“Former Harvard morgue manager stole brains to sell them”:
So reads the headline from an Associated Press release of 4 June, 2023. I think I know who may have purchased one! Public safety Minister Marco Mendicino has taken a great amount of heat recently over the transfer of convicted killer Paul Bernardo from a maximum security prison to a medium security facility in Quebec and no one in a position of responsibility in Government seems to have been told?
Plausible denial seems to be the catch phrase of the year down there in Ottawa, or is it Oz? Denials are made, fingers pointed and heads scratched when asked who knew? Don’t blame the guys at the top, blame their staff who apparently didn’t tell them anything. It’s your obligation to know, boys and girls.
OK, Corrections Canada has it’s rules that may or may not make sense. But, being part of government in this country means, independence of authority not withstanding, that there is a chain of authoritative command somewhere in the system. It would seem that one hand does not know what the other hand is doing as it should.
While our public officials are constantly maintaining that they are enhancing public safety by banning certain firearms, the real threats to society are getting scant attention from these hubris-tic elected officials. They claim it was the convicted offender’s rights that were at risk.
Wait a minute. At what point do the rights of a convicted killer arrive at centre stage? I was raised in a society that taught that if you contravened society’s laws or mores, you were fully responsible for your behaviour and you lost some rights. How stupid was I?
While one can have little or no sympathy for those convicted of heinous crimes, were does consideration for the rights and feelings of the victims and their families come into play? Oh yeah, this is Canada, apparently they don’t.
Bad enough that the victims in such crimes have to go through the initial trial(s) and all the delays and appeals that inevitably follow the charging of a suspect, they have to endure the recurring painful experience of going through parole hearings every couple of years or so with the stress of knowing that the continued incarceration of the offender is never guaranteed.
Now this clown has been removed from the province altogether and are the victims now expected to face travel costs and more stress to attend any subsequent parole hearings? You bet your life they will be.
Minister (for now) Mendicino may, in law, not be fully empowered to do much about the current situation, but, perhaps in the near future when these elected clowns who are apparently running the circus in Ottawa are actually able to find their collective asses with both hands, things may change for the better.
Perhaps our next Minister of Public Safety may actually be able to purchase a working brain!