Good-Bye StatsCan; Hello MacDonald-Laurier Institute and Scott Newark?

Well, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the Harpercon mantra is if the facts and data don’t suit his highness’s ideology, find somebody sympathetic to work magic with those numbers to suit master Steve’s whims.

Ex Alberta prosecutor, Scott Newark  vis a vis the MacDonald-Laurier Institute attempts to dazzle us with his statistical magic, telling us how crime is steadily going up and up! He’s a callin’ for newfangled ways for StatsCan to calculate crime. Ready boys ‘n’ girls? Try not to fall off your chairs, now.

» The annual report on crime statistics, know as Juristat, routinely revises crime statistics from previous years upward in any given year’s report, making annual crime decreases appear more significant than they are.

I have no words for this

» Crime categories are revised from year to year, with specific crimes added or dropped, making it difficult to compare apples with apples.

Oh dear, typical conservatives, not realizing that perhaps even in the crime world, trends change.

» Juristat does not attempt to factor in unreported crime, even though a separate Statscan survey shows more people are not bothering to report crimes such as break-ins and auto theft because they don’t have any confidence the crime will be solved.

Oh goody! Back to ‘unreported crime’. Well, Scott,  duh, it’s ‘unreported’, meaning, there’s no report, no data, nothing, nada! 

It is interesting that the reason folks are ‘not reporting’ crimes against ‘em is lack of confidence that the crimes will be solved. Well, how does implementing new insipid laws against growing and posessing marijuana and running office hockey pools or Friday night poker games and spending billions on new mega prisons better solve these crimes?

What is telling, typical Harpercon again, is that the only ‘unreported crimes’ mentioned here are burglaries and auto theft.   Weird, one would think most of those crimes would be reported whether one is confident or not– to make an insurance claim with your insurance carrier, a police report is required in order to have any chance of recovering anything.

Funny how there is no mention of serious crimes that really do go unreported in the real world; conjugal violence and sexual assault.  But, those misogynistic Harpercons don’t care about that as they’ve illustrated time and time again. So far, sooo not impressed! 

» The report fails to identify whether the crime was committed while the offender was out on bail or parole, although the data is available.

Who cares?  Is a crime committed by a newbie any more or less reprehensible than someone on bail or parole?  That suggestion smacks of stepping up neighbourhood witch hunts.

This is all typical Stevie Spiteful and his puppets though. First was scrapping the long form census. Then their precious tough on crime agenda being tweaked to suit their own ends.  Watch for Scott Newark getting some nice appointment, perhaps with StatsCan. Even better, perhaps the MacDonald-Laurier institute will replace StatsCan?

The MacDonald Laurier Institute claims to be non-partisan, but according to the article, it has done research for the Harpercons before and has produced results favourable to his highness.  Well, of course they did! If they actually produced a factual report that didn’t necessarily support Stevie’s quest for a neo-con utopia, would  the Harpercons use their work again?

As for Scott Newark, well, that’s even more juicy. He apparently was an advisor to ol’ Stockwell ‘Doris’ Day and yes, was awarded a government contract while perhaps still on that job or very shortly afterwards (according to Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch, The code prohibits a public office holder from accepting employment for one year from a firm ”with which they had direct and significant official dealings” with during the year before they left public office).

Bidding for the ”job-hazards analysis” closed April 11, when Newark was still in the minister’s office, with the $312,400 contract being awarded on July 17 with an end date of March 2, 2007.

Read the rest about Doris and Scott’s relationship here.  Well worth the read, because I have a feeling Mr Newark is going to be appointed for something by Stevie sometime in the near future.