BC Politics with Hubert Beyer

WE NEED A SEXUAL PREDATOR LAW

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VICTORIA -- During the early evening of Friday, June 17, 1988, Anna Stephenson attended at a local shopping plaza in Brampton, Ontario, with her 11-year-old son Christopher and her nine-year-old daughter Amanda.

Christopher stood outside a sewing shop in the mall, holding onto some shopping bags gathered through the evening of shopping, while Anna and Amanda momentarily went into the shop.

During these few short minutes, Joseph Fredericks, a multiple sex offender, who was out of prison on mandatory supervision, after serving two-thirds of a sentence for sexually assaulting a little boy in Ottawa, approached Christopher with knife in hand, covered by a jacket, and placed his arm around Christopher’s shoulder, holding the knife to the boy’s neck.

Fredericks told Christopher if he yelled and didn’t co-operated, he would be killed. In these circumstances, Fredericks was able to walk Christopher out of the mall without incident.

The rest of that evening and throughout the following day, Christopher was repeatedly and brutally raped, tortured and finally murdered by Fredericks. On Father’s Day, Sunday, June 19, 1988, Jim Stephenson had to identify his son’s body in the city morgue.

We cannot begin to imagine the pain and the anguish Anna And Jim Stephenson will live with for the rest of their lives. And there are all to many Jims and Annas, whose children have been murdered by sexual predators.

But notwithstanding the horror of their experience, the murder of their little boy has given the Stephensons a new mission, one that Canadians might want to support.

A report, commissioned by the Stephensons, and released last week by the Canadian Police Association and the National Justice Network, makes an excellent case for a sexual predator law. The report was prepared by Toronto lawyer Timothy Danson, who acted as counsel for the Stephensons at the inquiry into the death of their son.

Danson is an expert in constitutional law, which is important because most opponents of sexual predator laws point to their constitutional vulnerability.

First off, what is a sexual predator law, and how could it offer greater protection to potential victims of sex offenders?

The report defines a sexual predator as "a person who has a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes him likely to commit acts of a sexually violent, predatory nature. Predators stalk, hunt, terrorize and kill children and women just for the thrill of it. They are dangerous psychopaths, sexual sadists and often pedophiles."

A sexual predator law would ensure that sexual predators are kept off the streets and placed in a secure setting until they no longer represent a threat to public safety. Such a law would apply to predators who would otherwise be released following the completion of their criminal prison sentence for a previous offence.

The report stresses that such a law could and would provide for comprehensive due process protection to make sure that a fair and impartial hearing takes place before anyone is declared a sexual predator.

"When we speak of dangerous sexual predators, we are referring to people like Clifford Olsen, Joseph Fredericks and the person who murdered Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffie. We are concerning ourselves with probably one half of one per cent of the entire criminal population," the report says.

Similar legislation is already in place in Washington State, which can detain sexual predators by means of its Community Protection Act and the Violent Predator Statute.

The Washington State legislation defines a "sexual violent predator" as someone who has previously been convicted of a sexually violent crime as well as someone who has a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes them likely to commit crimes of a sexually violent nature.

The Washington State law has survived constitutional challenges, and the U.S. Bill of Rights doesn’t even have the provision our Charter of Rights does, according to which the rights and freedoms guaranteed therein are nevertheless subject to reasonable limits which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

And yet, the federal government refuses to enact sexual predator legislation, claiming that such a law would be unconstitutional. I find it strange that the government should be second-guessing the courts. The proper way would be to bring in the law first and then find out if it is constitutionally sound.

For all the children and all the women who will surely fall victim to sexual predators, unless we do something about it, let’s tell Ottawa in a loud and clear voice that we’ve had enough.

STUPICH'S LAST HURRAH

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By HUBERT BEYER

VICTORIA -- If you want an interesting read, phone Dave Stupich at his Victoria or Nanaimo office and ask for a copy of his reply to the budget.

The NDP finance critic's speech was noteworthy on a number of counts. It was a well-reasoned speech. No trumpets. No fire and brimstone. Just a quiet critique that stung.

But it was more than that. Aside from criticizing aspects of the budget which is, after all, his job, Stupich delivered a review of the NDP years in capsule form, trying to debunk what he called the myths of the Socreds' financial expertise and the NDP's fiscal ineptitude.

The speech was probably Stupich's last hurrah in the legislature. He plans to step down and enter federal politics if and when Prime Minister Mulroney calls the next election. That doesn't mean Stupich will no longer participate in the legislative debate, but his reply to the budget was probably his last major address.

Leaving aside his criticism of the budget, here are some of the observations Stupich made with regard to the three-year NDP reign from 1972 to 1975. Consider them carefully in the light of never-ending claims by the Socreds that the voters "made a terrible mistake" at the time.

When the Socreds took office in 1976, the government had no direct debt, except for $4.4 billion incurred by Crown corporations, primarily B.C. Hydro for dam projects built under the previous Socred administration.

Today's debt stands at more than $19 billion, of which more than $6 billion has been created by government through deficit financing. That amounts to about $24,000 for the average family. Stupich stressed that the NDP never produced a deficit budget. It never ran up a direct debt.

During the NDP administration, British Columbia had the lowest income tax rate for small businesses and the second-lowest personal income tax rate.

The B.C. Petroleum Corporation, established by the NDP, brought in close to $1 billion in resource revenue from the sale of natural gas. It was killed by the subsequent Socred administration.

The NDP government bought Canadian Cellulose for $1 and the Ocean Falls forestry operations for $789,000. They both turned a profit and preserved jobs.

The NDP government bought Panco Poultry for $4.8 million. Under public ownership, the company put $1.2 million in profits into the treasury. Later, the Socreds sold the company for more than $14 million, turning a nice profit for B.C. taxpayers.

The NDP government built and paid for three new ferries at a cost of $55 million. The same ferries were later sold by the Socreds to eastern interest at less than cost with a guarantee to lease them back over an 18-year period at double the selling price.

Stupich pointed out that the NDP government "put real cash money" into special rainy-day funds, totalling $201 million. When the Socreds defeated the NDP in 1975, these special funds contained a total of $552 million. That was real money from budget surpluses.

The 1975 public accounts, Stupich said, showed that when the NDP left office, the budget surplus was $45 million higher than when it came to power.

Stupich's argument does, of course, have holes. It wasn't just Socred bungling that led to the massive debt. Had the NDP stayed in power, it, too, would have had to succumb to the world recession by going into debt. But Stupich succeeds in killing the theory that the NDP was fiscally inept or irresponsible.

The NDP has nothing to fear from a comparison of its fiscal prowess with that of the Socreds. The NDP didn't squander half a billion dollars on a highway through nowhere. The NDP didn't stage Expo, a wonderful show that left a legacy of debt.

If the Socreds have been successful at one thing, it's got to be the promotion of the myth that the NDP made a mess of things during its three years in power. The facts say otherwise.

Sure, the NDP made mistakes, some of them pretty stupid, like the $100 million overrun in the human resources ministry's budget estimates.

On the whole, the NDP gave British Columbians excellent value for their tax dollars, and Stupich's reply to the latest Socred budget is as good a document supporting that claim as any I've come across.

THAT'S NOT THE WAY TO POWER

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VICTORIA -- When you made it to the gates of the enemy's fortress, you don't shoot at the walls with slingshots. You find the weakest spot in the fortifications, line up your biggest guns and fire away.

For a year and a half now, the NDP has laid siege to the Socred citadel, but rather than storming the stronghold, it has given up a number of strategic advantages by squandering its munitions on secondary targets.

As of late, the opposition's secondary target has been Vancouver businessman Peter Toigo and his real or imagined links to the government.

Question period in the legislature continues to be dominated by shots fired blindly in Toigo's general direction in the hope that a stray bullet might hit Premier Vander Zalm. For some strange reason, the opposition seems to believe that the premier's weakest spot is his personal friendship with Toigo.

First, the NDP concentrated on the interference the premier's office ran in the bidding process for the Expo lands in Vancouver. For weeks, the opposition, egged on by the media, single-mindedly pursued what came to be known as the Toigo affair.

What was at worst a gaffe on the premier's part became a cause celebre, making daily headlines and raising -- at least in the minds of the opposition members and some media types -- the sceptre of a premier about to fall on his own sword.

No sooner was that issue laid to rest or rather petered out, than the NDP found another Toigo angle -- his appointment to the premier's economic advisory council. Never mind that the appointment had been known for at least four months. Toigo was still hot stuff as far as the opposition was concerned.

While the opposition chipped away at the premier's relationship with Toigo, a target of questionable strategic importance, the Socreds have had all the time in the world to fortify the weakest points of their perimeter defence.

Plans to privatize the highways ministry's road and bridge maintenance have been rolling merrily along. The socalled decentralization process also continues without much opposition.

Those two issues alone are enough to pave the way for a government's defeat at the next election, provided the opposition keeps them alive and on the public's mind. That, however, the NDP failed to do, wasting its time on Toigo instead.

Another major opposition blunder was to alienate the best ally it had in any attempt to foil the highways maintenance privatization ©© Alex Fraser, Socred member for the Cariboo and former minister of highways.

Trying to keep the Coquihalla scandal alive, which wasn't a bad move per se, the only one the NDP could nail was Fraser, king of all roads in this province for more than a decade.

The original idea was to blame the present government at least in part for the financial disaster of the Coquihalla Highway. That was to be achieved by way of a special debate in the legislature to determine whether a number of previous and current politicians had misled the house with regard to the true cost of the highway from Hope to Merritt.

The NDP wanted to have a go at Premier Vander Zalm, Finance Minister Mel Couvelier, former highway minister Cliff Michael, former finance minister Hugh Curtis and Fraser. The speaker would only allow a debate that centred on Fraser's possible misleading of the legislature.

At this point, the opposition should have called the whole thing off. You don't attack a man as popular as Fraser, a man who has just lost his voice to throat cancer, without looking heartless and cruel. You also don't crucify a potential ally.

Fraser has led the fight against privatizing highways and bridge maintenance, an issue that could cost the Socreds the next election. Rather than trying to discredit Fraser, the NDP should have enlisted his support.

The other major issue the NDP has sadly neglected these past months is the government's decentralization program, which is really a centralization program.

The strategy does not give the eight regions a greater say in their own affairs, as government rhetoric would have it. It does an end run around local MLAs by concentrating responsibility for the regions in the hands of eight socalled ministers of state, cabinet ministers who have little or no clue about the areas they're supposed to be in charge of.

For the NDP, the way to the executive wing of the Parliament Buildings in Victoria doesn't lead over Peter Toigo's dead body.

It leads via constant hounding of the government over issues such as privatization and decentralization.