Canadian Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews appeared on Power and Politics with Evan Solomon last night to discuss among other things, the Conservative government's so called tough on crime agenda.

If it seems like Stephen Harper and the Conservative party have been schizophrenic with respect to spending by the Federal government, you're not alone.  Since the Tories came to power in 2006 the country has gone from yearly fiscal surpluses to a $56 billion yearly deficit as of about mid way through 2010.  Dropping the GST (the national goods and services tax) from 7% to 5% contributed a great deal to our current situation with some going even so far as to call it a structural deficit.  However, the world wide financial crisis hasn't helped, forcing governments around the world to increase spending to fill the gap, including Canada.  That being said, while the Canadian government did increase spending to stimulate the economy, our banking system was left largely unscathed.  There was no need to bail out Canadian banks even though they did incur some losses, as our regulatory structure was up to the task.

Couple that with Stephen Harper's plans to make his new corporate tax cuts permanent, having already dropped taxes for big corporations from 22% to 18% and with the rate scheduled to drop down to 15% by 2012, it makes you wonder how the Federal government will pay for anything.  Remember, tax cuts have to be paid for somehow, so it's an open question as to how these cuts will play out down the road.  This means a larger fiscal deficit than we have now in the years to come and that's not the entire story, which brings us back to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

Mr. Towes is a staunch advocate of an American style crime and punishment system with more prisons, more personnel, and above all, more prisoners.  In his interview with Evan Solomon he said that his position was to keep Canadians safe.  When asked if it was at any cost, he avoided the question, preferring to reiterate his commitment to Canadian safety.  The problem being that the data doesn't match what he says he stands for.

Yesterday a report was released panning a pilot project created by Mr. Toews that tested a GPS anklet system to keep track of parolees.  There were two questions that needed to be answered for the $1 million test project.  The first was whether or not the technology actually worked, and the second was if it affected the crime rate.  The project failed on both counts with technical glitches like multiple false alarms and incorrect tracking which led to 1 valid alert out of every 19 false alarms.  On top of that, the study of the project found that staff hired to monitor subjects weren't trained properly, in some cases not knowing the geography of a given area and where parolee was allowed to be.  As for the anklet system keeping crime down or keeping people safer, the study found that nothing changed.  No one was safer.  Granted, a million dollars isn't a ton of money to monitor 46 people for a test pilot project, but Vic Toews defense of the project, hinting that they would move forward with it anyway is telling.  And if it becomes fully implemented the costs will be far higher.

This brings us to a topic I've discussed before, the estimated doubling of expenditures on the federal penal system.  Vic Toews says that that Parliamentary budget office is making the numbers up, but the facts are the facts and someone is going to want to know how this is being paid for in light of the massive spending already done by the current government.  Statistics Canada shows that crime rates in general as of 2007 were down from 1987 levels, with significant drops in property crime, fraud, and break and enter.  It appears that the data disagrees with the urgency and methodology used to determine that a massive ongoing expenditure on new prisons isn't about keeping people safer or reducing crime.

More disturbingly perhaps is the marked increase in arrests of non-violent drug offenders during the same time frame.  While places like California and even the United States Congress debate the efficacy of their current drug laws and the extreme violence drug prohibition has caused, Canadians are poised to follow a different and much older path.  The path towards a failed criminal policy.

So who is going to pick up this new $10 billion tab that no one asked for or needed in the first place?  It won't be the federal government because they have successfully created the worst structural deficit in decades, which means that the costs for building and maintenance, new prison guards, new police officers, and all the support staff to house these people will be dumped onto the provinces.  Federally mandated spending for an agenda that makes little to no sense on top of all the other spending isn't good governance, it's an ideology.

Oh and don't forget the over $1 billion wasted to host the G8 and G20.

You can watch Vic Toews interview on the CBC by clicking here.