17 January 2008

Whatever happened...

To good, old-fashioned consequences?
-- The rupturing of pipes is a big issue in Canada as lines are being hit thousands of times each year.

In B.C. alone, gas lines were hit 1,700 times in 2007. In Ontario there are an average of 3,500 gas-line hits every year. --
So guess what happens when your dopey backhoe guy blows through a pressurized pipe transporting natural gas? I mean... apart from the obvious fiery cataclysm.

Well... apparently not much.
-- Prosecutors in Ontario say education, not enforcement, is the key to compliance, and admit to having only prosecuted one case in 2007.

In fact, during most cases in Canada, the only consequence of striking a gas line is a letter or a visit from an inspector ordering the offenders to "cease and desist" from hitting gas lines. Fines are rare. --
Any of this... and I'm talking specifically about the lack of consequences... sound at all familiar?

How about the infamous Youth Criminal Justice Act... or, in fact... anything at all to do with Corrections Canada?

How about collapsing bridges... or deporting the same people, over and over again?

How about using taxpayer bucks to buy hypodermic needles and medically supervised overwatch for degenerate junkies?

Or extortion and threats of continued violence from aboriginal communities.

You know what, Jethro? It doesn't take a freakin' village... to separate the intellectual wheat from the chaff here.

Choices have to have consequences... it's how we learn.

And it's past time everybody got that straight.

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