Chris Selley: Poilievre has a great case for the notwithstanding clause. He'll need to make it
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had long ago expressed appreciation for the notwithstanding clause, which allows legislators to override some sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So it should have come as no surprise that on Monday he vowed to use the so-called “override clause” to reinstate consecutive life sentences for multiple murderers . By rights, it should be something of a slam-dunk for the Conservatives.
“The worst mass murderers should never be allowed back on our streets,” Poilievre said in Montreal, adding a typically Poilievre-ian flourish: “They should only come out in a box.”
Crime isn’t showing up on pollsters’ lists of top priorities nowadays, but it was certainly on those lists before President Donald Trump retook the White House. And when political opponents are actually willing to oppose plain common-sense ideas, it’s usually good politics to invite them to try. To wit: On Monday Liberal leader Mark Carney called Poilievre’s proposal a “very dangerous step.”
It’s not a step that should be taken lightly, certainly. But Poilievre cited two truly compelling examples of multiple-murderers who should obviously be locked up automatically and forever, or at least for way more than 25 years: Alexandre Bissonnette, author of the 2017 massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Sainte-Foy, Que. ; and Justin Bourque, who murdered three RCMP officers in Moncton, N.B. in 2014.
Under a Conservative-era law allowing consecutive life sentences — not just 25 years without parole, no matter how many people you kill — Bissonnette was condemned to 40 years and Bourque to 75. The former, especially, wasn’t a remotely draconian sentence. It was less than seven years per parishioner whom Bissonnette cut down in cold blood, as opposed to the 25 per he would have gotten had he murdered only one. He would have been eligible for parole with a good few years left to live. All was well. But then in 2022, in its infinite and baffling wisdom, the Supreme Court busted those sentences back down to 25 years without parole .
Poilievre’s Conservatives quite rightly honed in on a key element of that ruling — a passage that makes an utterly compelling case to keep the notwithstanding clause around forever: “The imposition of excessive sentences that fulfil no function … does nothing more than bring the administration of justice into disrepute and undermine public confidence in the rationality and fairness of the criminal justice system,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote for the unanimous majority . “And … the imposition of extremely severe sentences tends to normalize such sentences and to have an inflationary effect on sentencing generally.”
Excessive, irrational, unfair … says who? Criminal sentences should not inflate but deflate … why? “Fulfils no function”? The sentence is the function, surely. Lots of people die in prison before their sentences are up; they don’t get it back in casino chips when they check in at the pearly gates.
Locking up Paul Bernardo, William Pickton, Alexandre Bissonnette or Justin Bourque forever would “undermine public confidence in … the justice system”?
Unhinged.
(Incidentally, if you’re thinking the court must have cited precedent to back up these odd conclusions, you are correct. It cited a 2016 paper published by Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law Review , which was entirely about the United States and not in any respect about Canada.)
There’s just one maddening problem for Poilievre here, and for conservatives in general: Canadians are torn on the notwithstanding clause, which is Section 33 of the Charter itself. In January 2023, the Angus Reid Institute found 55 per cent of Canadians would prefer to abolish it, with 45 per cent wanting to keep it. Even Conservative voters were split down the middle, with 51 per cent in favour of keeping it and 49 per cent preferring abolition.
Poilievre has a very good case to make here, but he’ll have to make it. It won’t make itself.
National Post
cselley@postmedia.com
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