Clifford Olson should have been sentenced to 275 years in prison; none of this "concurrent sentence" palaver combined with faint hope clauses and parole applications. He also should have had to shut up and just do his time.

That said, however, I'm against the death penalty because sometimes innocent people are wrongfully accused and convicted of murder. For example, there were David Milgaard, Donald Marshall and Guy-Paul Morin (the "3 M's), as well as Ronald Dalton, Randy Druken and Gregory Parsons in Newfoundland.

It's true that there are cases (such as Olson's) in which there is truly no doubt of guilt. Nonetheless, the system doesn't work that way. The system says that you're convicted and punished if you're "found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." The 6 gentlemen to whom I alluded above were all found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt...and yet, they were factually innocent.

They've got to eat old boy. I'm sure if you added up the cost of bread served to inmates it would add up to a lot more. What's the alternative? Not feed them? Although if it's Haagen Dazs or Ben & Jerry they're getting, fair enough!

But then again I'm used to paying for all the products I want in life.  And for working for that money.  I find this appaling.  Hard working people across Canada particularly in urban areas where it is increasingly expensive to live do not have the money for luxuries like ice cream with increasingly high living costs, taxation, fuel costs, clothing, electronics, phone companies everything is more expensive and taxed to the hilt now.  A tub of ice cream now is almost 10 dollars! It isn't about ice cream persay but this is a perfect illustration of the frivilous wasting of the Canadian government (as well as the way we pander to convicted criminals at the expense of victims).  

The amount of money our legal system wasted on the Pickton and Reena Virk and Air India trials and countless others...These cases should have been solved long before they were at a fraction of the cost.  What every happened to reasonable doubt?  We have to have pretty much DNA videotape evidence to convict someone in Canada otherwise the trial drags on for decades at the taxpayers expense!  And if your lucky enough to be one of the protected RCMP members, even if you kill someone on camera (like they did with Robert D - the polish man whose last name I won't attempt to spell without googling it - at the Vancouver airport) then you'll get away with it!  You might even keep your job.

Oh ya and if your a high ranking army official in Canada you get to keep your pension if you are convicted of murdering and raping two women (whilst wearing your military uniform and stolen little girls panties). Wow.  Taxpayers paid for this Colonels new hardwood floor after his wife complained their house was damaged during the search for his panty collection! What a joke! What a country we live in where we continue to have taxpayers paying for housing renovations and ice cream for convicted murders and sex offenders.

It isn't always so extreme most of the money wasting is more subtle no doubt - the PMs expenses on his trips aboard (1.3 million to go to Singapore for a conference?)  His house on 24 Sussex....10 million in renos recommended by the Auditor General.  Why can't Stephen Harper pay his own rent? I do.

How come the hardest working people pay the most while the entitled elite get everythign expensed over to our bank accounts?