Once again our esteemed leader, Prime Minister Harper, is making uninformed decisions such as insisting that we need to get tougher on crime. It doesn't seem to matter that in fact our crime rate overall has gone down in recent decades. So, he wants to increase spending, dump useful programs like prison farms, and put more people inside, at the taxpayers' expense. Never mind that we already spend more than ten times as much per inmate as we do per student in our schools here in Canada. That's right. Even though we know what good fiscal and social policy a strong education system is, even though prisoners themselves know that what they need is education, counselling, and job skills, our federal government still wants to put more people inside, and build more prisons to house them all. Of course they are often fathers, and their families are often then dependent on taxpayers as well.
Here are some astounding facts about the direction Harper is taking us:
http://www.suite101.com/content/canada-spends-more-on-prisons-than-schools-a363996
...and the reality about how much crime there is in Canada? We don't need all these expensive prisons!! Put them to work in the real world, paying back in some meaningful way!
http://www.suite101.com/content/how-much-violent-crime-occurs-in-canada-a365657
