It鈥檚 not often both major federal parties are right and wrong at the same time.
But as the rehashing of the tragic 2009 murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford echoes through the House of Commons, the Liberals and the Conservatives have accomplished this rare feat.
There鈥檚 a monster living in Saskatchewan鈥檚 Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge. Her name is Terri-Lynne McClintic. She is a first-degree killer who delivered the death blows to a beautiful little girl whose only mistake was trusting a stranger who promised to show her a puppy.
For that, McClintic deserves every minute of her 25 years in a medium to maximum security prison, not a healing lodge where inmates are comfortably housed in self-contained units, some with family members, including children.
There she enjoys a fence-free lifestyle with her own personal life plan, vocational training, language instruction, nature walks and even the odd day pass. There she will remain until she becomes eligible for parole in 2035.
But while Conservatives rightly see this as a miscarriage of justice, they are shamelessly thundering the grisly details of Tori鈥檚 murder into the official record, clearly seeing it as proof of soft on crime Liberals with one eye on this as future election campaign material.
By spending an entire week fixated on an outrage that鈥檚 under official review by Corrections Canada, they鈥檙e going beyond demanding government accountability to political grandstanding.
The Liberals, for their part, don鈥檛 understand the widespread visceral anger this transfer has triggered.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale described McClintic鈥檚 abhorrent behavior as 鈥渂ad practices鈥� in a Power Play interview and limply transferred responsibility to Corrections Canada.
That鈥檚 not good enough. And he knew it, ordering a review of the decision the next day.
Yet the Liberals are right to insist that there shouldn鈥檛 be direct political meddling in an individual inmate鈥檚 case.
If a particularly egregious case like this demands legislative or regulatory amendments to reverse it or prevent it from re-occuring, that鈥檚 the government鈥檚 role.
But we don鈥檛 want justice ministers of the future randomly over-riding the incarceration experts just to make the shouting stop in the House of Commons.
As for the prime minister, he needlessly turned nasty by blasting the Conservatives as ambulance chasers seeking to profit from Tori Stafford鈥檚 death.
When it comes to McClintic鈥檚 unfathomable transfer, the Conservatives are right to raise it, the Liberals are right to review it and hopefully they鈥檒l reverse it.
But they鈥檙e both wrong to turn the fate of Tori Stafford鈥檚 killer into a parliamentary circus that sullies the memory of a little girl who went through hell on her way to heaven.
That鈥檚 the Last Word.
