Third World Horror

The Edmonton Journal is not a bad paper but like most newspapers their headline writers have serious comprehension problems. The headline “More Canadians being left to Third World justice” is certainly alarming but it does not really reflect the content of the article. One would think that Canadians are being shipped out to some horrible prisons in Sierra Leone or Myanmar after reading the headline. The article is really about the limit the Conservative Government put on the repatriation of convicted criminals. In the centre of the story is a man convicted of having sex with an underage girl in Cuba. And for putting this man in jail, Cuba put the entire Third World in the worst light in the eyes of Edmontonians.

If this had occurred in Alberta, the reaction of most Edmontonians, I am guessing, would be “throw him in the worse jail and throw away the key.” What happens here is that the guy is put in a jail that is “filled with mosquitoes, rats and bad food.” That sounds pretty terrible if it were a resort, but par for prison. If that is what Third World justice is like, then it is far more humane than the rapes, gangs and drugs in First World justice systems. I suspecting therefore that the story does not really have much to do with Third World justice, even if there were such thing.

What is in question is the right of Canadian citizens, convicted of crime or not, to return to Canada; and whether the government has the authority to deny them entrance. This has nothing to do, really, with anything or anyone not Canadian. The Journal is doing what local paper always do—pull for the hometown boys, regardless. If the Canadian government had sent a sexual offender from Edmonton to a perceived comfy Swiss prison and early parole, the Journal would probably be up in arms about it. Now the Journal is trying to get a convicted sexual offender to a more comfortable prison. That is just the way local papers work. The headline though should have been “Stockwell Day refused Edmonton man right of return.” It is a lot more shocking and like to be offensive to the many supporters of the Conservative Party. Blaming it on the Third World, however mistaken and cowardly, is just safe thing to do. So now, come to think of it, the headline writer may have actually read the article and decided to be inaccurate. I just don't know which is worse: stupidity or lying.