Do you know your rights as a Canadian citizen?
- Thread starter Tonington
- Start date
Canada is a society of rights an entitlement - that is correct.
We don't uphold our citizen's responsibilities and duties.
We treat our prisoners like guests in a hotel. Here welcome to the Belage Hotel that you can never leave. We offer daily newspaper, television, board games, hearty food, great sleeping conditions, and all the hygiene you could desire!
Prisoners should get basic food, 1 toilet in their cell, 1 shower per day, and be ALONE in their cell... an nothing more... except possibly a work program that betters society. eg. get them to work on agricultural plants for food for food banks, or something that betters society.
All media, social interaction, entertainment, voting privelleges, our criminals serving time do not deserve any of that.
They didn't respect somebodies rights, so they should lose their rights.
What is wrong with my idea!
A basic system of rights for everyone in our nation, and a second level of rights for law-abiding, productive citizens.
Anyone carryout punishments of a court should lose the second level of rights for the duration of their punishment.
That is my opinion.
To much "gimme gimme gimme", we all expect to have all these rights kept by our gov. Well our gov. should expect things from us to give us these rights (eg. follow the laws of the land).
We don't uphold our citizen's responsibilities and duties.
We treat our prisoners like guests in a hotel. Here welcome to the Belage Hotel that you can never leave. We offer daily newspaper, television, board games, hearty food, great sleeping conditions, and all the hygiene you could desire!
Prisoners should get basic food, 1 toilet in their cell, 1 shower per day, and be ALONE in their cell... an nothing more... except possibly a work program that betters society. eg. get them to work on agricultural plants for food for food banks, or something that betters society.
All media, social interaction, entertainment, voting privelleges, our criminals serving time do not deserve any of that.
They didn't respect somebodies rights, so they should lose their rights.
What is wrong with my idea!
A basic system of rights for everyone in our nation, and a second level of rights for law-abiding, productive citizens.
Anyone carryout punishments of a court should lose the second level of rights for the duration of their punishment.
That is my opinion.
To much "gimme gimme gimme", we all expect to have all these rights kept by our gov. Well our gov. should expect things from us to give us these rights (eg. follow the laws of the land).
I respect the USA... they give their citizens rights, but they make damn sure they uphold their responsibilities to earn those rights.
Canada is and always will be a nanny state.
Canada is and always will be a nanny state.
Much rather have all of those than what?
Or just would like to have these rights?
I'm sure we can all think of rights we think we ought to have, I think more personal property rights.
I suspect that when tonington set up this thread he was trying to let you knwo what you're rights are in a LEGAL sense.
I am against more personal property rights.
Do you want to have a 4 story home next to your bungalow? no..
Do you want to have a 4 story home next to your bungalow? no..
As I've said before, what you need to do in the justice arena is demand system access. How? Every single case should be assigned a number and that number should be stated in any court document and any media article. Say the cops just made a marijuana bust in Scarborough. This bust is assigned the number 125A21 (or whatever). In two months or ten I can input that number in my computer and see what happened to the case. With knowledge comes power. And with the power coming from the implementation of this idea alone, explosive repercussions will happen across the country.
Dude, you don't understand anything our prison system. Its not club med. Some of the lower rung minimum security prisons aren't bad, they are like halfway houses really. But the Max pens are fairly similar to Oz, stabbings and rape abound with a 40% infection rate. Its not a "vacation".
Everythnig the inmates have or do is not based on "coddling" them, but based on costs and safety of the guards.
Inmates have TV because it pacifies them. Rather than learning chemistry to brew drugs, poison and booze they watch Oprah. Rather than working out to the point of being mini-hulks they watch Maury Povich, rather then building shivs, organizing riots, and plotting to escape or capture nurses they vegitate in front of the TV.
This saves sooo much money on guard salaries (you need fewer) and reduces the number of assaults on staff immenesly. Its a scary thing to walk amonst hordes of bulked out rapists with aids and a raging hard-on to take any staff member hostage for a few hours.
They are vile enough that I would personally would kill myself before spening 2 years in a max (which everyone does before being assigned to a lower grade prison if they are deemed able to exist in a lower security environment)
I think this thread was a really good idea.
However, I think the idea of the thread has been derailed by a bashing of our criminal justice system. Am I the only average citizen here (as in, not a legal expert) that actually takes the time to read court cases and understand the workings of our justice system?
It is easy to get information about court proceedings, it is even your right to be able to do so. Here are some links:
Justice Canada (contains all of our laws): http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/
Supreme court of Canada: http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/
BC courts: http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/
Alberta: http://www.justice.gov.ab.ca/home/
Saskatchewan: http://www.sasklawcourts.ca/default.asp?pg=ca_about
Manitoba: http://www.manitobacourts.mb.ca/
Ontario: http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/ocj.htm
Quebec(English version): http://www.tribunaux.qc.ca/mjq_en/c-quebec/index-cq.html
New Brunswick: http://www.gnb.ca/cour/index-e.asp
Nova Scotia: http://www.courts.ns.ca/
Prince Edward Island: http://www.gov.pe.ca/courts/
Newfoundland and Labrador: http://www.court.nl.ca/
Yukon: http://www.justice.gov.yk.ca/prog/cs/
Northwest Territory: http://www.nwtcourts.ca/
Nunavut: http://www.nucj.ca/index.htm
There are equivelent sites where you can read about the decisions in the Youth Courts of Justice, only the names are protected. Wherever you are in Canada, you can easily find out about the cases near you and it is a lot more difficult to get off a crime than people seem to think.
Everything can be accessed through: http://www.canlii.org/
However, I think the idea of the thread has been derailed by a bashing of our criminal justice system. Am I the only average citizen here (as in, not a legal expert) that actually takes the time to read court cases and understand the workings of our justice system?
It is easy to get information about court proceedings, it is even your right to be able to do so. Here are some links:
Justice Canada (contains all of our laws): http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/
Supreme court of Canada: http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/
BC courts: http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/
Alberta: http://www.justice.gov.ab.ca/home/
Saskatchewan: http://www.sasklawcourts.ca/default.asp?pg=ca_about
Manitoba: http://www.manitobacourts.mb.ca/
Ontario: http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/ocj.htm
Quebec(English version): http://www.tribunaux.qc.ca/mjq_en/c-quebec/index-cq.html
New Brunswick: http://www.gnb.ca/cour/index-e.asp
Nova Scotia: http://www.courts.ns.ca/
Prince Edward Island: http://www.gov.pe.ca/courts/
Newfoundland and Labrador: http://www.court.nl.ca/
Yukon: http://www.justice.gov.yk.ca/prog/cs/
Northwest Territory: http://www.nwtcourts.ca/
Nunavut: http://www.nucj.ca/index.htm
There are equivelent sites where you can read about the decisions in the Youth Courts of Justice, only the names are protected. Wherever you are in Canada, you can easily find out about the cases near you and it is a lot more difficult to get off a crime than people seem to think.
Everything can be accessed through: http://www.canlii.org/
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Nif, interesting links! I shall take you up on your dare. I am looking for the specifics on specific local cases. Some mundane, others not. I want to see if I can quickly access those specific ones. I'll report back later. I hope you're not wasting my time and offering a general overview site!
I don't know how "quickly" you will be able to do it... but I think you should be able to beat 6-8 weeks that the government would give you. :smile:
If you know the case number you should be able to enter that in CanLII. Other than that, their search engine seems overly complicated. I generally just go searching for stuff to establish precendence, since I generally need to know how to interpret such and such a section of Legalese.
Nice links Nif. I thought of adding some other laws specific to what happens on the forums like the hate crime proliferation and what not.
Another site people might find interesting and eye opening is Stats Canada. I don't find it overly difficult to find what I'm looking for and they do a first rate job at collecting and analyzing the relevant data. Really a national treasure I think.
Another site people might find interesting and eye opening is Stats Canada. I don't find it overly difficult to find what I'm looking for and they do a first rate job at collecting and analyzing the relevant data. Really a national treasure I think.
Nif, I've just returned home and given your search a try. I'm not impressed. You're wasting my time. Under Divisional Court for Ontario only 1079 decisions are logged. The database is way way behind. The ability to find anything of local importance and find it quickly simply isn't there.
The court system is in crisis. We don't have the Justices of the Peace nor courtroom time to handle the deluge. Most charges in Ontario are dropped. We need transparency in the justice system. Not a site that basically references key judgments or case studies. A system to monitor all cases in the province could easily be set up and give privacy its due where warranted. If there's a grow-op busted I should be able to easily access info on the case. If teens have smashed public property I should be able to see how the case was completed. As it stands now we're all in the dark. Charges come constantly in the paper and only a few ever surface again as court decisions. We're entitled to know if the system is working or not. The easiest way is to do it is as I said. Treat each case like an eBay sale. There's not an item of the millions on eBay that can't be accessed in seconds if you know its number. Justice should be as easily accessed and understood. Too much is swept under the carpet in this country and it's allowed to happen because we don't have access to essential and specific information.
The court system is in crisis. We don't have the Justices of the Peace nor courtroom time to handle the deluge. Most charges in Ontario are dropped. We need transparency in the justice system. Not a site that basically references key judgments or case studies. A system to monitor all cases in the province could easily be set up and give privacy its due where warranted. If there's a grow-op busted I should be able to easily access info on the case. If teens have smashed public property I should be able to see how the case was completed. As it stands now we're all in the dark. Charges come constantly in the paper and only a few ever surface again as court decisions. We're entitled to know if the system is working or not. The easiest way is to do it is as I said. Treat each case like an eBay sale. There's not an item of the millions on eBay that can't be accessed in seconds if you know its number. Justice should be as easily accessed and understood. Too much is swept under the carpet in this country and it's allowed to happen because we don't have access to essential and specific information.
I am hardly wasting your time. It is simply erroneous to think that every trivial aspect of criminal conduct will make it into the court. There are better avenues for the rehabilitation of first time offenders who suffer a lapse of judgement than sending them to court. These cases will never be made available to the public for the protection of the people involved, as well as guilty pleas to offences. I sent you those links so that you could read and understand our justice system based on actual experience, as it stands now you seem to base your opinions on common errors and biases.
A system to monitor all rulings should never be set up. The primary aim of our justice system is rehabilitation and such a system would be inhibitory. If the details of the case in question are severe enough that it goes to court it is assigned a unique label, you can look up cases easily based on this number, but you are never made aware of these details by the media. I don't know why they never give these details.
Again, I offered to help you if you had trouble. If you are willing to share the details of the cases that you are interested in, I can help you find information about them. If they are fairly recent, it is quite probable it has not even been ruled on yet, if it has even been heard yet. You would need to tell me dates and enough information for me to determine which laws would have been broken. However, as it stands now you just seem to want to bash the court system. You talk about a deluge which I assume stems from your awareness of a long wait time for some cases to come before court, but those wait times have more to do with providing applicants and respondents with time to prepare than with a lack of staff. The papers are always quick to trump up charges and will even lay blame, even in situations where the police don't have a suspect. This is why it is so important that juries never read media articles related to the case they are sitting on.
All of this just goes to show that Tonington's point is an excellent one. People do not understand enough about how their country works. They assume that if something doesn't work the way they think it should, it means it is broken. The crime rate has fallen since its peak in 1991, yet due to media glamorization, people are thoroughly convinced it is higher than ever. Because of this, there are many people who want to arbitrarily degrade certain human beings and give more power to the police institution when there are plenty of organizations that know better and advocate for the reverse using actual information.