Thomas Walkom, Opinion, The Toronto Star: Scapegoats are useful political fodder. Former Conservative premier Mike Harris won power by successfully scapegoating the poor. Tim Hudak, the current Ontario Tory leader, hopes to replicate that success by campaigning against prisoners.
How else to explain Hudak’s call for what in effect would be provincial chain gangs?
Read more: Hudak proposes modern day chain gangs
Let’s be clear. The idea of forcing every provincial inmate to clean up highways or scrub down graffiti is potentially a political winner.
Most people have little sympathy for convicted criminals. In hard times, those who work for a living doubly resent anyone who doesn’t or can’t do the same.
That’s why Harris’s attack on welfare recipients was so successful. He picked his fight with the poor during one of the worst economic slumps since the 1930s.
Hudak, in his announcement Thursday, pressed all the usual buttons. He scoffed at those apocryphal prisoners who spend their time in jail watching high-definition television and learning “Zen yoga.” He said anyone in prison should have to work “just like every hard-working family out there.”
But he was also disturbingly vague. Would prisoners picking up garbage along the roadside be shackled? He wasn’t sure. Would young offenders be included? He promised to get back to reporters on that. How would his scheme affect the jobs of workers who are now paid to clean up litter from highways? He didn’t have an answer.
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