CANADA - Tim Hudak, exploiting ex-offenders, fear and children to get elected

Tim Hudak
Original Article

Of course he is, he knows a good plan when he sees one, exploiting ex-sex offenders, fear, and the usual "for the children politics" to get elected! Politicians do it all the time, he's just joining the bandwagon!

09/14/2011

By Rob Ferguson

LEAMINGTON - Ontario’s police don’t like the idea but Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is sticking with his plan to make the province’s sex offender registry public if he wins the Oct. 6 provincial election.

Hudak sat with parents and grandparents in a children’s playroom at a community centre in this Lake Erie town near Windsor, where a convicted sex offender named Sarah Dahle was recently found living next to a school while on parole. She left for the London area last week after months of protest from Leamington parents.

“Our right to security for kids, should it come ahead of the right to privacy for child predators?” Hudak asked on his second day in the riding of Essex, which the Conservatives consider up for grabs after the sudden death of Liberal MPP Bruce Crozier a few months ago.

Hudak said he would make the registry public so that parents know where sex offenders are living in their communities and can take “responsible” action to protect themselves and their children.

“I’m not looking to harm them, I just want to know where they are,” said Paula Pimiskern, a mother of four who sat beside Hudak around a table as the issue was discussed before a phalanx of television cameras.
- What about all other criminals?  Why aren't you also pushing to have them on an online registry so we all know where they live as well?  You are just using the usual "vote getter" by exploiting ex-sex offenders and children to get elected, IMO.

“If we knew where, we would tell our kids not to linger.”
- And ever if you knew where, if a person is intent on harming a child, or anybody else, they probably will.  This is just politics as usual!

OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis has warned making the registry public could lead to vigilante action — even killings — by citizens against convicted sex offenders living in the community.

“I totally disagree with Mr. Hudak on this,” Lewis said recently in a television interview. “In the U.S. states where they do it, it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to greater adherence to the legislation. We have almost 100 per cent compliance rate in this province with our sexual offender registry because they’re not online.”

There have been cases in U.S. states with public registries where “people have hunted people down because they saw their face on a registry and went out and killed them,” Lewis added.

In Ottawa, Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty said it’s a little rich for Hudak to be carping on crime given his proposal to put work gangs of prisoners out in the community.

“He wants to take prisoners who are safe and secure away from the general population and release them into our communities…it puts our communities at risk,” McGuinty told reporters.

“Our police…tell us this particular approach is not going to lead to more public safety so I’m with them,” he added.

Hudak would also put GPS bracelets on sexual predators and other high risk offenders so police could monitor their movements, at a cost of about $50 million a year.

At a campaign rally in the nearby town of Kingsville on Tuesday night, Hudak lumped McGuinty and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath together in accusing them of “coddling” criminals as the Tories look to win the Essex riding which is held federally by Conservative MP Jeff Watson.

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