Feds get "tough", but what's the real impact?

Here we go, introducing get-tough-on-crime legislation in a period when we really ought to be celebrating how effective we've been at lowering crime rates these past 20 years. But enough of the public seem to want to believe otherwise that the Conservatives see a political edge in doing this. Time will tell how these laws will translate on the ground, but you do have to wonder about what will happen to people's rights.
Case in point: The Preventing the Trafficking, Abuse and Exploitation of Vulnerable Immigrants Act. 
The act sounds good on paper. It gives power to immigration officials to refuse work permits to people if they suspect the person is vulnerable and being brought to Canada to do "humiliating or degrading" work (the nickname for the act is the "anti-stripper law," reports the Globe). Hey, nobody likes human trafficking and exploitation.
But how exactly will an immigration officer decide who's "vulnerable"? What criteria will be used? Who will be deciding whether a job is humiliating or degrading, and whose definitions will they be using?  What's the process for assessing someone's "vulnerability"? Where are the protections to ensure powers like these don't end up being used just to block certain categories of people from getting work permits?  
And really, if we're so deeply concerned about people's vulnerability, is denying them a work permit the best way to help them?
But of course, helping immigrants was likely never the goal of this act. It's just a new way of being able to say no to more people. 

We're failing future generations

Excellent piece in this morning's Times Colonist from a Toronto doctor who reminds us of all the ways things are growing worse for certain populations of Canadian children. It disturbs me no end to be part of the generation that has made life more difficult for coming generations. Aren't we always supposed to leave the world better than when we arrived?

Media far from fair in kidnapping coverage

Maybe Randall Hopley really will turn out to be every parent’s worst nightmare - a scary, creepy predator who snatches children from their beds in the night.

That rough-looking mug shot of Hopley certainly seems to confirm the image. And how about all the news reports about him being a convicted sex offender? Surely he’s the guy.

Unless he’s not. What’s striking about all the media coverage around Hopley and the kidnapping/return of little Kienan Hebert this past week is that other than police saying so, no evidence has been put forward connecting Hopley to any of it.

I’m stunned by how roundly ignored that fact has been in the reporting of this story. Police have offered no detailed explanation for why they’re convinced that it’s him. Yet we’re all just so certain.

Hopley has been the featured bogeyman in every news story from the moment three-year-old Kienan Hebert’s disappearance went public. His unkempt mug is now known around the world. The make of his vehicle and licence plate number are public information.

All this on the basis of police comments. Innocent until proven guilty? Forget it.

The media coverage of Hopley has been downright inflammatory.

One story quoted a former classmate recalling 46-year-old Hopley as “the dirty, creepy guy who always rode his bike around.” The little boy’s dad lashed out in the national media at “the system” for not doing more to stop a dangerous, damaged guy like Hopley. His conjectures were left to hang there like facts.

No small wonder that at Hopley’s first court appearance Wednesday, picketers outside were calling for the death penalty.

And yes, Hopley could be the bad guy. But it’s way too soon to say, let alone assert it as fact in the media.

Hopley is routinely referred to as a convicted sex offender in news coverage, a phrase that brings all kinds of horrifying images to mind when a child goes missing.

But Hopley’s conviction involves a sex assault from 25 years ago on someone of unknown age, with no suggestions that he has done anything similar since. He got a two-year sentence.

He’s also been reported as having “at least one brush with the law involving a child.” That refers to an incident in which Hopley says he was trying to take a 10-year-old away from a foster home on behalf of the boy’s parents. The charge was stayed for lack of evidence.

Hopley’s criminal record - at least for the eight years of it available in the newly public provincial court database - doesn’t mark him as an obvious child predator. His crimes have been more likely to be break-and-enters and breaches. (He does appear to be fresh out of jail, though, having been sentenced in June to two months for assault.)

Police do what they need to do. I don’t blame them for the tone of the media coverage.

I imagine it makes sense when you’re the police to identify someone like Hopley - he’s well-known to them, after all, and constantly in trouble - in hopes of enlisting the entire country in finding him. If he turns out to be the wrong guy, that’s a problem for another day.

But media have a different duty. They’re expected to be fair and accurate in their reporting of the news. That’s particularly true when reporting on crimes, because you can ruin a person’s life and reputation with a single story that gets things wrong.

Perhaps the news outlets chasing the kidnapping story each made a thoughtful decision that obliterating the rights of a possibly innocent man was worth it given that a child was missing. My fear is that they didn’t even think twice about it.

One observer noted before Hopley’s arrest Tuesday that his image was so high-profile he was virtually “a caught man walking” in terms of public recognition.

In fact, he could have ended up a dead man walking. Imagine if an intense dad had been the first to spot Hopley and acted on the presumption he’d found the sick pervert who grabbed the little Sparwood boy.

If Hopley did it and is competent to stand trial, then may the misery of a lifetime in prison rain down on him. Kidnapping a child is unconscionable, regardless of whether this particular story had a happy ending.

But right now, we don’t know anything. News media have a responsibility to remember that. 

A fine editorial in today's Times Colonist on the dreadful things happening to people with developmental disabilities in B.C. these days.
Government obviously hoped this announcement of "new" money - a third of it is money that was always supposed to go to Community Living B.C. but had been withheld by the province up until now - would make its critics ease up. That scares me, because it strikes me that government must genuinely have no idea of the scope of the problems in the way we're supporting British Columbians with mental handicaps these days.
Developmental disability is forever. Someone in the system obviously has to focus on cost efficiencies, but not to the point where the exhausted families and advocates of people who will need quality care and support for a lifetime are left to struggle for the most basic services.

What shall we make of the mysteriously wonderful return of little Kienan Hebert?  The stories I've read so far made the alleged kidnapper sound like an unsophisticated fellow with a mental handicap, yet during a period when there was a national manhunt on for him and police everywhere, he sneaked back into the house where Kienan lived to return the boy safe and sound.
At any rate, I will quell the skeptic in me for now, because this really is an incredibly good outcome to the whole sad scenario. But the police certainly haven't made Randall Hopley out to be the kind of clever - and clearly empathetic - man who would do something like this.
I wouldn't have thought it easy for anyone to break into a closed crime scene at 3 a.m., let alone the alleged kidnapper. But perhaps police had let their guard down in the presumption that Kienan's home would be just about the last place that Hopley would return to.
Still, I hope someone's out there digging on this one. The pieces just don't fit. And really, Hopley's life hangs in the balance, because he's exactly the kind of guy to end up gunned down in a confused standoff with police.
But for now, let's just celebrate a genuine happy ending.