Death Penalty Woes

There's been a lot of electrons expended in the latest hit into far right field by the Harper Tories on the Canadian government no longer working for clemency for Canadian citizens abroad. The way I see it it speaks to two things: 1 - why the Harper Tories are stalled in the polls; and 2 - them revealing some of their so-called hidden neo-con and so-con agenda.

Now, it should be obvious to most readers here that if you want to go up in the polls, you probably shouldn't take stands that are against the majority view of voters. The death penalty doesn't have a lot of support here in Canada, especially the parts outside of Alberta. So saying you support the death penalty, even in other countries, to be applied to Canadians probably isn't going to win a lot of new votes for the Harper Conservatives. It may even drive some away. Some one needs to tell Conservative strategists and Stephen Harper that a nice bounce in the polls by slashing taxes will be quickly erased by doing something unpopular.

The reversal of over 50 years of government policy by the Tories also speaks to what they intend to do if they get a majority to "get tough on crime". If they're willing to allow other countries to execute our citizens, they're probably more than willing to do the deed themselves. This means with an unchecked majority, the Tories will likely re-introduce the death penalty in Canada. Now the fact that the far right support the death penalty is no secret. What has been less clear is if Harper will promise not to bring it in if he wins a majority next election. Even if Harper did promise, it's unlikely people will believe him, given his track record on promises. So it would seem that we're on our way to joining the United States as being the only Western democracy to have the death penalty. It would however put us in the company of such great countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and many of the other countries the neo-cons love to hate.

This is an issue the opposition can hammer the Tories on. In fact, the opposition should bring a motion reversing the government's decision. This would be a confidence motion and would force the Tories to run on a pro-death penalty platform. Now that's something to fight an election on.