At issue are rules that make it a crime for a company to hire illegal immigrants, yet simultaneously protect those same workers from retaliation for engaging in union activity.

Those intertwined standards came into play at Agriprocessors’ small distribution facility on the Brooklyn waterfront in 2005, when a group of about 20 workers voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

John Feldsted, Winnipeg, Man.

The Conservatives want to toughen up crime legislation regarding young people, ideally deterring future criminal acts. Instead of addressing societal factors that make it more likely that certain youths will commit crimes, therefore potentially working to ameliorate the problem of youth crime, Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to instead punish, stigmatize and criminalize youths.

Why isn’t the government looking at the larger structural forces that contribute to and have an impact upon criminality?

It makes more sense to fund programs and services that help prevent youths from committing crime in the first place.