The Supreme Court of Canada has torn to pieces one of the most abject reforms of the Harper era on consecutive sentencing by reaffirming, in the case of Alexandre Bissonnette, that the justice system must keep hope alive , no matter how small, for the rehabilitation of an offender.
The case could not be stronger on a symbolic level. Alexandre Bissonnette left six dead, five injured and traumatized the entire Muslim community by savagely attacking the great mosque of Quebec on January 29, 2017, a day of infamy in the history of Quebec. Under the provisions of section 745.51 of the Criminal Code, he was liable to consecutive sentences of up to 150 years in captivity. At first instance, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The Court of Appeal, however, struck down section 745.51 of the Criminal Code and reduced the sentence to 25 years, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday.
Under the pen of Chief Justice Richard Wagner, the Supreme Court condemns what The duty and other progressive forces, such as the criminal lawyer Jean-Claude Hébert, had described at the time as “a death sentence by degrees” for Alexandre Bissonnette. By depriving him of any hope of parole, the trial court had inflicted on him a cruel and unusual sentence, excessive to the point of being incompatible with human dignity.
The Supreme Court thus leaves “the door ajar to rehabilitation”, while the forces of penal populism are working to lock it twice. This is a huge step that restores the balance between the objectives of rehabilitation, deterrence and denunciation in sentencing. This is the best guarantee that Canadian penitentiaries will not turn into overcrowded cages where the hope of redemption for criminals sentenced to excessive sentences, sentences exceeding the duration of a human life, dies.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, representatives of the Grand Mosque of Quebec expressed their disappointment and fear that members of the community would come across their father’s killer on the streets of Quebec, in the remote event. where Alexandre Bissonnette would benefit from a conditional release. Under the Supreme Court ruling, that day could come in the year 2042. Religious leaders, like the general public, are unaware of the intricacies of sentencing. The release of a murderer is not automatic after 25 years of detention. Some offenders, irrecoverable, will never find the sweet pleasure of freedom.
The president of the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec (CCIQ), Mohamed Labidi, believes that the Supreme Court’s decision “breaks the balance” between the rehabilitation of an offender and the punishment for his crimes. “Families who have been affected must also feel that they have won their case, that the killer is being punished for his crimes,” he said.
This conception of justice is profoundly contrary to the values on which the Canadian judicial system was built. In Mr. Labidi’s imagination, justice is close to the law of retaliation and a principle dating back to time immemorial: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The pain of victims and their families cannot be used as a yardstick for sentencing. Past a certain threshold, the objectives of deterrence and denunciation lose their value, recalls the Supreme Court, and the judicial system loses its rationality and fairness. Punishing criminals based on the “value” that survivors attribute to their crimes is therefore an approach that involves the nth degree of subjectivity and emotionality.
It would be tempting to see in the disarray of the CCIQ the expression of different cultural or religious values, but nothing could be further from the truth. The followers of the exacerbated severity of the sentences are found en masse among the police organizations, the prosecutors, the political parties camped on the right of the ideological spectrum. While the Liberals are finally tackling ex-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s poisoned legacy of minimum sentencing, the main candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) are proposing to increase the severity of the sentences for reduce crime, particularly with regard to crimes committed with firearms. They are more timorous about measures aimed at restricting the circulation of weapons, as well as investments in crime prevention.
The debate on the reform of the Criminal Code is permanent for the Conservatives. May they bear in mind these words of wisdom from Judge Wagner. “The horror of crimes does not negate the fundamental proposition that all human beings carry within them the capacity to rehabilitate themselves. »