(For the complete story please click on the headline) …as the Conservative government continues this fall to roll out its long series of tough-on-crime initiatives built around mandatory minimum penalties for a raft of offences—from gun crime to big-time fraud—it would be reasonable to expect a thick stack of Justice studies explaining why dictating longer prison terms is the way to go. But Justice Minister Rob Nicholson doesn’t offer up any departmental research at all to support the Tories’ major law-and-order thrust. Instead, in response to requests from Maclean’s for any analysis or data justifying the new minimum sentences, his office produced a 1,000-word memo explaining the policy. It candidly admits that research doesn’t offer persuasive evidence that mandatory minimum penalties, called MMPs for short, reduce crime…Some NDP MPs, including Libby Davies and Megan Leslie, have been more willing to challenge Nicholson. When he appeared before the House justice committee last spring, Davies repeatedly pressed him for evidence that MMPs work. He didn’t offer any. “We have the mandate of the Canadian people,” Nicholson answered, “and they have told us that this is what they want to see us move on.”

Libby speaks to Vancouver Island podcaster Andrew Davis about politics and her book, Outside In.

Sunday Nov. 24, at 1:30 p.m. LGBTQ Lives Wolfson Campus, Room 3209 (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) 300 N.E. Second Ave. Edie Windsor, an icon of the gay rights movement presents A Wild and Precious Life a lively, intimate memoir describing gay life in 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism, which opened the door for marriage equality. Judith Kasen-Windsor, Edie’s widow, will talk about Edie’s groundbreaking life. Transgender reporter Samantha Allen takes a narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in conservative states, offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America in Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. Part memoir, and part analysis of the political process, Outside In: A Political Memoir is the work of Libby Davies, the first openly lesbian MP in Canadian politics.

VICTORIA — The Harper government’s health plan is often said to divide booming western provinces and poorer eastern provinces. But, more accurately, it pits Alberta against everyone else. Alberta would be handed about $810 million more under Ottawa’s new per capita transfer model if it were in place today, calculations by The Chronicle Herald show. Every other province would lose out…The federal NDP has gone so far as to say Prime Minister Stephen Harper designed the system to pit the provinces against each other in a divide-and-conquer strategy. "This is a very calculating prime minister," said federal NDP health critic Libby Davies. "I’m sure he knew full well that just slapping down one formula was going to create divisions. I just don’t think there’s any two ways about that."