The Electric Pencil

Carole Goar has a strong piece in the Toronto Star today about Harper’s politics of fear, where Canada is a “country whose citizens worry about teenage killers; oil-hungry foreigners prowling their Arctic waters; terrorists lurking in their cities; and economic shock waves rolling toward them.”

She does a particularly good job taking on the Conservative promise to crack down on young offenders:

Those unregenerate 14-year-old criminals he proposes to lock up for a decade were troubled kids when he came to power. Their teachers had spotted the danger signals. So had welfare caseworkers, community activists and beat cops. They had tried to help, but were hampered by too few resources and too little political support.