Canadian Judicial System - Independent Or Simply Unaccountable?

Guess what - it's now ok for those willing join the police force to have a criminal record. One may still think that requiring applicants to be law abiding is just common sense. But the judges don't think so:

MONTREAL- The Montreal Police Dept. violated the Quebec Charter of Rights when it refused to hire a police applicant who had been convicted of theft, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

In a 6-2 ruling, the nation's highest court found that the would-be police officer, whose name is protected by a publication ban and is identified in the judgement only as N, had seen her rights infringed when her application to the force was rejected on the grounds she did not require the "good moral character," required by the department's hiring regulations.

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But we can allow a handful of folks who have been convicted of minor crimes to join the police force, can't we? After all, the "social cause" soft-on-crime approach has proved to be working, hasn't it? The crime rate has never been that low... Or has it?

Here are some figures you probably didn't see widely quoted in the media earlier this month when Statistics Canada released its 2007 data on falling Canadian crime rates.

- First, violent crime is up 320% since 1962, when modern records first started being kept.

- Second, property crime, which many victims don't even bother to report anymore, is nonetheless up 75%.

- Third, the overall crime rate is up 152%.

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Not that long ago, Stephen Harper's government proposed some reforms to the process of appointing judges. That also included appointing few representatives from the police to the committee - so that the police would have its say on who's being appointed judge. The opposition objected the reforms, claiming they would infringe judicial independence. Well, if judicial independence means complete lack of common sense and accountability, if it only results in judges putting criminals' rights ahead of victims' rights (let alone - maintaining law and order) - then sacrificing such "judicial independence" is the risk I'm willing to take.