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Canada is soft on violent crime.
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More specifically, the Supreme Court of Canada is soft on violent crime.
The Canadian public would secure monsters in prison until they emerged feet-first in a body bag.
I’d have thought the people of this supposedly centre-left country would be in favour of life in prison, not the death penalty.
But last year CTV News reported, “A new poll conducted by Research Co. has found that the majority of Canadians support reinstating the death penalty for murder.
According to the survey, 54% of Canadians support relying on capital punishment on murder convictions.”
I am okay with a forced end to a monstrous, murderous life, but I can give up on it if life in prison meant life in prison. In Canada, it does not, courtesy of the Supreme Court.
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The latest story that got me going was from Brad Hunter in the Toronto Sun.
“Joseph George Sutherland was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 21 years on Friday. He will be in his 80s if he’s ever allowed to emerge from the perpetual darkness that is prison.
Over four terrifying months in 1983, the IT professional raped and murdered Susan Tice and Erin Gilmour. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder last October in the brutal sex slayings.”
No chance of parole for 21 years.
So, you’re saying there is a chance?
Why should there be? Because the Supreme Court says so.
Last year, the Court took the soft-on-monstrous-crime approach.
The Globe and Mail reported, “A Supreme Court ruling that ended the punishment of life without parole for multiple murders has led to a greater emphasis on rehabilitation in sentencing for a wide range of offences.
The court’s decision in May in the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six Muslim worshippers in Quebec City in 2017, said Canada’s commitment to rehabilitation sets it apart from many other countries.”
How does that make us better?
The victims of those crimes — Susan Tice, Erin Gilmour and six Muslim worshippers — are gone, to whatever fate awaits us after death. We don’t know for certain what that is, but we do know they are not coming back.
The victims who continue to suffer are those who loved and continue to love and mourn – painfully grieve – their loss.
Does the Court care about them?
It would seem not. It seems more concerned with “scholarly” nitpicking of the Charter of Rights, as if that makes justices wiser than those who still double over in pain, despite the years. There is no closure.
Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that life sentences without the chance of parole are both “cruel” and unconstitutional. It determined that sentencing killers to lengthy prison terms with little hope of freedom risked bringing the “administration of justice into disrepute.”
That was after the Harper government tried to follow the will of the people with the possibility of actual life in prison plus consecutive sentencing for multiple murders.
Instead, in Canada, those who receive a true life sentence are the victims’ loved ones, doomed to grieve until their own death and perhaps live to see the murderer of their loved ones go free.
The Supreme Court of Canada is soft on violent crime.
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