'Lack of Insight' - Whose?

Justice Fletcher Dawson excoriated Steven Chand, one of the Toronto 18 terrorists for his 'lack of insight' into his own character, his free will exercised to make the choice to join a group of Islamist jihadis, to help them to the best of his considerable delusion-heavy abilities to achieve their goal of wreaking carnage on the Canadian scene.

The plans were ambitious enough, planning to bomb targets in downtown Toronto, at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, to launch an attack on Parliament, with special plans for the Prime Minister. They'd show those Canadian kuffirs that you don't mess with fanatical Muslims, and that there is no reason for Canadian troops to be engaged in Afghanistan.

"Mr. Chand was ideologically committed to the cause... He was serious", as an integral member of the terror cell's "inner circle", commented the Judge. His job manifold; to assess recruits at their training camp, to raise funds, to train, to find a safe house, to acquire the assault rifles they would need to perfect and perform their plans for chastising Canada.

"I strongly feel I've been misunderstood in many ways, but there's only so much I can do and say to correct other peoples' view of me", this predicament-laden young recruit to violent jihad explained petulantly. "I have no intentions ... to participate in anything that has even a hint of terrorism", he pledged.

He recanted the "corrupt and misguided mentality" of his former associates. Which he found to his liking only four years earlier when they all engaged frenetically in plans to acquit themselves as befits martyrs to their common cause of inflicting as much damage as possible within the country that gave them refuge and educated them and offered them a future.

Presenting himself as innocent of plans to disrupt society, to help his colleagues in their terror-inspired aspirations, he continued to deny he had done anything 'wrong'. He was, quite simply, the wrong person in the wrong situation at the wrong time. Holding no brief for what his friends were planning, just being a companionable sort of guy.

Judge Dawson spoke despairingly of Chand's "shocking lack of insight" in refusing to own his responsibility in the plans hatched by the group of 18 and to which they were all dedicated. "Mr. Chand presents as an enigma .. He [appears to lack] both remorse and insight", the judge concluded.

And then he handed down his sentencing decision, ostensibly to match the seriousness of the charges brought against this man. It's difficult to determine which is more shocking, the sentence that both the Crown and defence advocated for, or the sentence that the judge finally decided upon.

The sentence deemed by Judge Dawson to be 'adequate' in response to the two separate offences of terrorism for which Steven Chand was found guilty, was ten years. The eight years recommended he dismissed out of hand as "inadequate". So for counselling the commission of fraud for the benefit of committing terrorist acts, and participating in the group's actions, the judge deemed ten years to be an adequate reflection of society's risks and benefits.

And under Canada's system of justice, taking into account time already served while awaiting trial and sentencing, and enhanced credit, he is likely to be freed within seven months. The maximum term for one of his convicted offences was stated to be life imprisonment. Which seems adequate to ensure that the country is saved from further offences on his part.

Yet our justice system is simply incapable, on the evidence of this and other judgements handed down to terrorist suspects, tried and as-yet-untried, of taking these offences seriously. It is as though Canadians cannot get their heads around the reality of the volatile, vicious determination of demented Islamists to mount murderous assaults on Canadian soil.

Justices in Canada appear unwilling to bring well-earned punitive and meaningful sentences to the fore even while they deplore the dreadful plans apprehended, and the atrocious attitudes of those whom they sentence. The punishment meted out in no way resembles what the public and what their government deems adequate.

The punishment is most definitely not commensurate with the severity of the crime. Canada's justices at every level display a shocking and deplorable "lack of insight".