Signalling Exactly What?

What a turn-about. Who might have expected that the Government of Canada would suddenly turn its back on its long-established custom - as a country that does not practise the use of the death penalty - of pleading for clemency for the life of a Canadian on death row elsewhere.

Nor would Canada permit the extradition of a convicted capital-offence felon without assurances that once taken into custody in the country which had sought extradition, that person would be exempted from the death penalty. And only then would extradition be proceeded with, on assurances that Canada's denial of the humaneness of exacting the penalty of death be respected.

It's really all about core values as a society; universal respect for human life. We long ago pledged ourselves to rejecting the taking of a human life as an act of vengeance by the state on behalf of the population. Regardless of how heinous the crime represented. Regardless of how deserving some psychotic felons might be thought of earning that final punishment. Canadians have always been aware that the occasion of false arrests, wrong assumptions and incorrect court proceedings have resulted in wrongful judgements.

We have seen ourselves collectively as being sufficiently humanitarian in representing an enlightened society to reject capital punishment. There are other sentences which careful judgement befitting the nature of a crime are handed down toward those convicted of serious offences against society that we find more acceptable. Even if, from time to time, we chafe at the reality of sentences that appear insufficient to match the crimes committed.

That the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper would now, unexpectedly, with no prior hint of an alteration in governmental policy, inform the public that this country will no longer contest a judgement reached through due process of law in another nation representing the democratic ideal comes as an unpleasant shock. In this particular instance, a Canadian on death row in Montana in whose interests our Foreign Affairs diplomats have already intervened previously.

In defense of this step, Mr. Harper contends that this move is synchronous with the government's new emphasis on stronger initiatives to battle violent crime in this country. At a self-serving stretch, it is. While in this present case, of a Canadian having murdered two residents of Montana in 1982, the malefactor may indeed have received a fair trial. There are no guarantees that in other instances in the future this may not be the case.

Which in any event begs the issue, since Canada is not being true to her own convictions in eschewing the death penalty if we are now to turn ourselves around and claim that we can be complicit in the delivery of the death penalty elsewhere, by not protesting, by not attempting to protect our citizens' rights as Canadians, no matter where they are held.