Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. The answer is yes, without a doubt.
Mr. Coffin was executed on February 10, 1956. Today is February 5, and Saturday, February 10, will mark 51 years since he was hanged. When a judicial error is made—and the expression does not begin to describe the seriousness of the consequences—it is always possible to correct that error when the person was not killed. In this case, he was killed; he was hanged. A week later, someone else confessed to murdering the three American hunters, but it was too late. Mr. Coffin was already dead.
The events of 1956 weighed heavily in the balance. Fortunately, there were noises in the press at the time, but unfortunately, the political context was not very receptive. It is important to remember who was in power in Quebec at the time; that, too, was part of the history of this case. Wilbert Coffin's hanging weighed heavily in the balance. The government decided that it no longer wanted to find itself in situations where it wondered whether an error had been made and, more importantly, whether it could be corrected.