Night Patrols and Election Dates

September 01, 2008

"Dangerous male swinging a samurai sword at civilians". That was the emergency call that came into the police call centre. I'll tell you in a minute how the young RCMP officer handled the situation.

This past week I've done afternoon and late night ride-arounds in police cars in Montreal, Yellowknife and Inuvik. Talk about diversity! In Montreal I went out after midnight with a specially designated anti-street gang squad. Their goal is to identify and hopefully dissemble the network of competing gangs, especially those who are into serious violence and drug crime. I can tell you I was impressed with the high level of training, dedication and courage with which these officers go about their appointed rounds. These street teams have made over 60 arrests since they hit the pavement in June. That has put a significant chill on many thugs who up till now figured they pretty much had free rein on the late night streets.

In Yellowknife, in the course of just a few hours of being in their briefing room and in a police truck we had some interesting calls come in. The samurai swordsman swinging his weapon at passersby was efficiently 'taken down' by a young officer who seemed to have mastered some martial arts abilities of his own. Then there was a call for help from somebody whose dogs were being attacked by an aggressive and large sled dog which had broken free from his leash and seemed more than willing to attack some of his more domesticated cousins who were having a quiet 'doggie party' in their own yard. After that we checked out and called in help for a semi-conscious middle aged male whose bout with alcohol most of that day had reduced him to a hapless heap on a downtown sidewalk.

Inuvik was like a step back into time for me. We lived there for a year over 30 years ago. Being back there with the Prime Minister and my Cabinet colleagues was a bit surreal but definitely inspiring. As you know, we are living in an era when other countries are greedily eyeballing the potential of our Arctic in a globally warming world. After years of the former government's lack of attention to the challenges to our sovereignty in 'True North Strong and Free', we have been taking decisive steps of action. That's why the PM chose Inuvik as the site to announce the construction of what will be Canada's largest ice-breaker. It's a multi million dollar boost to Canada's ship building industry and a key component of our ability to have a strategic Arctic presence.

On the other matter of election timing, by the time you read this column we may or may not be into one. I've had some calls to the office about our 'Fixed Date for Elections' rule. We tabled that to show our desire to have federal elections on a pre-set date. We wanted to break the federal Liberal travesty of calling 3 elections in 7 years despite the fact they had a majority government each time.
Our proposal still allows for the PM to go to the Governor General at any time if he feels Parliament has become dysfunctional. The 3 Opposition Leaders said from the outset they would not respect the Fixed Date and would look for the best chance to force a non-confidence vote and election for their own individual gains.

Right now we have gone longer than any minority government in Canadian history. The Opposition are now saying they fundamentally oppose our major proposals for the way ahead; reducing taxes and debt, our law requiring 20% green house gas reductions, (they want to hit us all with a stifling carbon tax) proposals to reform the justice, young offenders and penal systems, our child benefit program etc. (For over two years they even obstructed initiative to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16.) To ask the people to choose between two very different approaches to governing in a time of global uncertainty ahead would not be unheard of or unreasonable.