Indigenous communities on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are trying to build an alliance with U.S. Congress and the Biden administration in hopes of pressuring Ottawa into a bipartisan effort to confront toxic trans-border mining runoff.
JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS
In a city of pinstripes and partisan power brokers, Mike Allison sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s in the wrong place – and he knows it.
“I shouldn’t be here,” the denim-clad Indigenous elder suddenly says, fighting tears beneath the brim of his trademark cowboy hat.
“I should be out on the land, working with my kids, teaching them values. I should be teaching them kids how to work with the environment, not fight for it.”
The double hanging in December, 1962, would be the last in Canada, although it would take another 14 years for the death penalty to be abolished for civil, as opposed to military, crimes. In a free vote in July, 1976, Bill C-84 squeaked through the House of Commons with the narrowest of margins: 131 voted for the abolition of capital punishment and 124 against. In 1998, Canada became a fully abolitionist country when all references to capital punishment were removed from the National Defence Act.
And yet.
It was political will rather than public opinion that brought about the end of capital punishment in Canada, and the issue never seems to go away. In 2013, for example, an Angus Reid poll asked: “All things considered, would you support or oppose reinstating the death penalty for murder in Canada?” Sixty-three per cent of respondents voted for the restoration of the death penalty against 30 per cent who demurred. In a 2022 poll, Research Co. found that 51 per cent of Canadians were in favour of reinstating the death penalty, with 37 per cent opposed and 12 per cent undecided.
It is extremely unlikely that this fractious issue will be revisited in the current political climate. There is no predicting the future, though: In an age of populism, anything would be possible. However, the death penalty was a blot on the social and political life of this country. It should never be reinstated. Murder, granted, is a heinous crime, and it merits an appropriate punishment. But, to quote Albert Camus, “capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared.”