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Tories Won't Intervene to Protect Canadians from Foreign Death Penalty

allabootmatt said:
Four reasons:

One. There is an overwhelming international consensus that the death penalty is barbaric and has no place in civilised societies. Canada is party to that consensus, or its citizens are anyway, and our actions relating to our nationals abroad should reflect that. Defending our values is not a waste of taxpayer money.
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This is an overused phrase "consensus" (usually meant to mean that all that agree with you -- believe the same). I don't oppose the death penalty because it is barbaric -- I oppose it because of the chance of a mistake (small as it might be), and that it costs more than life in prision (usually running close to 10 million dollars in automatic appeals etc.). If a pedophile, or murderer (multiple) gets executed - I have no problem with it... morally.

allabootmatt said:
Three. Canadian law takes a very dim view of the death penalty abroad, for example by forbidding extradition on capital charges, even to the US.
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Canadian law does not take any view on foreign executions -- and even if it did - they really doesn't have any jurisdiction. The only ruling that I remember is that we cannot deport someone to get executed, but I believe we are able to deport someone to face trial -- even with the potential of a death sentence if found guilty (I actually thought it was the opposite - but I seem to remember extraditions going ahead regardless - so I could be wrong on this one). Either way, the COURT made rulings on CANADIAN law in CANADIAN jurisdiction RE: Extradition law

allabootmatt said:
Four. How do we define "democratic country?" There's a wide range, and by making that judgment as we will inevitably have to we could set off any number of international incidents. How about Singapore? Will we oppose the death penalty there on a Canadian, but not in the US? Much easier to just oppose it, period.
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Singapore may be a well run country - but it is not democratic - it is only a facade at most. If you don't want to be subject to the death penalty - don't commit a crime in those jurisdictions. No Canadian has to travel outside of Canada. When I travel, I am a GUEST of those countries and SUBJECT to their law. It is really arrogant to believe that Canadian law takes precedence.
 
cacruden said:
Hmmm, has the left not been pushing separation of church and state .... The government is not a Christian organization :eek:
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no, but it's an organization predominantly operated by people with christian values who like to make those values public whenever it's good for votes. i'm simply pointing out how full of shit some people are. tho the government doesn't "officially" endorse a religion, you can't say it is separated from it. just look at our religious school funding and our national anthem. it's not god that keeps this land glorious and free, it's people, people who make the ultimate sacrifice.
 
rpgr said:
The fact remains that Canada does not support the death penalty though. Even if it is just to put up a face, Canada should continue to object to the use of the death penalty. I mean we don't deport people who are under the death penalty in other countries even if it is a fair trial. We've refused to deport US prisoners in the past.
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True, but the person in question (and the issue at hand) has nothing to do with extradition. The Canadian facing the death penalty was apprehended in the United States after killing two people there.

I'm certainly no fan of the death penalty, but I find it seriously stupid when people go to other countries, commit crimes such as murder and then plea ignorance of the local laws. I also find it a little difficult to take when convicted murders then plea for protection from those laws.
 
Hydrogen said:
True, but the person in question (and the issue at hand) has nothing to do with extradition. The Canadian facing the death penalty was apprehended in the United States after killing two people there.

I'm certainly no fan of the death penalty, but I find it seriously stupid when people go to other countries, commit crimes such as murder and then plea ignorance of the local laws. I also find it a little difficult to take when convicted murders then plea for protection from those laws.
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I can't argue with that logic. Still doesn't change my mind though to use these cases as a cardboard box and a microphone to denounce the death penalty though. It's more politking than anything else. Yeah, likelyhood of changing anything is close to 0, still, Canada needs to assert Canadian values when it can and should.

I'm not saying anything will change, it's like small time protesting. Your just a guy shouting hoping someone will listen. You hope sooner or later that your opinion will catch on, just probably not in the span of a single lifetime.
 
allabootmatt said:
Ah....and I'm reminded why I love the Tories (in present/Reform/Alliance incarnation): just when you think they have their act together some crazy--Stockwell in this case--starts running off his mouth about some right-wing issue without thinking what he's saying, and they quickly have a PR disaster on their hands. This is the sort of thing that swing voters will be repulsed by.
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Feds won't sponsor UN anti-death-penalty resolution
Updated Tue. Nov. 6 2007 5:38 PM ET

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- The Conservative government will not co-sponsor a United Nations resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty, breaking with a nearly decade-old tradition.

An official with the Foreign Affairs Department says Canada will vote in favour of the resolution when it comes to the floor of the UN General Assembly in December, but will not sponsor it.

"There are a sufficient number of co-sponsors already, and we will focus our efforts on co-sponsoring other resolutions within the UN system which are more in need of our support,'' said Catherine Gagnaire.

Seventy-four other countries have put their names forward as sponsors, including the United Kingdom, Australia and France.

Last week, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day surprised the House of Commons by announcing that Canada will not oppose the execution of a Canadian citizen on death row in Montana for two murders. Day said the new policy will apply to "murderers'' such as Ronald Allen Smith who have had a fair trial in a democratic country.

The government has not specified which countries it considers democracies.

The UN Human Rights Commission voted every year from 1998 to 2005 on a similar resolution and Canada was a co-sponsor each time, according to Amnesty International.

"Co-sponsorship is the stage at which Canada has the opportunity to demonstrate that its firm commitment to abolition has not changed,'' Amnesty International secretary general Alex Neve wrote Tuesday to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"I hope and expect Canada will demonstrate that leadership.''

Canada's former ambassador to the United Nations, Paul Heinbecker, said co-sponsorship doesn't involve much effort -- a simple phone call or the raising of a hand during a meeting.

He said in the absence of a radical change in the wording of such a mainstream resolution, the decision not to co-sponsor signifies a departure for the Canadian government.

"You can only take these as signs of how the government wants to be seen,'' Heinbecker said.

The United States and Japan are among the few democracies that have traditionally voted against anti-death penalty resolutions at the UN.

Two proposed moratoriums have reached the floor of the General Assembly, in 1994 and 1999 -- the former defeated by eight votes and the latter withdrawn at the last minute.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters last Friday that his government had no intention of reopening the debate on capital punishment, although opposition critics have accused his party of revealing its true desires through the policy change.
 
From a moral standpoint, yes, capital puishment is very cruel. But with the overpopulation issues of the world and increasing pressures on food, freshwater, and energy resources, it is probably necessary from an economic and environmental standpoint.
 
Meanwhile, the US is slowly, finally, heading in the right direction on this issue - while there are still 38 death penalty states (the exceptions being AK, HI, IA, MA, ME, MI, MN, ND, RI, VT, WI, WV and DC and territories), it's now effectively gone in NY and IL, and a few states, such as New Hampshire, it's on the books, but not used. Death row inmates in California are more likely to die in prison of natural causes these days.

And with the current suspension of the penalty while the lethal injection procedure is under review, it's the beginning of the end in US. Some hard-core states like Texas, Virginia and the Deep South might go around it, but that's a core group of 10 backwards states. Apart from the US and Japan, it's only a rump of mostly regressive third-world countries that practice it for regular crimes (ie not wartime/treason), most of whom are known as human rights abusers. Does Harper really want to take us in that direction?
 
Wow....74 sponsors and not us. I wonder what sort of company we're keeping on the not-sponsors list?

When even the Australian government, which will do practically anything to cozy up to the US, is on the other side of something, you know it's pretty stark.
 
cacruden said:
Singapore may be a well run country - but it is not democratic - it is only a facade at most. If you don't want to be subject to the death penalty - don't commit a crime in those jurisdictions. No Canadian has to travel outside of Canada. When I travel, I am a GUEST of those countries and SUBJECT to their law. It is really arrogant to believe that Canadian law takes precedence.
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That's not my point, though I agree with some of your sentiments. What Ottawa said was that it will not oppose the death penalty when applied in "democratic" countries. We all know that Singapore's not democratic, by any standard, but then again a Canadian PM isn't about to tell Singapore that in an official capacity. That's the sort of thing that could cause a huge rift in relations. But if we have certain countries in which we oppose executions and others where we don't one day a PM will be in the position of causing such incidents.
 
allabootmatt said:
Four reasons:

One. There is an overwhelming international consensus that the death penalty is barbaric and has no place in civilised societies. Canada is party to that consensus, or its citizens are anyway, and our actions relating to our nationals abroad should reflect that. Defending our values is not a waste of taxpayer money.

Two. I don't know about Montana specifically, but in many, many death-penalty states there are enormous problems with fair trials for capital cases. Many of them do not pass even basic international judicial standards, particularly when public defenders are involved. The Faulder case for example (last Canadian to be executed) contained significant irregularities including blatant violation of the defendant's consular rights as a Canadian citizen. It's far from accurate to assume that just because someone is tried in the US they are getting anything like a fair trial.

Three. Canadian law takes a very dim view of the death penalty abroad, for example by forbidding extradition on capital charges, even to the US.

Four. How do we define "democratic country?" There's a wide range, and by making that judgment as we will inevitably have to we could set off any number of international incidents. How about Singapore? Will we oppose the death penalty there on a Canadian, but not in the US? Much easier to just oppose it, period.
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Excuse me for repeating a post, but this is as forceful and clear a response as you are going to see in this forum in defence of a particular point of view, and I applaud it.

Illinois' discredited Republican governor, George Ryan, opposed the death penalty before being voted out of office. And despite all that he had done badly, poll after poll demonstrated that he had hit a nerve: that there were more people against the death penalty than anyone could have possibly imagined, across party lines and throughout socio-economic divisions. It wasn't enough to save Ryan who is now on his way to jail, but he might have considered it when he tried to find something to latch on to that would stir people to reconsider him.

Illinois has had a penchant for over-zealous prosecutorial actions on homicide, only to discover later that the person targeted was in fact innocent of the charge after being found guilty.

At the other end of the spectrum is Texas, which under former Governor George W. Bush, increased executions to a level that went off the chart. I choose two Republican governors because it is across party lines there and one can see that here if you look behind the differences.

I am not sure how it all shakes out, but capital punishment is, as allabootmatt states, a barbaric response by the state, and if we believe so, it does not stop at our borders. One would also be foolish if it is not also recognised that pro-capital-punishment will be there as night responds to day.
 
allabootmatt said:
That's not my point, though I agree with some of your sentiments. What Ottawa said was that it will not oppose the death penalty when applied in "democratic" countries. We all know that Singapore's not democratic, by any standard, but then again a Canadian PM isn't about to tell Singapore that in an official capacity. That's the sort of thing that could cause a huge rift in relations. But if we have certain countries in which we oppose executions and others where we don't one day a PM will be in the position of causing such incidents.
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Don't make the criteria "Democratic countries" -- create a policy that says when and when not to oppose it based on a case by case basis. The criteria should be if the trial was reasonably fair - and that will take a case by case review.
 
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