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Who said crime doesn't pay?
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| Fir3start3r |
This makes my blood boil...
Hopefully, for those of you that are still sitting on the fence when comes to voting tomorrow, this will be enough to get you to mobilize and send a clear message...
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'Linda, this makes me sick'
[size]Insider reveals Liberal government is mailing $250 energy rebate cheques to prison inmates[/size]
By Linda Leatherdale
Who says crime doesn't pay?
Just ask Ottawa's crooked politicians, who've defrauded us of our tax dollars with no fear of ever going to jail.
And now they're sending our tax dollars to jailbirds.
Read on and try not to burst an artery.
Just as we get set to vote tomorrow, $250 energy rebate cheques are being sent to criminals behind bars, who already got to cast their vote in the comfort of their cells, heated by our tax dollars.
"Linda, this makes me sick," sniffed a correctional officer, who was on the line complaining he had just distributed cheques from Canada Revenue Agency (formerly Revenue Canada) to four inmates at a provincial detention centre, located north of Toronto.
One inmate had been at the detention centre fighting deportation since December 2004, after he was transferred from a federal prison where he had served his sentence.
He has 23 convictions, including armed robbery and drug offences.
This officer, who's worked for Ontario's ministry of correctional services for 16 years and asked not to be named for fear of being disciplined for speaking out, went on: "I'm delivering money to criminals that's been stolen from me and other hard-working taxpayers in Canada."
This isn't the first time, he said. In 2001, in another lamebrained Liberal scheme to help Canadians deal with skyrocketing home heating costs, many inmates received rebate cheques of $125 to $250.
It was part of the botched $1.4-billion rebate program, whereby only $250 million went to low-income Canadians struggling with home heating costs.
According to Canada's auditor general, most of the rest of the money went to dead people, inmates and Canadians who don't pay any heating bills at all.
Now the Liberals are doing it again.
Prime Minister Paul Martin refused to listen to taxpayers, who joined in the Sun's gas tax revolt demanding relief from skyrocketing energy prices by axing the high taxes at the gas pumps, especially the GST -- which is a tax on tax.
The GST alone has netted Martin's coffers a windfall of millions in extra tax revenues.
So last fall I went to Ottawa to deliver thousands of gas tax protection coupons and demand fairness.
Martin refused to accept them, so Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, who's promising to cut the 7% GST by 2% on all goods and services, took them.
At the same time, Martin and his taxman, Ralph Goodale, announced they were again delivering their flawed rebate program, this time at cost of $2.4 billion. And now criminals are again getting cheques.
The Liberals also voted to pump up their own gas allowances by 10%, with an MP now getting $500 for every 1,000 km he or she drives.
"Many of my colleagues who work here are struggling with high gasoline prices, home heating costs and electricity bills. Yet, MPs and criminals are getting relief, and not us," complained the disgruntled officer.
He also was upset that after alerting tax officials at CRA that government cheques were being sent to a post office address that belongs to a prison, he was told nothing could be done.
"Can you believe Revenue Canada told me they have no system in place to cross reference where the cheques are going?" he said.
Meanwhile, the mighty hand of Ottawa's tax auditors are quick to come after hard-working, middle-class families. For example, the disgruntled officer said he was audited after claiming moving expenses to take a job north of Toronto.
As well, a colleague he works with is being forced to pay back $86 in a GST credit given to his late mother-in-law, who passed away last year.
Bottom line is it's not just energy rebate cheques making their way into our prisons. Inmates commonly receive GST credits, worker's compensation, tax refunds, and welfare cheques, though welfare has been clamped down on, the correctional officer said.
And, as reported in this space, many a telemarketing scam and other frauds are carried out from inside prison walls.
Yet our correctional officers are powerless to blow the whistle.
My insider explained, "If I call up and say an inmate is committing fraud, I have violated the oath of secrecy I took as a peace officer."
So where's the whistle blower legislation to protect him?
Tomorrow is the day to have your say. Get out there and vote.
In the words of this correctional officer: "I work to July to hand over all my money to the taxman, and today I gave convicted criminals a rebate cheque. It's all wrong. It's time we stood up and said enough is enough."
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| ShadoWolf |
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/2006...n_prison_voting
About 35,500 prison inmates eligible to vote in federal election
JOHN COTTERMon Jan 2, 4:31 PM ET
EDMONTON (CP) - They are Canada's most captive voters.
Behind razor-wired penitentiary walls and minimum security fences, about 35,500 federal and provincial prison inmates are eligible to cast ballots in the federal election.
This is the second time federal prisoners have been allowed to vote since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Elections Act in 2002. It had been challenged under the charter of rights by a convicted murderer.
The court said voting could teach inmates democratic values and social responsibility.
Shane Shoemaker, serving a life sentence for first-degree murder at Edmonton Institution, agrees.
He and other inmates at the maximum-security prison have been following the campaign on TV in their cells. There are no election posters on the walls. No candidates have come to door-knock.
"Most guys in prison feel like outcasts. Voting is kind of a big thing," says Shoemaker, 30, who hails from Calgary.
"You feel like you are contributing to society."
Shoemaker, who is into the eighth year of his sentence, says most inmates plan to vote for any party other than the Conservatives.
Prisoners fear the Tories want to make life in prison harsher by taking away comforts such as televisions and stereos, he says. They also believe the Conservatives want to strip them of their right to vote.
"We live in a volatile environment and if they start taking these things away from us, it will just create more problems and tensions."
Under Elections Canada rules, inmates will vote with special ballots inside prisons on Jan. 13, 10 days before the general election. They may vote in the riding where they lived before going to prison, in the riding where a relative lives or where they were convicted.
At the Edmonton Institution, guards will shut down activity at the prison on voting day. Elections Canada will send in two returning officers and two polling clerks. One polling station will be set up in the prison's segregation unit and another elsewhere in the facility to handle the rest of the inmates.
Ballots will be sent to Elections Canada in Ottawa in the same way ballots cast by members of the Canadian Forces who are serving abroad are processed. The votes will be included on election night in the designated ridings when results are tallied.
Robby Nowicki, Edmonton Institution's chief administrator, says everything went smoothly during the 2004 election, with 65 of 238 eligible prisoners casting ballots. More are expected to vote this time.
While she hopes the voting process helps inmates, Nowicki said she doesn't support it personally.
"It is one of our basic rights," says the 27-year corrections veteran. "I feel we should have to earn it."
The issue of prisoner voting rights has bounced around in the courts since 1993, when the Progressive Conservative government amended the Canada Elections Act.
The law, which banned inmates serving terms of two years or more from voting, was struck down in 1995 by the Federal Court. Then in 1999, it was upheld in the Federal Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court struck that decision down in 2002.
The Liberals and NDP say they can live with the high court's decision.
The Conservatives say they don't have an official policy, but would favour a constitutional amendment to ban voting by federal prison inmates.
Tory justice critic Vic Toews says Canadians have told him on the campaign trail that they don't believe federal prisoners should have the right to vote.
"What they say to me is that it is wrong that these individuals who have broken their obligations to society are now entitled to have the same voice in society," Toews says.
In the 2004 election, 9,250 of an estimated 35,500 eligible prison voters actually participated - a voting rate of about 26 per cent. The national voter turnout was 61 per cent.
Shoemaker, who has spent most of his adult life in the prison system, says the parties should do more to encourage inmates to take an interest in the political process, including having candidates campaign inside.
He believes that regardless of their crimes, the more of a stake inmates have in society, the better off everyone will be.
"I am still a human being, I'm still a person. I still have a voice," Shoemaker says.
"Regardless of where I am right now, I will be out some day."
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Criminals voting for criminals. Makes sense. |
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