at 26 weeks gestation is backed by the full power of Canadian law, yet an unborn baby at 40 weeks gestation -- more than three months older -- has no rights, and can be aborted or declared a non-person if stillborn from a birth misadventure (Sullivan-Lemay midwife decision).
Pro-life advocates are often accused, wrongly, of wishing to "turn back the clock." In fact, Canada's legal position on the fetus derives from the "born-alive" element of English common law, and dates from the '80s. That is, the 1480s.
...Can we not be honest and once and for all admit that if you want your pregnancy you are having a baby and if you do not want your pregnancy, you are hosting a bunch of cells/mass of tissues? That they are in fact one and the same, and that it is the perception of the mother that differs, nothing else...
"...wasting time on violence in a safe and growing safer country is at least a misdemeanour and maybe even a crime."
Just look at the numbers. It's shocking if you consider the city has already eclipsed last year's count of 69 murders.
"Lets hope the record isn't broken, but there are still 10 weeks left in the year," AM 640 crime expert and former cop Craig Bromell said yesterday. "We pray it doesn't happen, but it could because today's criminals have absolutely no fear of the system."
Combine that with easy access to bail, guns, an increase in stabbings and that the gangsters have a "no snitch" edge, it makes it difficult for the overworked cops.
"These guys are out on bail or parole before the poor cops can get their paperwork done properly to prevent some liberal judge from throwing out their whole case and then order compensation for the criminals for their inconvenience," said an angry Bromell.
"No matter the number, there better not be dancing in the streets come Dec. 31st from the leftists that crime is down. It would be a slap in the face to all of these victims and their families."
From time to time, the Liberals, Bloc, NDP and the old Progressive Conservative party, when the public outcry became so deafening that even they couldn't ignore it, might grudgingly agree to do something, although never much.
Their default position, however, was to ignore this outcry and even on those rare occasions when they deigned to hear it, make a great show of saying they could not respond to the cries of the uniformed mob, even though there was no mob and it wasn't uninformed.
There was just a lot of Canadians frustrated at never being heard.
...(1) longer mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes (2) placing a "reverse onus" on people seeking bail after being accused of gun crimes, to prove to a judge they are not a threat (3) sanctions against drug-impaired driving (4) raising the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14 (5) putting a reverse onus on a criminal after he has been convicted of three serious, violent offences, to prove to a judge he should not be declared a dangerous offender and jailed indefinitely....
All five of them were already passed through second reading in the House of Commons. Four of them were actually completely done in the House and had gone on to the Senate for final approval there. Three of them were included in the Liberal fast track offer stretching back at least eight months. They could be the law by now, if the Conservatives had not stalled their own agenda.
Did you hear that? "As much as 70%". Ralph, Ralph, Ralph... you keep talking about the 70% you agreed to fast-track, but you keep ducking and dodging whenever anyone asks you about the other 30%. It's the other 30% that's the issue... WE WANT IT PASSED, IMMEDIATELY.Bravo!
...The desire to maintain our permissive abortion regime should not prevent the criminal law from addressing the reality of crimes against pregnant women. A crime against an expectant mother is something different -- there is real trauma to the mother, if she survives the violence, resulting from the injury or death to her child -- to say nothing of the child. The Roxanne Fernando case makes it all the more clear; without the child, there would have been no crime. The law should not have to pretend otherwise.
One of the key elements of Tuesday's Throne Speech was the omnibus Tackling Violent Crime bill. The controversy over the legislation is far more apparent than real. Anyone dealing with the justice system knows a major overhaul of the criminal system is long overdue--indeed, the strongest complaint that can be leveled against the proposed crime bill is that it does not go far enough.
The reforms proposed are, for the most part, straightforward and reasonable. A dangerous offenders bill that puts the onus on criminals convicted of three violent offences to show they should not be taken out of society is hardly a significant attack on civil rights -- to require someone thrice convicted of serious violent offences to explain to a judge why they should be released into society is not an onerous burden. Overall, these initial revisions to the criminal law are long overdue.
I fail to see how raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16 will protect young people from predators. If anything, it will lead to wrongful convictions and criminalize consensual relationships among youth. Even with close-in exemptions, this proposed legislation will drive sexual activity underground, away from the scrutiny of parents and friends. Given that there is no objective evidence to lend credibility to such legislation, one can only assume that the Harper Conservatives are playing to their religious base -- to the detriment of the country. Someone should remind the Conservatives that Canada is not a theocracy.
A BATTLE IS COMING
The Charter of Rights and Freedom, rightly or wrongly, has successfully been used to challenge the Canadian constitution and the BNA Act Some could even argue that the Charter has made the BNA act and the Constitution irrelevant. I'm betting another battle will happen again in Ontario pretty soon, and McGuinty will have to choose between funding everybody or nobody. I think I know what he will decide.
Catholics, consider yourselves warned.
