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Why would the government do such a thing? Because Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised voters, at every opportunity, he will Get Tough on Crime. He wants to bring a dose of Old Testament justice to our court system.

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But when MPs passed the Charter, they made that impossible, because they guaranteed judges, not MPs, would have the final say over the law of the land. In recent years, those judges have increasingly relied on social science evidence to determine whether laws comply with the Charter.

This is good news for those who would like our judicial system to make life-or-death decisions based on evidence, but bad for Harper, since he is unable to deliver what he has promised.

He could have responded by adjusting his offer to voters — adding roughage by putting money into aboriginal policing, for example — but he has stuck with the empty calories of tough sentences, likely because it is the best-selling item on the menu.

Governments are machines for turning votes into laws. We ended up with a federal gun registry, for example, because the Liberals were responding in a different way to the same desire for safer streets.

What’s different about the Conservative legislative agenda is that it is driven by populism, rather than the experts who helped earlier governments draw up laws.

Under Harper, laws emerge ready-made with cute titles and integrated communications plans, ready for use in party fund-raising and issue-identification campaigns.