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Prison tatoos, taxpayers, expense

True conservatism – an illustration

By arthur Weinreb

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Contrary to what newly elected Liberal leader, French citizen Stphane Dion and his cohorts are saying, the Conservative Party of Canada is hardly the extremist, right wing Republican-like neocons that they are attempting to portray them as. Rather the Harper government is a right of centre party that occasionally, but not always, manages to get it right.

an example of "getting it right” took place on Monday when the Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, announced that the government was cancelling the program that provides inmates of federal penitentiaries with taxpayer subsidized tattoos.

a pilot program was set up by the previous Liberal government in august 2005. Tattoo parlours were opened in six of Her Majesty's institutions at an initial cost of $350,000 and a further cost of $600,000 a year to operate. Had the program been extended to all federally run prisons the initial startup cost would have been $2.6 million and taxpayers would have had to fork over $5.8 million a year to keep them operating.

Day's reasoning for cancelling the pilot project was simple (you have to remember that all conservatives and conservative principles are simple). It was an inefficient use of taxpayer money.

Fans of the prison tattoo parlour project were up in arms (all being good lefties we can safely assume that these arms were registered). Some made the ridiculous argument that depriving prisoners of the "right” to get a safe tattoo in prison was a breach of those rights, as if everyone on the outside was entitled to government-funded body art. But the main argument against the government's move has some merit; allowing prisoners to obtain tattoos at properly operated facilities would cut down on the incidence of HIV/aIDS and Hepatitis C that can be spread by dirty needles that are used to provide unauthorized tattoos.

This argument is, of course that the lack of proper facilities in institutions will lead to a greater spread of disease which in turn will increase the costs of health care so operating tattoo parlours in prisons is a cost efficient method of keeping down health care costs. Medicare was first introduced in Canada for the noble purpose of allowing people to avoid the catastrophic cost incurred by people who require major medical treatment. The founders never envisaged that paying a doctor for an office visit would one day be seen as "un-Canadian”. The result has become that the state now uses our government-funded health care system to intrude deeper and deeper into the lives of Canadians and regulate their conduct under the guise of keeping health care costs down.

There is no extent to which leftist governments in Canada will go to regulate and micromanage the lives of Canadians using as a justification, the fact that the health care system will be able to reduce expenditures. The most blatant example of this was when George Smitherman, the oaf that passes for Ontario's Minister of Health, considered banning the sale of non pre-frozen sushi because he had heard that some people, possibly in Europe, may have eaten sushi that had not been frozen and might have become sick or something. If we are going to retain any semblance of freedom, we cannot continue, by laws and regulation, to micromanage the lives of Canadians using medical costs as a justification. Saving on health care spending should not come at the expense of our freedoms.

Stockwell Day's decision does nothing to contravene the rights of prisoners; in fact his decision on Monday is just the opposite. If the prisoners are going to be released back into society they should be learning how to be responsible for their own actions, including the consequences of using dirty needles to produce tattoos.

Those who are preaching doom and gloom scenarios about the cancellation of the program will never understand how well the government's decision resonates with ordinary Canadians across this country who are fed up with such things as safe injection sites and prison tattoo parlours.


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