Harper's cabinet: puzzling, on pardons

This morning on The Current I talked about one puzzling aspect of the government's reaction to the pardon for convicted sex offender Graham James.

As we all know now, the prime minister was shocked that the National Parole Board could pardon someone who had committed such crimes against young hockey players. And he instructed Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews to conduct a review of the National Parole Board and propose reforms.

Now if Vic Toews is busy, as I have no doubt he is, he could speed up his review process by simply speaking to his cabinet colleague Stockwell Day.

Here's why: On October 19, 2006, the Globe and Mail ran an article on its front page with this headline: "Sexual predator at private schools pardoned."

This was the case of Clark Noble. He was a teacher at some of Toronto's most elite private schools. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to a sexual assault against a student from Oakville's Appleby College. He also admitted that he had attacked a student at Upper Canada College in 1971.

Two days later, the former minister of public safety, Stockwell Day, said in a statement that he had asked the National Parole Board to review the process for granting pardons to criminals convicted of violent of sexual offences.

He is quoted as saying, "we want to ensure that unwarranted pardons are not granted to violent or sexual offenders."

That was three and a half years ago. And three months before Graham James was pardoned on January 8, 2007.

This is why the prime minister's (and the rest of the government's) head-scratching over the parole board's pardoning of sexual offenders like Graham James is puzzling. Apparently they were reviewing this already, back in 2006.

According to Michael Carabash, a Toronto lawyer and the author of the forthcoming book "Criminal Records in Canada," changing the way the parole board issues pardons is unlikely to take three and a half years. Such a change would require only a tweak of the current Criminal Records Act.

This morning on The Current Carabash said, "it could be a simple sentence in the Criminal Records Act that says the minister of public safety will have the authority to list certain criteria that the National Parole Board has to follow."

According to Carabash, in 2000, new amendments were added to the Criminal Records Act that dealt specifically with sexual offenders and the changes were passed into law within a year.

So in summary, in 2006 the government said they were going to change the way pardons are granted to sexual offenders. It's not difficult to make those changes. But as we saw this week, the government is still puzzled about how it is that the parole board can give pardons to these sorts of sexual offenders.

Puzzling indeed.