The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

6- The Oakville Beaver, Friday October 26, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com OPINION & LETTERS The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: The Oakville Beaver is a division of IAN OLIVER Group Publisher Media Group Ltd. NEIL OLIVER Publisher JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA CALHOUN Circ. Manager Is there justice for all? What is a human life worth? A few recent court cases in Halton suggest that our country's justice system routinely takes a fairly dispassionate view of the loss of life. Two weeks ago, the media reported on the outcome of a case involving a woman found responsible for the March 2005 death of a baby girl -- born two months premature as a result of a multi-car crash. The at-fault driver was convicted last August of two counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm and one of dangerous driving causing death. She received 21 months house arrest and a five-year suspension of her driver's licence. Conditions of the house arrest permit her to leave home for work and to conduct weekend errands, including grocery shopping. On one side of the scale we have a woman who will regain her freedom by the summer of 2009 and will be eligible to drive again by 2012. On the other, a baby is dead and its parents' lives and those of their families are changed forever. One month ago, our courts determined the life of an off-duty OPP officer was equivalent to two years probation, 100 hours of community service and a oneyear driver's licence suspension. The victim, an avid cyclist, was struck and killed by a Grimsby trucker who -- based on his grocery list of prior traffic convictions -- should have faced a lifetime driving ban a long time ago. The repeat traffic offender had amassed more than $14,000 in unpaid fines while being previously convicted five times for driving with a suspended licence and twice for driving without insurance. However, his first-time careless driving conviction in connection with the cyclist's death precluded a jail sentence. Hammurabi, the king of Babylon between 1792-1750 BC, devised an organized code of justice largely based upon the precept of "an eye for an eye." During his rule, most serious crimes were punishable by death. As our civilization evolved, we came to realize Hammurabi's version of law was too simplistic, too barbaric and failed to take into account mitigating factors that vary from case to case. To his credit, Hammurabi's code placed a greater premium on victims' lives than our justice system does today. While laws exist to set out an acceptable code of conduct for society and to punish those who cross the line, Canada's court system is leaving behind a growing list of dissatisfied citizens, many of whom would dispute the existence of justice for all. The Oakville Beaver welcomes letters from its readers. Letters will be edited for clarity, length, legal considerations and grammar. In order to be published all letters must contain the name, address and phone number of the author. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Oakville Beaver, 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, ON, L6K 3S4, or via e-mail to editor@oakvillebeaver.com. The Beaver reserves the right to refuse to publish a letter. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR According to www.oakville.ca: "The Town of Oakville is a beautiful lakeside city with a strong heritage, preserved and celebrated by residents and visitors alike." This is why we decided to move from Toronto to a nice suburb in North Oakville with our young daughter in the spring of this year. We quickly found the town of Oakville certainly has much to offer: great neighbourhoods, well serviced amenities, walking trails, children's Vandalism leaves bad impression on new residents parks...and a serious outbreak of vandalism. Within one week of moving into our house, our car was broken into while sitting in our driveway. In the next three months more cars on our street were broken into (including ours a second time), two neighbours' homes were vandalized (rocks thrown through bay windows), personal belongings from our neighbours garage were stolen and three doors down from us, someone had their truck stolen while they slept at night! Bad? Yes. But probably the most disheartening occurrence so far was taking our daughter to the newly installed equipment at the local children's park this morning and seeing graffiti written all over the park signs, just weeks after it was built. Makes us second guess our decision to move here. PETE AND NATALIE KAULBACH Do we really need this? Re: Making Oakville the most livable town in Canada? This statement can mean different things to different residents, so it was interesting to get councillor's thoughts on Oakville's strengths and weaknesses. The thoughts, pro and con, regurgitate what most residents already know and there is little or no original thinking. Indeed, the claim of "historic" shows the shallowness of this program to make Oakville the most livable town in Canada: the settlement that was Oakville c.1830 (Officially incorporated 1857) cannot be claimed for the Oakville we see today that did not exist until 1962. We have never needed any accolades in the past and this claim has overtones of the infantile pastime of one upmanship. To my mind, we have a majority of councillors, and a Mayor, who lack base sound thinking and gravitas, caught in a cascade by listening to the questionable siren call of a few. Surely taxpayers' money, and councillors' time, can be better spent rather than building a bigger trumpet to sing the praises of Oakville, not only to residents, but to other municipalities within Canada. The statement has been proudly publicized, "Making Oakville the most livable town in Canada", do we really need this? IVOR DAVIES The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council.The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206,Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone 416-340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Pud BY STEVE NEASE snease@haltonsearch.com