This summer, Canada hosted an insane number of wild blazes, up to and including the biggest one BC has ever seen. In some cases, the firefighting efforts were complicated when crucial equipment was damaged or stolen. So Mel Arnold, a Tory MP, just tabled a private member’s bill, Bill C-365, looking to make theft of firefighting equipment punishable by life in prison.
Of course, stealing that equipment — hoses, trucks, etc. — endangers lives, so I can understand the hypothetical logic of adding restrictions. But this bill is both unnecessary and a waste of time, motivated simply by topical frustration.
First and foremost: the punishment is excessive in the context of the Canadian punitive system. It’s true that stealing firefighting equipment can indirectly lead to harm beyond the scale of single homicide; it could lead to the fiery deaths of several people in one swoop. But we already have section 430 in place, which deals with mischief that endangers life and already has “life sentence” as a maximum penalty.
C-365 acknowledges the pre-existence of that law and suggests that, if a charge is made based on that section, the involvement of firefighting equipment should be an aggravating factor. But why?
I don’t mean “why is stealing firefighting equipment particularly bad,” but rather “why does this need to be passed into law?” We have judges for a reason. The Criminal Code gives us rules and the judge interprets them for the purposes of a given case. We cannot add things to the Code for every possible way a given offence might unfold, because we’d never be done.
As Huffington Post reports while interviewing defence lawyer Michael Spratt on the topic, the Code already has such strangely esoteric mentions as “stealing cattle [and] theft from clam beds.” Continuing this trend is a waste of time when, either way, the final decision is going to fall to the judge.
Rather than us wasting time on the bill, it’s the work of a moment for a judge to make the call on exactly how much danger a thief actually posed. This falls more in line with what the working relationship between the law and the courtroom is meant to be.
The only tangible purpose C-365 would have is if it sought to change the minimum or maximum penalty awardable for the theft, but it doesn’t. The wording on the bill is exactly the same as the one in section 430: “guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for life.”
Ultimately, it’s just one bill: repetitive or not, who cares? Here’s the thing: C-365 isn’t just a waste of time. It’s a detrimental waste of time, because every second the government has is essential when bureaucracy is already a very slow process. It tells us that our MPs are not in tune with the priorities of the country right now.
Spratt mentions “bills tackling poverty or the overuse of jail as a solution to crime; or bills that might take steps to alleviate some of the serious problems that we have with the opioid epidemic” as more worthy projects, and I agree.
