Canada's Supreme Court Bringing the Administration of Justice Into Disrepute

"The impugned provision, taken to its extreme, authorizes a court to order an offender to serve an ineligibility period that exceeds the life expectancy of any human being, a sentence so absurd that it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute."

"[Depriving offenders in advance of any possibility of reintegration into society, the provision] shakes the very foundations of Canadian criminal law."

Chief Justice Richard Wagner, Supreme Court of Canada

"I'll tell you what cruel and unusual punishment is."

"It's an innocent person being murdered. It's an innocent person being maimed or an innocent person having their life ripped apart."

"That is cruel and unusual punishment."

Cathy Riddell, one of 25 victims of an INCEL attack

The Supreme Court of Canada, Justin Tang, Associated Press

 

A Criminal Code provision that ruled mass murderers might have to wait 50 years or longer before they might apply for parole, has been struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada which unanimously called the provision degrading and incompatible with human dignity. This is a court that has for decades been leaning more heavily toward the rights of the accused and by extension overlooking victims' calling out for justice from great harm done them by psychopaths whose regard for the dignity and human rights of their victims have been ruthlessly absent.

The previous Conservative government of the administration of Prime Minister Stephen Harper had enacted that legislation in an effort to honour the rights of victims and to ensure that the murderous predators within society faced justice for their deadly acts of mass murder. The current Liberal government of 'progressive' Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wasted no time in overturning much of the Criminal Justice legislation of his predecessor. Now the Supreme Court stacked with progressives has followed suit.

 

Six men died in the attack on the Quebec Mosque. They are, clockwise from top left, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Azzeddine Soufiane, Abdelkrim Hassane, Ibrahima Barry, Aboubaker Thabti and Khaled Belkacemi. (CBC)

 

The case in question that the Supreme Court focused their decision on was that of Alexandre Bissonnette, who had fatally shot six people to death at a Quebec City mosque in 2017. This mass murderer will now be allowed to seek parole after having served 25 years of incarceration. The 2011 provision that allowed a judge in cases of multiple murders to impose a life sentence and parole ineligibility periods of 25 years to be served concurrently for each murder was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

According to the justices the provision serves to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee against cruel and unusual treatment, for as they determined, denial of a realistic possibility of being granted parole before they die offends the Charter.  Bissonette was 27 years old at the time he pleaded guilty to six charges of first-degree murder in the mosque assault that occurred following evening prayers. A previous judge had found the parole ineligibility provision unconstitutional but failed to declare it invalid, ruling that Bissonnette must wait 40 years before applying for parole.

A subsequent ruling by Quebec's Court of Appeal held the provision invalid on constitutional grounds, stating the judge had erred in the ineligibility period of 40 years. The court, it said, must revert to the law in standing prior to 2011; parole ineligibility periods to be served concurrently, resulting in a total wait period of 25 years in the case of Bissonnette's crime of mass murder.

Henceforth this ruling requires that every prisoner must be given a realistic potential of applying for parole earlier than the expiration of an ineligibility period of 40 years. The Criminal Code provision has been declared invalid immediately, retroactive to 2011 when it was enacted. Any offender who was ordered through the unconstitutional provision to serve a parole ineligibility period of 50 years or greater for multiple murders must be able to apply to the courts for a remedy.

 

Mounties pay tribute to the memorial sculptures in Moncton in honour of the three RCMP officers killed in 2014. (Matthew Bingley/CBC)

 

Mass murderers such as Justin Bourque, sentenced to 75 years in prison with no chance of parole in the killing of three RCMP officers, and the wounding of two others in Moncton, New Brunswick in 2014 will be able now to take advantage of a new 'humanitarian' prospective, giving full due to their human rights and dignity of person guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Rather than relinquishing those rights on the basis of having deprived others of the dignity of life.

Then there is as well the case of Alek Minassian who was found guilty of ten counts of first-degree murder, three years after he crashed into people with a van in a busy area of Toronto on a sunny day that brought people out to a popular promenade in large numbers. Minassian was a member of the disaffected male group calling themselves involuntarily celibates, complaining that women overlook them for other males more characteristic of male traits attractive to women.

In all these cases and more, psychotic psychopaths have decided to take revenge on others whom they consider to be guilty of offences affecting their quality of life and aspirations. In the case of the mosque killings it was religious bigotry, in the case of the killing of the RCMP officers, it was hatred of policing agencies, and in the instance of the INCEL murders it was the sense of victimhood as a male unattractive to the opposite sex. All chose to murder as an expression of their hate, depriving others of life.

Yet the Supreme Court of Canada justices sitting in the high court commiserate with the plight of the murderers, held to account for their atrocities in committing mass murder, while the administration of justice, placing responsibility on the shoulders of those whose criminal acts are beyond the pale of civil society is undermined and the victims of lethal assaults and their families and greater society at large see justice fail in its fundamental purpose; to protect society from the vicious predators in their midst.

A man leaves a note at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the van attack in Toronto in April 2018. Photograph: Lars Hagberg/AFP/Getty Images