03 Jun Leaders agree: Punishment first, trial later—if ever (cont.)

Former CBC Radio host Ian McNeil was disappointed in the answers to his question. In a conversation with contrarian, he called the response of his own MLA, Premier Rodney MacDonald, patronizing.

He said the point of the act was to make people like me feel safe in my home in Lake Ainslie. But it’s precisely because this can happen to a guy in Sydney Mines that I don’t feel safe in my home in Lake Ainslie.

[Last week, CBC’s Joan Weeks reported here and here that a Sydney Mines man with no drug convictions was living in his car after being evicted from a home after neighbors complained of drug activity in the house.]

if you’re going to punish people, you’ve got to charge them and convict them and hopefully give them a chance to face their accusers. He’s going to spend 90 days living in his car with his dog because he can’t afford to pound him. He can’t afford a lawyer. He can’t get legal aid. Just  because he’s not the most tasteful guy—that guy especially deserves the protection of the law.

It’s pretty sad that our premier-in-waiting, a professed social democrat and a lawyer to boot, would be too afraid of the law-and-order crowd to speak out against this.