Â鶹´«Ã½

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion outlined his party's law-and-order strategy in an attempt to rebuff Tory claims that he is soft on crime.

"We need to adopt a comprehensive and effective approach that deals with every aspect of fighting crime: preventing crime, catching criminals, convicting criminals through competent and quick administration, and rehabilitating criminals," Dion said during a Wednesday speech in Mississauga, Ont.

Dion committed in his speech to increasing the amount of judges and prosecutors in courts and to putting more police officers on the streets.

He said judicial appointments are being left unfilled because the Tories only want candidates that share their social conservative values.

"I call on the Conservative government to let the courts do their job, and start appointing highly qualified judges free from ideological interference," said Dion.

The delay has resulted in a backlog of criminal cases and dismissals, said Dion.

Additional details of the Liberal plan include:

• Funding for a 400-officer RCMP team to fight organized crime, gangs, drugs and gun activity.
• Tougher laws to fight Internet predators that target children and measures to battle identity theft.
• Increased security at places of worship in "at-risk communities".
• Amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) to make it mandatory for companies to notify clients if their personal information is jeopardized.
• Legislation that would target spam emails, making them an offence.

The Liberals will additionally offer their support in Parliament to the Tories on the issue of reverse-onus bail conditions for gun crimes -- which would require the person under arrest to justify their release.

The Conservatives have already tabled a bill on the issue in the House of Commons but it still has to make it through the Commons justice committee.

The Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and the NDP have previously acted together to water down Tory measures on tougher sentencing.

While Dion is offering to co-operate on the reverse-onus issue, he favours better policing as a more effective solution to crime.

Reaction

"After spending the last couple of months opposing every tough on crime measure, voting down his own anti-terrorism measures, bashing the police in the House of Commons, he now wants to be tough on crime," Harper told reporters Wednesday in King City, Ont. -- about 40 kilometres north of where Dion made his announcement.

"Look, I hope it lasts, because the government has a lot of tough-on-crime legislation. And if this is a sincere conversion, we can actually get on with moving that through the House of Commons."

Michael Bryant, the Liberal Ontario attorney-general who has been critical of his federal counterparts, had some praise for Dion's new policies.

"I think it's safe to say this is an incredibly comprehensive policy that actually, in some ways, takes the politics out of public safety initiatives," he told Â鶹´«Ã½net on Wednesday.

"What it says is it doesn't matter if an initiative comes from the left or comes from the right. If it's effective and smart, and it's going to make our streets safer ... then we should do it."

Dion had asked for a provincial perspective when developing his approach, Bryant said.

Dion's announcement on law and order came on the same day that Harper made another announcement of spending on the environment.

"It's a big change, and I think the Conservatives are certainly trying to change their image," Peter Woolstencroft, a University of Waterloo political science professor, told Newsnet.

"They're trying to present themselves as a very responsive, competent, middle-of-the-road political party.

"And the Liberals have been hurt by charges that the Conservatives have hurled at them that they've been soft on security, soft on terrorism and yes, soft on crime. So the Liberals have hit back accordingly."

Dion has also had to address the question of whether he's more than just an environment guy, "especially since the Conservatives have been very green in the last few months," Woolstencroft said.

With files from The Canadian Press