p2pnet OT news:- A 16-year-old in Ontario, Canada, was jailed for 30 days after writing a story in which the bad guy blows up his school to get revenge on bullies. He was charged with uttering death threats after reading the story in class.

But he got off light. The prosecutor had been looking for two years and ten months inside. This was at the end of 2001, though. Something a little more recent?

A woman in Regina, Saskatchewan, was arrested, strip-searched and spent 48 hours in a jail 400 kilometres (almost 250 miles) from her home after failing to pay parking tickets fine.

Even more recent?”

This September, an Alberta woman who ran with her son to Mexico and California rather than give her husband custody had to spend another two months in jail for violating a court order.

“She faced a maximum sentence of six months but was given credit for four months she spent in custody in the United States,” says the Edmonton Journal. “In his ruling today, Justice Peter Martin of Court of Queen’s Bench said six months seemed lenient but was the harshest sentence he could legally impose.”

Yesterday, Paul Coffin, a Montreal advertising executive who’d admitted swindling the Canadian federal government [read Canadian taxpayers] out of $1.55-million in ad contracts, was told he’d had to give a lecture tour as part of a two-and-a-half year community sentence.

The subject? Business ethics and the story of his downfall, says the Globe and Mail. He’ll also have to be home by 9 pm and temporarily give up his Canadian passport.

“Mr. Coffin, 63, stood stone-faced while hearing his sentence in Quebec Superior Court, then swept past reporters without comment,” says the story.

“In granting a community sentence, Mr. Justice Jean-Guy Boilard accepted the recommendation of Mr. Coffin’s lawyers, who raised his clean record and expressions of remorse as mitigating factors. Mr. Coffin pleaded guilty in May to 15 counts of fraud related to sponsorship contracts.

“He made almost $5-million from federal government contracts received from 1996 and 2003, admitting to billing for meetings that never took place and for work that was never done.”

Coffin “appeared genuinely remorseful and deeply ashamed for what he had done,” Judge Boilard said, according to the story.

Or if you read the Associated Press, he “appeared to sigh in relief as the sentence was imposed”.

AP also points out that Coffin’s crime was part of a huge, on-going sponsorship scandal that saw advertising firms friendly to Liberal prime minister Paul Martin’s government get $100 million for doing absolutely nothing.

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

See:-
Edmonton Journal - Woman jailed in custody case, September 15, 2005
Globe and Mail - Coffin avoids prison for ad fraud, September 20, 2005
Associated Press - Canada Gov’t Scandal Convict Avoids Prison, September 19, 2005
$100 million - Canada’s Paul Martin wins Juno award!, April 4, 2004

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