The Inside Story Of the Conservatives’ Controversial Decision To Pardon 10 Farmers
New documents show frustrated bureaucrats didn’t know who or what they were pardoning until the last minute. One high-level public servant says the debacle pushed her to eventually leave her job.
Stephen Harper has presented himself as a champion of tough-on-crime politics. “Proven leadership for a safer Canada,” the blue-toned wrap on his campaign bus says in bold.
There was one time, though, when the prime minister loosened the grip of the law on a group of offenders.
In August 2012, Harper announced that the Conservative government had officially dismantled the Canadian Wheat Board, a federal agency that brokered export deals for barley and wheat farmers. He also made the surprise announcement that he was unsheathing “an ancient power” to pardon a group of farmers who had, as Harper said, simply been protesting the monopolistic nature of the Wheat Board.
“These people were not criminals,” Harper said.
Some members of Farmers for Justice, as the small group called itself, were charged under the Customs Act for trying to bring their grain to the United States illegally. Some spent time in jail for refusing to pay the resulting fines.
The government would later say that it had granted the farmers an “ordinary pardon,” a rarely used form of clemency under the Royal Prerogative for Mercy.
At the time of the announcement, tens of thousands of traditional pardon requestssat unanswered in a backlog of the Conservative government’s own creation.
The pardoned farmers couldn’t all be identified at the time because of privacy laws. Recently, the Parole Board of Canada revealed that 10 farmers received pardons. The farmers who came forward on their own accord, though, expressed immense relief at having their records sealed.
But questions lingered about the the way in which the government went about granting the pardons.
Now, for the first time, documents obtained by BuzzFeed Canada show the prime minister’s hand in having the farmers pardoned, and how some officials — including the public safety minister — pushed back.
The law states that anyone who wants a pardon — now called a record suspension — must apply to the Parole Board of Canada and pay a $631 fee.
Clemency is more typically used to clear the records of those who were wrongly convicted. But in very rare cases, the governor general, on recommendation of the public safety minister, can grant it to deserving applicants who’ve exhausted all other legal remedies.
The farmers had applied for neither a record suspension nor clemency. Political offices approached them, asking if they wanted it.
One high-level bureaucrat involved in the pardons told BuzzFeed Canada that the process blurred the lines between public service and politics.
“I found it very distressing,” said Mary Campbell, who retired as director general of corrections and criminal justice in 2013.
Campbell said it pushed her to leave Public Safety Canada after serving for nearly three decades.
No comments:
Post a Comment