It makes me a little sick to my stomach, but I’m almost certain that this will happen.  After all, there were Tories complaining that the Senate was delaying the crime bill even before the crime bill was before the Senate for Pete’s sake!  The crime bill’s clearly not about crime, it’s about politics.

To my mind, it’s becoming obvious to me that the only thing the Tories want to do more than pass the crime bill is to NOT pass it.  After all, they’ve killed the thing themselves THREE TIMES by proroguing Parliament, and just this week the Minister of Public Safety tried to introduce amendments to the bill that were essentially the same amendments that the Tories voted against when Irwin Colter first introduced them in committee.  At first, it worried me to think that the Minister of Public Safety didn’t understand (hasn’t read?) his government’s own crime bill.  How could he possibly be hitting rewind on Cotler’s amendments, at the very last possible minute, if he had any idea whatsoever of what’s going on?  Coupled with the government’s seeming indifference to the fact that everybody who knows anything about crime seems to think that their bill is an abomination that won’t work, the government’s seemingly complete ignorance and incompetence on the criminal justice file was quite worrying to me.  Now, however, I have a new theory.

The Tories haven’t read their own bill because it doesn’t matter.  They’re not concerned that every expert thinks it’ll do nothing to reduce crime, and could make things worse, because it doesn’t matter.  I’m starting to think that the Tories have spent so little legislative effort on this file, while expending so much rhetorical effort on it, because talking about crime is more important to them than doing something about crime.  The government’s not right on the verge of passing an incompetent bill that’s ill-conceived and poorly thought out because they’re idiots, the bill is ill-conceived and poorly thought out because they have no intention whatsoever of passing it, and why waste time making a sensible bill if you’re just going to use it as a rhetorical sledge hammer anyway???  I’m starting to realize that what we’re seeing here is actually brilliant politics, not incompetent governance.

Or perhaps I’m giving the Tories too much credit.

It would be a calculated risk in that a prorogation would be unpopular. In order for this to work, you have to bet that Canadians will forget about the prorogation come next election and that the opposition and/or the media will find no traction for the “hypocritical tough on crime” meme either.
 
 The bet is that whatever number of Canadians is needed to secure a majority (given a climate of reduced electorate turnout), they will simply not care. 

 Very ballsy wouldn’t you say?

 But when you can openly defy parliament (Afghan file) and keep a straight face while propping up truth sifters like Oda, Clement and MacKay, you ain’t afraid of nuthin’.