BY DAN GARDNER, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN, APRIL 7, 2010

Having spent the last four years being amazed and appalled by Stephen Harper’s style of governance — cynical, ruthless, controlling, unprincipled, and proudly ignorant of basic facts — I thought I had seen the worst. But then the news of Graham James’s pardon broke.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Stephen Harper was so angry after hearing of the pardon that he called Toews on Good Friday and ordered him to lower the legislative boom. In another government, that might be information Toews himself decided to give to reporters. But this is the Harper government. Ministers do not breath without permission. And so it’s safe to conclude that the prime minister’s office not only wants Canadians to know it’s getting “tough” on pardons, it also wants us to know it’s getting tough because the prime minister heard about James’s pardon and got angry.

Whether the pardon system is broken or not, whether new legislation is needed or not, this is an atrocious way to run a country. More consideration goes into the average letter to the editor. If Stephen Harper and his cabinet had a clue about good governance, they would hang their heads in shame, but they are clueless and shameless — and bragging to anyone who will listen.

Let’s start with something no one is talking about. How did Graham James’s pardon become public information years after it was granted?

The Canadian Press story that broke the news refers, vaguely, to the pardon being revealed after a new accuser came forward in Winnipeg. But it’s not legal for police, prosecutors, or other officials to reveal pardon information. Only if the minister personally approves the release of such information, and only if he does so in accordance with the criteria in law, is it legal.

Did a police officer or prosecutor illegally leak the information? Another official? Or was it the minister or someone in his office? The leak seems to have included the name of the parole board official who granted the pardon, which indicates the leaker had the sort of detailed information available only to someone with significant access.

One might think this would concern Stephen Harper, who has dealt harshly with illegal leaks in the past. But it seems not. The CP story quotes his spokesperson saying James’s lawfully granted pardon is “deeply troubling and gravely disturbing,” but the spokesperson apparently expressed no concern that the law may have been broken. That’s a little odd. And suspicious. Remember, the prime minister’s office is legally forbidden from confirming that the pardon had been granted, but the tone of the story suggests the prime minister’s spokesperson may have done just that.

So will Stephen Harper call on the RCMP to investigate? Oh no. He only does that with leaks that don’t advance his political agenda. (I asked Public Safety to clarify, but, true to form, they did not return my call.)

As for the substance of the matter, I am agnostic. Maybe reforms are needed. I don’t know. I do know that pardons are revoked if those who receive them are subsequently convicted of another crime, and I know that 96 per cent of the more than 400,000 pardons issued over the last 40 years have not been revoked. This suggests the program is working just fine. But it’s a complicated issue. I’d want to know a lot more before I decide whether changes are needed or not, and I’d like to hear a lot more about whatever changes might be proposed. I don’t see how I could make a rational decision otherwise.

And I’m only a journalist whose decisions don’t matter all that much. Stephen Harper is the prime minister. His decisions count. A thoughtful and responsible person in his position might well get angry after hearing about a particular pardon, but he certainly wouldn’t run to the nearest phone and start barking orders. He would ask his officials to prepare a briefing that explained the rationale for pardons, detailed the essential facts, and outlined any controversies or proposed reforms. If he were an especially serious leader, he would ask officials to conduct an intense and thorough investigation of the issue, to talk with stakeholders and to bring their research together in one concise and informed paper. He might even ask an arms-length agency to do this work, to get a truly impartial perspective.

The government used to have an agency whose purpose was to do just that sort of thing. It was the Law Commission of Canada. Stephen Harper closed it shortly after taking power.

Making decisions on nothing more than impulse and politics, Harper and his ministers are often badly informed. Toews illustrated the point perfectly when he claimed that “certain types of criminals cannot be rehabilitated.” Presumably, Toews meant sex offenders. And that’s just wrong. Among the many studies on the subject is one by the United States Department of Justice which tracked almost 10,000 sex offenders — including 4,300 men convicted of molesting children — released from American prisons in 1994. “Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offence,” the study concluded, and only 5.3 per cent of sex offenders were arrested for a sex crime.

And bear in mind those offenders were released under appalling conditions. Forbidden from living here or there. Forbidden from a long list of jobs. On-line registries making their names, faces and crimes known to one and all. Such an amazing array of restrictions have been heaped upon American sex offenders over the years, ex-cons who want to stay on the straight and narrow find the system doesn’t help them do that: It actually pushes them off.

It is no accident one in four prisoners on the planet is American. An entire generation of politicians chose to ignore research, leap to their feet after every sensational headline, and play to people’s worst instincts. American justice became brutal, wildly expensive, and utterly dysfunctional. Subject this country’s justice system to a couple of decades of Stephen Harper’s style of governance and it will be no different.