Conservative Lakeland MP Shannon Stubbs calls the final report on her rural crime motion by the Liberal-dominated Public Safety Committee "outrageous" and showed that the Trudeau Government doesn't take the problem of rural crime seriously.  

At a May 23 press conference, the Northern Alberta MP called her motion "a call to action on rural crime."  She complained the Public Safety Committee did not make a serious effort to address her motion, which received the full support of the House of Commons. The resulting final report was not only released six months after the established Nov. 30 deadline, but it was also only a two-page document and contained no formal recommendations for action.

"Clearly, the dramatic increase in rural crime is not a priority to the Liberals," says Stubbs.  "After initially supporting this motion, it is unconscionable that the Liberals would dismiss the opportunity to take action on this pressing public safety issue."

Banff-Airdrie MP Blake Richards fully agrees with Stubbs' assessment of the government's lack of action on rural crime and scoffs at their initial support of the motion.

"With the Trudeau government, a lot of it is about symbolism," says Richards. "When you talk about a motion like this one, they'll support a motion to study something, but when it comes to actually doing something, they disappear, they have no desire to actually address the problem.  They just want to make people feel like they're doing something."

While Richards and Stubbs agree that the issue of rural crime will require addressing in several areas: more police, better communication, more crown prosecutors and more judges to name a few,

Richards says the first thing that must be done is to get tough on repeat offenders.

"So many of these people are repeat offenders and they consider this as a cost of doing business.  They're out there stealing things off people's properties and if they get caught, maybe they get a slap on the wrist at most and they're right back at it again.  We've got to look at our criminal code and say, 'how do we get serious and tough on repeat offenders'."