But it's true.
Tenants caught growing as few as six marijuana plants in their dwellings could face automatic jail terms of at least nine months, under a federal drug-sentencing bill revived Wednesday that imposes harsher penalties on home renters than on owners.
DJ! readers may recall my recent and vivid experience of the lowly legal status of citizens who rent their homes -- and, yes, I'm still planning on blogging about the whole ordeal -- but I'm gob-smacked.
What on earth could be the justification for hitting tenants harder than homeowners?
I read on:
The Harper government's proposed legislation imposes stiffer punishment on renters than it does on homeowners, because involving a third party is one of several aggravating factors.
Huh? Third party? Who? The landlord?
This just adds a whole new layer of idiocy to the Tory 'Stupid on Crime' program.
Let's go over the pressing reasons King Steve the First had to stack the Senate to pass this steaming pile of doo-doo.
The crime rate has been trending lower for decades.
Mandatory sentencing does not work to deter crime.
Mandatory sentencing works very nicely at filling up jails though -- to the point that many Merkin states are going broke over it.
And low-life tenants deserve harsher sentencing than homeowners. . . well, just because the ReformaTories are authoritarians with a hard-on for hurting vulnerable people.
Oh. No. Wait. I just remembered. According to the Minister of Farm Hair, it's for the wimmins:
“Our government has done more than any other government in the history of this country to keep women safe,” says Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, who is also in charge of the status of women in the Harper government.
“We have introduced new laws to make sure that we keep rapists and murderers off the street and to make sure that we protect children from sexual predators. That is what women want.”
Rona knows better than Sigmund Freud. But Bill Cosby really knows:
“Sigmund Freud once said, "What do women want?" The only thing I have learned in fifty-two years is that women want men to stop asking dumb questions like that.”
