Mr. Speaker, there is an old proverb that most of us were taught as children. It states, “actions speak louder than words”.
The government's actions in regard to the issue of the death penalty speak much louder than its words. It says one thing on the issue of the death penalty but acts completely differently.
With respect to a Canadian citizen, Mr. Ronald Smith, who is on death row in Montana, the government breaks with long-standing traditions and policies and declares that it will not seek clemency for this man.
I have with me a letter that was sent to the governor, Brian Schweitzer, from the leader of the official opposition expressing the conviction of millions of Canadians who want to see Mr. Smith's sentence commuted.
The government also abandoned a long-standing policy by having Canada withdraw sponsorship of a United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty worldwide.
From 1998 to 2005, Canada co-sponsored the resolution each year, along with countries like Britain, France, Australia and the European Union nations, among others. One of those nations, Portugal, actually abolished the death penalty on July 1, 1867, the date on which our country was founded.
Those who opposed the resolution, and in fact intensely criticized the co-sponsors, were countries like China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and the United States which, coincidentally, account for 90% of the world's executions. In Iran, for example, we know that Iranians are regularly executed for clearly political reasons and even due to their sexual orientation. Human rights in many countries like Iran are either unheard of or intolerably curtailed.
The death penalty is inhumane and incompatible with basic human rights and errors cannot be corrected. The United Nations resolution itself states, “...any miscarriage or failure of justice in [its] implementation is irreversible and irreparable”.
The Canadian government's decision spurred Canada's former Supreme Court justice and the current United Nations Human Rights commissioner, Louise Arbour, to state:
The High Commissioner believes that not seeking clemency is very troubling, and so is the fact that Canada is not among the co-sponsors of the draft resolution of the UN General Assembly on a global moratorium on capital punishment.
The government is, by its actions, indirectly accepting the death penalty as a means of punishment. I remind hon. members of the words of former prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, who stated:
Are we, as a society, so lacking in respect for ourselves, so lacking in hope for human betterment, so socially bankrupt that we are ready to accept state vengeance as our penal philosophy?
To borrow words from our former prime minister, I would maintain that we should not “accept” capital punishment anywhere in the world.
When the history of our age is written, let us be remembered as people who built a world, not upon cruel relics of the past but rather hopeful pillars of the future.
The words of Nelson Mandela are succinct in summarizing this issue when he stated, “The death sentence is a barbaric act”.
Why is the government taking Canada backwards with regard to this barbaric act?