Prime Minister Stephen Harper tells us that crime is getting worse in Canada.
He says we need tougher laws, and we must put more people in prison and keep them there longer.
There's one problem. It's not true.
Harper is out to lunch.
Police reported that there are 100,000 fewer crimes this year than there were last year. The crime rate is the lowest in 30 years
Cops have no reason to lie about it.
Especially since Harper has no figures to back him up. He just likes to say the crime rate is going up so he can scare us and get more votes even if it isn't true.
Surprisingly Harper gets away with it. As if tougher crime laws will scare criminals into being good guys. Might as well tell us that criminals believe they will get caught if they commit a crime.
On the one hand, Harper says we must crack down with laws against criminals who use firearms, but on the other hand he changes the gun laws to make it easier to own firearms. Now we don't even need to register our firearms.
How much has the crime rate gone down? In Quebec the crime rate fell by 4% more than in other provinces.
In Alberta the crime rate fell by 10%. That's in a province that traditionally has one of the higher crime rates.
The northern territories still have the highest crime rates in the country. But in the far north, most crimes are not as serious as they are in Western Canada, where we find the worst crime rates.
The Northwest Territories and Nunavut had a crime rate four times the national average.
In Quebec Montreal has the highest crime rate, and Quebec City continues to be the safest city in the province.
And even with its lower crime rate the crime rate in the provincial capital still went down another 6% last year.
Among Canadian cities, Quebec City boasts of being the second safest city in Canada after Guelph, Ontario.
Guelph is No. 1 but that probably doesn't include the orgy of electoral fraud conducted by Pierre Putin and his Conservative friends in Guelph.
While Toronto makes headlines with crime news it actually has a low crime rate compared to other Canadian cities.
Toronto is the third safest city in the country, right behind Guelph and Quebec. Montreal is much further back.
But it's always fun hearing Harper trying to scare a few more votes out of us.
