Debates of Jan. 31st, 2008

Death Penalty

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, under the international transfer, that would already happen. Let us be very serious about the issue.

I am not talking about bringing people back to Canada. I am talking about doing what we have done for years, which is to have the death sentence changed to life imprisonment. That is the difference. This is what we are talking about here. We are not talking about suddenly being sorry for any of these individuals. We are talking about not the death sentences, but having them spend the rest of their lives in jail.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to ask a question of my colleague whose motion is being debated in this House.

I would like to ask why did you table this motion for debate in the House?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine has a great deal of experience in this house and I know that she realizes that she should refer to other members in the third person and not the second person.

The hon. member for York West.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the issue is important. We often start out in life with one particular position on something and then we watch some of the miscarriages of justice such as what happened with David Marshall and Guy Paul Morin.

We take huge pride in our criminal system and we think it is perfect, but the reality is that it is not. Mistakes do happen. At least someone who has spent x amount of years in jail is able to get another trial and the original verdict may be over-turned.

Innocent people have been put to death and that cannot be reversed. There is no amount of money, nothing can be done, once someone's life has been taken, and I question that. The death penalty is the last thing we should be doing.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the member said that she would support life imprisonment for murder. I wonder whether she would enlighten the House on her definition of life imprisonment.

Florida, for example, has what is called a toe-tag sentence. In other words, if individuals commit a serious, multiple murder crime, they will be in prison until they go out on a slab with a tag on their toe identifying their body. It is life until natural death in prison.

In Canada right now it is 25 years nominally. In some cases prisoners can apply for early parole at 15 years. It is still a life sentence but only 25 years are actually served in jail.

I wonder what level of life imprisonment she would support for people who commit heinous crimes.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, life imprisonment should be life imprisonment, period.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad I have the ability to follow up because I was not sure of the answer that I received to my previous question to the hon. member. I am going to make it as simple as possible.

If clemency was contingent on a murderer being brought back to Canada, would you still support us bringing back convicted murderers if they are not facing the death penalty in whatever jurisdiction they are being kept if that is the only contingency that is available?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Burlington is new to this House, but he probably heard me mention to another member earlier that we address other members in the third person, not in the second person, so it is good for both sides of the House.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, under the international transfer, any individual can ask to be returned to Canada.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today and participate in this debate. Unfortunately, the motion before this House today is really a total waste of this House's time and nothing more than what I would say a cheap political trick and a feeble attempt by the Liberal opposition to draw debate where there is no debate.

We therefore oppose this motion today. The motion calls on the government to reaffirm that there is a not a death penalty in Canada. We have said before and we will say again, there is no death penalty in Canada. The Minister of Justice and other members of this government have clearly said that this government is not changing the law in our country with respect to the death penalty.

Since December 10, 1962 no one has been executed in Canada. That is over 45 years. On July 14, 1976 the death penalty was removed from the Criminal Code. The death penalty was then removed from the National Defence Act on December 10, 1998. Since that day there has been no death penalty in Canada in law as well as in fact.

In 1987 a free vote regarding the reinstatement of the death penalty was held in the House of Commons. The result of the vote sent a very strong signal that Canadians were in favour of maintaining the abolition of the death penalty. As the Prime Minister has confirmed, this government is not going to reopen this debate in Canada.

The second part of the motion asks the government to reaffirm its policy to seek clemency on humanitarian grounds for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries. As we have said repeatedly, in cases where Canadians face the death penalty abroad the Government of Canada will continue to consider whether to seek clemency on a case-by-case basis based on what is in the best interest of Canada.

According to today's headlines, a majority of Canadians support our case-by-case approach and as we found out last fall, a majority of Canadians support our overall approach to justice, an approach that focuses on tackling violent crime and tackling crime in our communities.

It is an approach that puts victims first rather than the approach of the Liberals in the past, and what frankly continues to be their approach, of putting the rights of criminals ahead of the rights of law-abiding citizens.

The protection of Canadians is a priority for this government. It is the priority of this government and if securing clemency is contingent on a murderer or a multiple murderer being repatriated to this country and let free to roam our streets, this is not a risk that our government is willing to take. Bringing back convicted killers sends the wrong message.

The third part of the motion before this House today calls on the government to continue its leadership role in promoting the abolition of the death penalty internationally. This government has been and will continue to be a leader in speaking up for a principled stand on human rights and the rule of law in all international forums.

For those states that legally retain the death penalty, the government will continue to advocate for full respect for international law including international legal obligations. I might add that it is standing up for humanitarian issues that is the reason why we have men and women from Canada across this world today who are fighting for those very freedoms and those human rights.

Many states do retain the death penalty. International law imposes restrictions on the use of the death penalty and imposes strict safeguards on its imposition. Canada's interventions with other states, whether made at a bilateral level or in a multilateral arena, are made in the context of supporting human rights within the framework of international law.

There has been no death penalty in Canada for 45 years. Our government has indicated that there is no intention to change that. We have also indicated that the decision as to whether or not we will seek clemency will be assessed on a case-by-case basis based on what is in the best interest of Canada.

I also find it very interesting. We are having this debate tonight on this issue and yet in the Senate sits stalled the tackling violent crime act. We have the leader of the official opposition who has absolutely refused to force Liberal senators in the Senate to pass the tackling violent crime act.

The tackling violent crime act would protect Canadians right here in Canada, would make our communities safer, would make our children safer, would take a tough approach on gun crimes, and would tackle the very serious issue of impaired driving.

Just today I got off the phone with a constituent who was concerned with the exploitation of young children by violent sexual offenders. We have in our legislation measures to protect young people, all of these stalled in the Liberal dominated Senate.

We have been calling on the leader of the official opposition for weeks to have the Liberal senators pass Bill C-2. This is legislation that provinces are calling for, parents are calling for and law-abiding citizens are calling for.

The only people I can imagine who would be against Bill C-2 would be criminals, and apparently the Liberal Party is also against passage of Bill C-2.

Everyone else I have talked to is in favour of getting tougher on crime. They are in favour of protecting children. They are in favour of making our streets and communities safer. They are in favour of tackling impaired driving. They are in favour of having an age of protection of 16 years rather than 14 years so that adult sexual predators cannot prey on Canadian young people. They are in favour of having laws that say if people commit a violent crime with a firearm, then they will do serious time for that crime.

That is what Canadians want. That is what our party wants. That is what this government wants. That is what we have introduced in the tackling violent crime act, and it is time for the Liberals to get the message.

If the Liberals want to stand with the criminal lobby that would prefer that we not pass this kind of legislation, they can continue to do so. We will stand on this side with law-abiding Canadians. We will continue to stand up for their rights. We will continue to make our streets and communities safer for all Canadians.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure today to take part in the debate on motion M-411 introduced by the member for York West.

Briefly, motion M-411 states that:

—the government should reaffirm that: (a) there is no death penalty in Canada; (b) it is the policy of the government to seek clemency, on humanitarian grounds, for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries; and (c) Canada will continue its leadership role in promoting the abolition of the death penalty internationally.

This debate is very timely in that we believed that the issue of the death penalty had been closed, politically speaking, for more than 20 years. However, this Conservative government has recently sent out some rather disturbing signals on this issue. Are the Conservatives giving us a glimpse of the policies they would adopt if they had a majority government? It is up to them to prove otherwise.

I do not want to debate this government's reactionary claims. Instead, I would like to discuss each point in this motion, to show the people who are watching why the death penalty should be avoided and why it is unworthy of the society we live in today.

First, Canada no longer allows the death penalty. It was officially abolished on July 14, 1976 for all crimes, except certain offences committed by soldiers. However, in fact, there has not been a civilian execution in Canada since 1962.

The military death penality was officially abolished in 1998, even though no soldier had been sentenced to death by a military court since the second world war, when there was only one execution. The decision to abolish the death penalty was based on a number of principles. I will not list them all, but one principle holds that there is no going back when a criminal is put to death. Any judicial error or miscarriage of justice cannot be corrected. Justice being human, it is impossible to guarantee that these sorts of errors will not occur.

Moreover, a justice system that applies the death penalty is focused on punishment, not re-education. It is implicitly ruling out the possibility that the criminal can change for the better one day. We must not confuse justice, which recognizes the harm that has been done to the victim, with vengeance, which is the desire to do harm. Justice can be the first step in the healing process for the victim, whereas vengeance imprisons the victim or victims in feelings that we know are negative.

Plenty of humanist arguments honourably support the decision to abolish the death penalty and could be the topic of a separate debate. This is why I maintain that wanting to reverse the abolition of the death penalty is a clear demonstration of narrow-mindedness and irrationality in terms of what we are at our very core: human beings.

Second, there is the fact that one of our policies is to seek clemency, for humanitarian reasons, on behalf of our citizens facing the death penalty in other countries. I would like to point out here that Canada did not hesitate in the past to appeal to other countries and ask that the death penalty not be imposed on its citizens who had been convicted. We do so not only for humanitarian reasons, but also to be consistent with our domestic laws.

Furthermore, this position has been reinforced by the Supreme Court, which ruled on February 15, 2001, that, under Canadian law, the death sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. As a result, it prohibited the extradition of Canadian and other citizens to foreign countries if there is any risk they could be sentenced to death. In short, the Government of Canada must obtain guarantees that the death penalty will not be sought or imposed if the accused is to be extradited.

More recently, however, this government seems to be moving away from this humanist approach. Last fall, it refused to intervene with the State of Montana in the case of Ronald Allen Smith, an Albertan sentenced to death for the murder of two aboriginal men of the Blackfeet tribe in 1982. Mr. Smith was convicted of the murders and must serve an exemplary sentence, since his crimes are inexcusable.

However, the political debate triggered by this government has unfortunately strayed from the position mentioned earlier. Despite what the Minister of Justice said at the time, it was not a matter of bringing that individual back to Canada. Nor was it a question of public safety. It is not a debate on whether a country operates under the rule of law, or whether it is democratic.

The fact remains that we must follow the laws we have established for ourselves and not ignore them for the sake of the laws of another country. The Supreme Court was clear about this and we must abide by this position. This is why the government's inaction in Mr. Smith's case could permanently stain our international reputation.

In fact, it undermines our international involvement. For example, the Conservative government took a hard line with the Chinese government over human rights. But how will it explain that it defends the rights of people on death row in China, but not in the United States?

Canada has already been strongly criticized, notably by the Secretary General of the European Council, Terry Davis, who accused Canada of outsourcing the death penalty to other countries.

Our position must remain the same, regardless of the country, its importance or its domestic laws. Canada should have intervened and tried to get Montana to commute Mr. Smith's death sentence, while still respecting local laws.

I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the Bloc Québécois' extraordinary initiative to unite all opposition parties on December 6 to intervene with the governor of Montana. Our approach honoured our traditional position, did not excuse Mr. Smith's actions, and demonstrated absolute respect for Montana's institutions.

Third, it is time to show leadership in campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide.

Over the past few decades, we sponsored all UN resolutions concerning the abolition of the death penalty. Suddenly, in October 2007, that changed.

Canada surprised all of its natural allies by refusing to sponsor a resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, a European Union initiative that enjoyed the official support of 87 countries.

At the time, the government said that it wanted to devote its energy to other more important documents. To hear them say it, one would think that supporting the resolution would have required a colossal effort on the part of the government. But according to a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, Paul Heinbecker, “co-sponsorship does not involve much more effort than a phone call or raising a hand during a meeting”. The government's position does not hold water and is very disappointing.

Fortunately, the resolution was adopted nevertheless but we sent a message that we are moving away from our tradition as a champion of fundamental human rights, a tradition that brought a very positive cachet to our international image.

Therefore, it is more than necessary to reaffirm this determination once more and at the same time to correct the message sent to the international community.

I will close by stating that citizens interested in human rights should be concerned about the change in this government's position. There is no indication that it is the government's intention, any time soon, to restore the death penalty, a punishment that has not been proven to be a deterrent and that remains unconstitutional in the eyes of the Supreme Court. However, the Conservatives' actions—particularly the refusal to sponsor the United Nations resolution or to intervene in Mr. Smith's case—should sound the alarm for our citizens.

That is why the Bloc Québécois supports Motion M-411. This motion is more than necessary at a time when ideological or rhetorical sound bites are used to please a particular segment of society.

Previous generations fought to defend human rights and the respect for human dignity. We must face up to our principles and we must clearly reaffirm our commitment to them.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by reading the motion moved by the member for York West. I think it is important because we have just heard the government talk around this motion and allude to things that are not contained in it. For the benefit of the Canadian people I would like to read it:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should reaffirm that: (a) there is no death penalty in Canada; (b) it is the policy of the government to seek clemency, on humanitarian grounds, for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries; and (c) Canada will continue in its leadership role in promoting the abolition of the death penalty internationally.

There is not one single word in the motion about bringing anybody back to Canada. If anybody has been getting that message from the government, it is the wrong message.

When I decided to run for this place I considered what I had to offer. As with many people here, it comes from personal life experience. I made a commitment to the people of my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek that I would bring their message, the average person's message, to this place instead of bringing the government's message to them. I have worked hard to do that.

Mr. Speaker, you are going to find in my remarks some very personal things. I am going to pause for a second. This may sound strange, but I say to my sister Audrey in Alberta, sit down, Audrey, you will understand in a moment.

Oftentimes, in fact most times when we rise in this place, we talk about the privilege that it is to stand and speak to an issue and the pleasure at times it is to speak to an issue. I cannot say that about Motion No. 411. I can speak to its intent, but I am deeply troubled that we find ourselves in a position of having to debate a matter that was supposedly put to rest some 32 years ago in an off-handed fashion.

This House decided at that time that it did not support the right of the state to put one of its citizens to death. Let us not talk death penalty; you are killing somebody; you are putting them to death. That ended capital punishment in Canada. As others have stated, it put us at the forefront working for the abolition of capital punishment around the world, our rightful position.

Logically, following the decision, the government of Canada adopted as policy that it would seek clemency on humanitarian grounds, as in the motion, for Canadians condemned to death in other countries. That was the right position and it remains the right position today. It is also consistent with the views of most Canadians.

Personally, I feel it is an affront to Parliament that the Conservative government has taken upon itself to start a change that is so diametrically opposite to what Canadians believe and what Canadians want.

On a regular basis, as other speakers have said, DNA evidence and other evidence have thrown conviction after conviction out of court and returned people to the streets after six, eight, ten years in prison, and some of them had been on death row. How can we look at something like that and not respond? Often the only reason these people were in jail in the first place was that they were poor. I alluded to that in a debate earlier today.

I am going to go to that place that I just warned my sister Audrey about and I am going to get emotional. In 1949 my sister was strangled to death. My father was accused of the murder of that child. Over a period of investigation it became clear that another member of our family, who was mentally ill, had committed that crime. Our family never quite recovered from that in many ways. My father died an alcoholic at 51 years of age as the result of living with the system. He was poor. He was a labourer on the railway, and he did the best he could for his family. Simply because he happened to be the last person to go in to say goodbye to that child in the morning, and she was covered to her eyes, he was accused that crime.

I want to put the timeframe in perspective. As I grew to be a child of about 10 years of age, it was during the time of Steven Truscott, a young man who was taken away and, at first, sentenced to death. At my age of 10 or 11, of course it was a frightening thing to hear. Coincidentally, my father had been picked up for impaired driving and was in our local jail in Perth-Andover, which is close to Plaster Rock, where I am from.

I went with some people to post bail. It was a small-town jail. There were a couple of cells in the place. The person who was maintaining that jail offered me the opportunity to see a jail cell. Just a year before, I had learned what happened to my sister. It had been hidden from me for a number of years. When I walked into the jail cell, I looked up and saw a ring in the ceiling. I was standing on a trap door. The person, not knowing the family history, said that this was where they dropped a person through to hang them. It struck me to the heart, to the bone and to my very soul. That was the door my father would have dropped through had the system failed him.

We have to step back from all the rhetoric. We have to step back from where the government is trying to take us and understand the humanity of what we are doing. We have to understand that in the prisons there are many people who are totally innocent of the crimes. Many times they are there simply because they cannot afford a defence.

My notes have kind of gone out the window here, but let me say that there is a built-in discrimination in our society and even more particularly south of the border. Let us look at the fact that those who are on death row are more often than not poor and even more often than not black. If we look at the correlation that happens between who it is that commits crimes, we see that the black race and the white race commit crimes fairly equally, but when there is a white victim, more often people are put to death.

I am not going to bother with statistics, as I am a little bit emotionally past the point where I could deliver them anyway.

In the U.S., though, an important point is that 53 people were executed in 2006. That makes for a total of just over 1,000 since 1977, but what is happening even in the U.S. is that people are starting to take another look at this. They are starting to understand more clearly, because of DNA evidence, a system of computers and better investigative processes, that more people can disprove the charges against them. Thank God. Many of them have spent years on death row and many will be freed.

However, even so, called into question today in the southern states and many states where lethal injections are used is the failure of that mechanism to work properly. When we start talking about hanging, the method that was used in this country, we need to do some reading about its effects.

I am very close to concluding my remarks. I will say only that Canada has been a leader on many fronts and I do not believe that there is anything more fundamental than the protection of human life and having the grace to say that we are not going to take that life.

I have no sympathy for a criminal who kills. I have no sympathy for a person who commits rape or harms children in any way. However, I still do not believe it is the right of the state to take a life. We can put them away and lock them up. Again, I want to stress that nobody was talking about bringing them back to Canada.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was quite moved, as I imagine all hon. members in this House were, to hear our hon. colleague from the NDP share with us some very difficult moments of his life. I want to thank him very much for sharing his life experience with us.

Many people have spoken on the issue of the death penalty and whether the state itself should engage in the practice of killing people. I would like to use my time to put before the House and anyone listening the words of others who can speak much better than I can on the issue of the death penalty.

However, I would like to say that I am vehemently opposed to the death penalty. I believe that Canada and the Conservative government must reinstate the policy of seeking clemency on humanitarian grounds for Canadians who have been sentenced to execution, capital punishment, in jurisdictions outside of Canada. I also support the proposition that Canada should continue its leadership role in promoting the abolition of the death penalty internationally.

I would like to read some quotes for members. The first is as follows:

I want to say to the House, without reservation and without qualification that I do not support the motion to reinstate.

I will be voting against capital punishment on moral and logical grounds. I believe that it is wrong.

I am not persuaded the death penalty works as a deterrent. Nor am I persuaded it is appropriate as a punishment. On the contrary, I believe it is repugnant, and...I believe it is profoundly unacceptable. It is wrong to take life, and I can think of no circumstance excepting self-defence to justify it.

The effect of this resolution, if enacted...would be to confer upon the state the ultimate power, that of executioner. Moreover, if this motion were carried, the state, in the exercise of that responsibility, could indeed put to death an innocent man or an innocent woman.

...before all else, we uphold one simple principle: the inherent dignity of a human being, the inherent worth of a human life. I will resist with all of my strength, all of my life, any action that would diminish that reality and would lessen that value.

Those words were spoken in the House on June 22, 1987, by the then prime minister of Canada, the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney.

That is not all. Martin Luther King stated, “The death sentence is a barbaric act”. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”.

Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., stated:

As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offences. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder.

John Diefenbaker, on April 4, 1966, stated:

From my experience at the bar I say that anyone who says an innocent man cannot go to the gallows is wrong, because I know differently. It is a frightful thing when a man you believe to be innocent and whose attitude is, Don't worry about me, God will not allow it, walks to the gallows and months later the truth comes out.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau stated:

I do not deny that society has the right to punish a criminal, and the right to make the punishment fit the crime, but to kill a man for punishment alone is an act of revenge--nothing else. Some would prefer to call it retribution because that word has a nicer sound. But the meaning is the same.

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?

...my primary concern here is not compassion for the murderer. My concern is for the society which adopts vengeance as an acceptable motive for its collective behaviour. If we make that choice, we will snuff out some of that boundless hope and confidence in ourselves and other people which has marked our maturing as a free people.

That is not all. The current leader of the official opposition said:

The Conservative government is not representing the views of the majority of Canadians nor is it respecting long-standing Canadian law and policy on the issue, and I believe it is my responsibility to make those views known and to uphold the law.

By refusing to seek the commutation of the death sentence of Canadian citizens on death row in other countries, and by reneging on Canada's decision to co-sponsor the UN resolution opposing the use of the death penalty, the Conservative government has changed Canada's policy by stealth.

I am opposed to the death penalty. I believe that the use of the death penalty undermines the human dignity of not only the individual who is killed, but of all involved in the process. I believe that the evidence supports the position that the death penalty has little to no value as a deterrent of crime. I can think of no acceptable justification for the taking of a life by the state. While there is obviously a strong argument for opposing the death penalty due to the risk of the state killing an innocent individual, I believe that it represents an injustice even when it falls on someone who is unquestionably guilty of crime.

The fact that this government doesn't even want to try [asking for clemency] shows me what this government would try doing to Canada if it had a majority. We could see the return of the capital punishment debate in Canada.

This government continues to show a complete lack of respect for Parliament. If they want to change the policy on the death penalty, they should debate the issue in the House, and let Canadians see the real face of this government once and for all.

There are sitting members in this House on the government side who have made statements in support of capital punishment, in support of reinstating the government, the state, executing Canadians. The Minister of Public Safety has made those statements. I have the quotes here.

The Minister of Justice has made those statements. Not only that, but when he was a member of Parliament in the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and the vote took place in 1987 on a motion to reinstate capital punishment in Canada to have the Canadian state resume executing Canadians, that member, the Minister of Justice, voted in favour of the motion.

The Minister of Labour was a member of Parliament in 1987 with the Progressive Conservative government under the then prime minister, the right hon. Brian Mulroney. That member, who is now the Minister of Labour, voted in favour of the motion.

When the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice rises here to speak to this motion and states that the government has absolutely no intention of reinstating the death penalty, he is giving bafflegab to this House and to Canadians. He knows full well that the Minister of Justice already voted in favour of the reinstatement of the death penalty. He already knows that his government has changed the policy and is now going to cherry-pick which Canadians for whom, as a government, they will seek clemency when a Canadian is under a death penalty in another country. They will cherry-pick and they will decide. If they do not like someone's face, they will not ask for clemency. If they like someone's face, they will ask for clemency. Who knows what criteria the government will use to determine. How easy will it be once Canadians get used to having Canadians executed in other countries to then bring the death penalty back into Canada?

I am opposed to the reinstatement of the death penalty. I want my government to be an active--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin I would like to tell my NDP colleague that the tragic events in his family have touched all of us and we offer him our sympathy.

This government is not reopening the debate on the death penalty in Canada despite what the member said. I want to make it very clear again and again so she understands once and for all, instead of going for the rhetoric she is talking about. This government is not reopening the debate on the death penalty in Canada.

Our position has been very clear. In cases where Canadians face the death penalty abroad, the Government of Canada, on a case by case basis, based on what is in the best interest of Canada, will continue to consider whether to seek clemency. We take our responsibility very seriously.

As we have repeatedly mentioned, our stance on this issue does not affect Canada's status as a country without the death penalty. We continue to strongly support international law and international standards on the death penalty.

Our position is clear. Canada's laws and history have made a response to the first part of this motion today unnecessary. There is no death penalty in Canada, not in law nor in practice and this has been the case since 1962.

In 1976, capital punishment was removed from Canada's Criminal Code when Parliament decided, after years of debate, that capital punishment was not an appropriate penalty for Canada.

In 1987, a free vote was held in this House regarding the reinstatement of the death penalty. The result of the vote was in favour of maintaining the abolition of the death penalty.

In 1998, Parliament removed the death penalty from Canadian law completely with the passing of an act to amend the National Defence Act.

This government continues to speak for Canada and make its voice heard at the international level on all matters of foreign policy, including international human rights. In addition, Canada's voice is a principled one which supports international standards and the rule of law.

It must be recalled that the death penalty is not, in and of itself, contrary to international law. International law clearly recognizes that different states may legitimately take differing views on the issue of the death penalty. One of the foremost human rights treaties adhered to by over 130 states is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Canada has been a party to this treaty since 1976. The covenant does not prohibit the imposition of the death penalty but rather sets out that states that retain the death penalty must abide by certain rules. Canada advocates full respect for the safeguards and due process of law where the death penalty is still in use.

I will conclude by reassuring this House, despite suggestions from the opposition that we are wavering in our support for the abolition of the death penalty in Canada, nothing could be further from the truth. The House has spoken on this issue previously and we will not reopen this debate.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, a recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, February 6, immediately before the time provided for private members' business.