🇨🇦 Judge sends Hamilton fentanyl dealer to prison despite 'immigration consequences'

The absurd part is that this even had to be argued. A permanent resident caught with fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking wanted a softer sentence so deportation rules might be easier to dodge, as reported. Hopeton McFarlane pleaded guilty, police found 8.44 grams of fentanyl, a digital scale, and $760 cash, and yet the court still had to tiptoe around the collateral pain this might cause the trafficker. Welcome to modern Canada, where the system is trained to agonize over the future of the dealer while communities get to live with the poison.

At least this judge remembered the obvious: immigration status is not a shield against consequences. Two years in prison and three years probation is hardly draconian for fentanyl trafficking, but in a country addicted to procedural sympathy, even basic enforcement now passes as noteworthy. This is what sovereignty erosion looks like in miniature: every straightforward act of law enforcement becomes a seminar on how not to offend the offender. Canadians are expected to absorb the social wreckage while the legal class debates whether deporting a fentanyl trafficker is somehow too harsh.

🍁 Maple Chronicles