OTTAWA — Canada needs to spend more money building prisons because of violent criminals and a rise in unreported crimes, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day said Tuesday.“We’re very concerned . . . about the increase in the amount of unreported crimes that surveys clearly show are happening,” Day said at a news conference. “People simply aren’t reporting the same way they used to.”
Now, to be fair to Stock, he does have a point. A lot of crimes go unreported. And while this prompted a slew of Twitter jokes about “unreported crimes” (“murse snatchings“, “wearing white socks with sandals“, “Nickelback“), a lot of unreported crimes are serious.
But…here’s the deal. There’s no indication that unreported crimes are increasing – quite simply, unreported crimes have been a fact of life since the dawn of time 4,000 years ago. And even if unreported crimes are increasing, I’m not sure how this government plans to get the unreported criminals into their new prisons. (Jeff has one solution)
I know 38% of politicians do it, but you can’t just make up statistics to prove your point.