Â鶹ӰÊÓ

OTTAWA - Guns, gangs, drugs. Oh my!

The Conservative party is warning that life will be grim indeed on your street if you don't cast a ballot for a Tory in the next election. The Liberals don't like the police, and they're just plain soft - soft on crime and soft on terror, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

On the other hand, if you do vote Conservative, your government will be looking out for you.

"The first and foremost priority we have is to be protective of Canadians," cabinet minister Jim Prentice said Sunday.

"To be protective of the economy, to protect the environment, to protect them from terrorism."

Get used to that type of rhetoric, because there'll be a whole lot more of it during the federal campaign, whenever it comes.

Law and order is shaping up to be a key element of the Tory strategy as the party looks for ways to shake loose more voters - especially in Ontario - and push into majority government territory.

Harper provided a taste of what was to come in a major policy speech last month where his party's ideas on crime and punishment were emphasized.

Canadians, he said, have "a clear choice between a country that values safe streets and safe communities, versus a country where the streets are ruled by guns, gangs and drugs."

That dire message was beaten home during the raucous Commons debate in February over whether to keep two expiring anti-terrorism measures on the books.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion declared that preventative arrests and secret judicial hearings were unnecessary infringements on civil liberties and his party voted against them.

Harper quickly labelled his opponent: Dion "is not just soft on crime," charged the prime minister. "For the first time in history we have a leader of the Opposition who is soft on terrorism."

It's all pure politics, explains political historian Michael Behiels, focused on winning over just the right number of people in wavering Ontario ridings.

"(Harper) wants to make sure he can use this to get members of ethno-cultural communities in the Toronto region that have consistently voted Liberal to get them to shift their loyalty," said the University of Ottawa academic. "The one issue on which he can do that is this law-and-order matter."

Why those communities in particular?

"Most of them come from societies that are very tough on law and order, from societies where you have a lot of deference to authority and they put a premium on personal security and family security . . . so they're more prone to being conservative on that issue," said Behiels.

The political stakes were laid bare by Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant in a position paper he wrote for the federal Liberal party, leaked to a national newspaper this week. Bryant scolded his party for not coming out tougher on crime, a politically palatable position in Toronto where there has been high-profile gun violence.

"The point is to have some credibility on the issue, enough to assure voters during a crime crisis that Liberals actually have some answers to improve public safety, thereby removing crime as a wedge issue with Conservatives and allowing a focus on more traditional Liberal social justice issues," Bryant wrote.

University of Toronto criminologist Anthony Doob says the Liberals, and even the NDP, have ceded the law-and-order stage to the Conservatives: "It's almost as if they're embarrassed to be smart about crime."

Doob contends there is little evidence to support Conservative claims that proposals such as mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes or getting rid of house arrest for serious offenders has any positive effect on the crime rate - which is actually on a long-term downward trend.

Harper said during his Canadian Club speech that when he was a boy growing up in Toronto, "safe streets and safe neighbourhoods" were a given. In fact, when Harper was still in high school in Toronto in 1975, Canada's homicide rate reached a peak of 3.03 per 100,000 people. The lowest rate since then was in 2003, with 1.73 homicides per 100,000, part of a decline over the past 30 years.

But whatever the rate, Doob says the problem is that it is far easier to explain to the public that you're going to come up with a series of tougher laws, than to describe a long-term, workable strategy for actually reducing crime.

"I look at this and I see one party that's absolutely clear on its position on crime - and they're almost always wrong - and the other two national parties are afraid to come out with strong, coherent policies."