Canada's Post-Prorogue Senate Gets Down to Business

When Stephen Harper Prorogued Parliament earlier this year, he took the opportunity to stack the Senate with like-minded Canadians. Check out this bit of legislative razzmatazz from the recently passed (in Senate) Bill S-10. In essence, "those who support this measure support it without quantifiable evidence; it just feels right."
Thank you, newly stacked Senate, for your investment in the prison-industrial economy. It's an investment that is bound to return in kind.

From Bill S-10:
"Those who support mandatory minimum sentences argue, in part, that there can never be positive proof that sentencing policies have an impact on the rate of crime – the variables involved are simply too complex. They contend that mandatory minimum sentences are imposed in any event because society believes in denouncing certain crimes and holding people responsible for them. They argue, in addition, that “common sense” dictates that such sentences have at least some deterrence value, even if it is not possible to prove how much, and that deterrence and denunciation remain very important sentencing principles."

Update: not much happening

Not much has been happening, which is fine. When things start to happen, you never know…

I’ve just dug out my most recent manuscript and have begun some light edits. Right now, it’s with several publishers and the silence is stunning.

I have also started on some new poems. Here comes part of one now:

How To Know

Little should rattle us by now.

We’ve seen rocks

fall to invent the earth

and blurred mysteries

that evade science,

microbes that are poison to us

in a universe made from our thoughts.

And just because we have not

said it out loud,

we’ve seen it all the same,

watched it in the vague moment

before we give to sleep, our eyes

see what the brain

cannot decipher and so

ignores; half the thing forgotten,

half ignored.

***

Anyway, it’s still a baby.

Thanks for reading.