A Conservative Party of Canada MP went to prison recently although not for a reason you might think.
Frank Caputo, who represents a rural riding in British Columbia, traveled all the way to La Macaza, a small town in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal, on a fishing expedition to feed the emerging right-wing talking point Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is soft on serial killers.
Caputo went there specifically to see the cell belonging to Paul Bernardo, a man so despised it caused a public outcry when it emerged last year he’d been transferred to a medium-security facility after spending nearly three decades in max.
“I came face to face with Paul Bernardo, and you will not believe how this guy is living,” said Caputo over ominous Stranger Things-style synthesizers at the start of a video called “Serial Killer Pick-up Hockey.”
He compares living conditions at the jail as similar to how the wiseguys from Goodfellas had it in the slammer, and Caputo is clearly hoping to be made a capo in a future Conservative cabinet. Some of the supposed luxury items discovered in Bernardo’s vacant cell included chocolate bars, an electric razor and even empty margarine containers (!), and the man also has access to a decent gym, billiard table, workshop and, according to the representative for Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, even an outdoor hockey rink/tennis court.
Turns out he might’ve taken some Katie Britt-level liberties with that last one.
Prison officials apparently didn’t appreciate having their facility used as the brunt of a political stunt and poured cold water on Caputo’s claims by pointing out they haven’t had a working ice rink in years.
“There is currently no functioning hockey rink or tennis court being used by inmates at La Macaza,” said spokesperson Kevin Antonucci. “It should also be noted that opportunities to participate in recreational activities [are] not unique to La Macaza, and can be found in other institutions.”
Antonucci also clapped back at his big Brush with Evil anecdote, which Caputo presents like he was Clarice Starling trying to catch Buffalo Bill, saying: “It is our understanding that participants did not interact with Paul Bernardo during their visit.”
They may have passed in a hallway though.
Chastened for embellishing the encounter, the rookie MP apologized and … lol just kidding. He’s a very serious Conservative man so of course doubled down and posted a photo proving there IS TOO a Serial Killer Hockey Rink, which has to be the worst name for a sports facility since Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, was renamed Guaranteed Rate Field.
Jesus wept. “The Trudeau government says doesn’t exist.” Nobody is saying it doesn’t exist, only that it’s currently just some boards assembled around a piece of pavement. Prison officials declined to say if this was due to safety concerns, budget cuts, a casualty of COVID or simply because violent sex offenders — people who don’t play well with others by definition — don’t want to play hockey with others either. Just because Jason Voorhees likes to wear an old-school goalie mask doesn’t mean they’re all into the game.
Caputo was also dismayed to discover the jail seems more like a university campus than the Black Hole of Calcutta. Which is because it used to be. La Macaza, located next to the airport for the Mont Tremblant ski resort, first began as a military base but was turned into Manitou College in 1973, the country’s first post-secondary institute offering studies in Indigenous affairs. Which seems like something the MP for the same riding where hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School two years ago should know. Although, unlike with residential schools, students at Manitou weren’t forced to attend against their will, and the school closed after three years before being turned into a prison.
But the trip wasn’t a complete bust since Caputo discovered there is now yet another notorious killer housed in this particular hoosegow, Luka Magnotta, the guy from the Netflix true-crime series Don’t F**k With Cats, whose name is fresher in potential Conservative voters’ memories. He is now trying to have Parliament do a special investigation into both of their respective transfers, and Conservatives want to pin the blame on Trudeau for passing a bill that made them possible.
Which also isn’t true.
Bill C-83 was introduced in 2019 to end the use of solitary confinement, which experts say does far more harm than good, and changed the law to ensure inmates are held in the “least restrictive environment.”
Global News breaks it down:
A spokesperson for Public Safety Canada says Bernardo’s transfer would have happened under the previous wording of the law, which was brought in by the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper.
That version of the law stipulated that prisoners should be kept in prisons with the “necessary” restrictions. When the law was originally created by former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney in the early 1990s, it used the term “least restrictive.”
“The result of this transfer was not affected by the passage of Bill C-83. A transfer would have also occurred under the previous language of ‘necessary’ restrictions,” said Public Safety spokesperson Magali Deussing.
The Right has a long history of using useful boogeymen to paint their opponents as being weak on crime. The best example is probably the outsized role convicted murderer William Horton played in the 1988 US presidential election, where George H. W. Bush’s campaign managed to convict former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis in the court of public opinion for crimes committed by Horton while out on furlough from a state prison. Horton was conveniently Black, so GOP strategists put a cherry on top of their dog-whistle sundae by giving him the diminutive nickname “Willie” to help sell the idea Democrats love violent crimes and any Black people who commit them.
Now that the rink stink has been put on ice, Caputo is pitching the prospect of these two potentially playing tennis together when the weather or court conditions improve. Which, as distasteful as it is, may not be the worst idea. Tennis is great way to work out aggression and release endorphins, and being scoreless in a match would likely be as close as these losers will ever get to experiencing love again.
[CBC / The Tyee / Global News / Merriam-Webster]
