The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Conservative's promise to scrap the gun registry in favour of a sexual offenders registry is to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, "one small step for a political party but a giant step for Canadian justice".

Scrapping of the gun registry, particularly the long gun portion, in favour of a sex-offender registry will prove in the long run to be far more useful in solving crimes as well as provide far more protection for Canadians. Personally, I would like to see estimates of the costs of maintaining the hand gun portion of the registry before it was scrapped. However, the concept of registering every hunting rifle and shotgun in the land cannot be justified as an effective preventative measure or an effective use of government funds.

The federal government has been far too long in putting in place a nation-wide methodology for keeping track of those who would sexually prey on others, particular our children.

There are those who would argue that when you pay your time for your crime you should regain total freedom, including the ability to move about freely without being required to report your whereabouts to any government agency. I would argue not in the case of sexual offenses. The recidivism rate for these crimes is historically high, which dictates the need for restrictions on the freedoms of those who commit such crimes. Harsh as that sounds, it is nowhere as harsh as the impact of such crimes on the victims.

From my perspective a major design criteria for a sex-offender registry must be the inclusion of links to similar registries in every other country with similar files. This requirement is particularly crucial for providing an integrated approach in North American for keeping track of sexual offenders.

Harper's suggestion of a 'three strikes and you are jailed forever' rule being applied to sexual crimes is a too lenient for some of these crimes; e.g. in the case of sex-crimes against children, it should be two strikes and you are out. Another, major requirement of the law should be the elimination of any ability of a judge to minimise the sentence.

Lastly, in conjunction with the elimination of the gun registry, the Conservatives must also pass a nationwide law making the use of a gun in any manner, in the course of committing a crime, a criminal offense with a mandatory full five year sentence to be served at completion of the sentence for the crime committed.