British Columbia. Oppal "Take back your criminals"

Alberta wants to toughen laws on repeat criminals, online gambling and child pornography, but it's not so keen on a proposal from British Columbia to get provinces to take back fugitives who flee to other jurisdictions.

B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal, whose province is experiencing a rash of gang shootings, is hoping a three-day meeting of federal and provincial justice ministers will lead to new restrictions on criminals who escape to his province and commit crimes.

He wants tougher laws to prevent them from fleeing to his province and is pushing his fellow ministers to do more to bring their own criminals back home to face charges.

Alberta, though, says it's not always feasible to repatriate its own offenders.

"Like any jurisdiction, our resources in Alberta are finite," said David Dear, a spokesman for Alberta Justice.

"It becomes a matter of where we say, 'Do we want to spend the resources to bring the accused back?' " Dear added.

Sources, however, say Alberta's economic boom means its jails are holding a large number of other provinces' prisoners. "Definitely, Alberta has a lot of people from outside the province," said a source within the prison system. "We have a lot of Easterners in our facilities."

Sources also say the current system provides incentives for fugitives to deal with all their charges in the province they fled to since the courts typically will hash out one sentence for all their offences instead of punishing them separately on each one. As a result, accused criminals often won't get sent back to where they're from unless their home province requests a transfer.

Steven Penney, a University of Alberta law professor, said the issue comes down to money. "There may be a resource issue where it may be financially difficult to transport their people. Then the question becomes who is going to pay for that," he said.

Alberta, meanwhile, has other priorities at the justice ministers' meeting in Winnipeg this week.

They include proposals to put new laws on online gambling in the Criminal Code, which Dear said hasn't been updated in order to reflect the reality of the Internet.

The government also wants laws to force Internet service providers to report child-porn activity to authorities, something Dear said other counties such as the United States and South Africa have already adopted.

As well, Alberta will be pushing for tougher laws on repeat offenders. Citing data showing that a small number of offenders are responsible for an "inordinate number of crimes," Dear said the province wants to see a "national effort" to combat the problem.

But Brian Hurley, the president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers' Association, said provinces like Alberta should stop focusing on changes to the Criminal Code, something that falls under federal jurisdiction.

If governments want to stop kids from joining gangs, they should improve social programs, he said.

"You've got to give them an alternative, and this province does anything but create an alternative."