Today he has been given 25 years in prison for murdering two people.
This hugely successful respected military man has been uncovered as a sick serial sexual predator/murderer of the first degree.
It is difficult to conjure up any individual of such high esteem to fall to such low disgust.
Regardless, the question has come up with regard to his $60,000 pension.
To my mind, he earned that pension, a deal is a deal, and the only person to benefit from that pension is his wife and she is entitled to it.
Any law passed by our Canadian government to take away his pension violates some sense in my mind that we all must be able to count on the laws that exist rather than retroactive legislation that can terminate our contracted entitlements.
Should Russell and his wife receive his military pension ?
I think I read somewhere that a prisoner has access to pension funds once released? That’s unlikely to happen - at least not for another 25 years in this case. I think his wife deserves the pension income (assuming she’s his age, she will reach retirement age before his parole comes up and has the right to count on that income). Though I’d love to know that that monster will never get to use a penny of it.
Aren’t there several civil suits pending against him? I’ve got no problem with a taxpayer-funded pension finding its way into the wallets of his victims and their families.
If there’s no proof the wife knew about anything (and from what I’ve read about his confession, it seems like she didn’t), she is certainly entitled to it.
He will not lose his pension because he has already earned it and there is nothing in the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act that affects pension entitlement based on type of release. The people who sue him will not get his pension because it is exempt from seizure by his creditors under the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act. His Canada Pension Plan benefits are exempt from seizure by his creditors under the Canada Pension Plan Act. His Old Age Security is exempt from seizure by his creditors under the Old Age Security Act.
Should he and his wife not separate, he can give as much or as little of his employment pension, CPP or OAS to her as he chooses once such pension is in pay. Should he and his wife separate, there would be an equalization of CPP credits earned by each party during the marriage up until separation. Should he and his wife separate and the employment pension come into pay, his wife would have a right to support if she were in need of support, but in fact she is the executive director of a major charity, so the odds are very much that she would not be in need of support. Should he and his wife separate, there would be an equalization of net family properties, but he recently signed over the 700K house to her at the same time she signed over the 180K cottage to him, she paid him 62K, she assumed the mortgage on the house, and it looks like his pension is only about 60K, so it appears to have been an equalization upon separation, although it is possible that he has assigned half of his pension to her as part of that separation, in which case she would receive periodic payments once it comes into pay which would also remain exempt from seizure from her creditors.
Yes, there is a Jane Doe claim for 2.5M against the murder and his wife, alleging inter alia that the property transfer was a fraudulent conveyance. The wife has defended, asserting that the property transfer was an equalization under the Family Law Act (something done upon a married couple separating), and she has counter-claimed for 2M. The judge granted a Mareva injunction freezing the wife’s assets.
I’m curious to see how this plays out, for if the wife separated from the murderer upon learning of what he did, if they made an FLA equalization upon such separation, and if the numbers in the equalization were reasonable when compared with the formula in the FLA, then it would be a matter of you snooze you loose with regard to Jane Doe, as unfortunate as that may be.
So if it was established that someone joined the forces with the intent to commit treason, rose to command a base, was exposed, imprisoned and discharged, they’d still collect a pension?
I’m not saying that it’s the same, but ISTM there ought to be a level of breach of contract that, oh I dunno, voids the contract.
Some places have laws under which the government pensions of certain persons are forfeit upon treason. Canada is not one of them.
Despite this, under your hypothetical, if the intent to commit treason, and the particular act of treason itself, were directly tied to the seeking and obtaining of employment, then yes, (1) it might be possible to have the contract found to be void ab initio, so therefore there would be no pension entitlement other than return of the individual’s contribution, and (2) the pension entitlement might be forfeit under the well established policy based common law principle that no one should profit from his or her crime.
He will never leave prison. He is unlikely to live another 25 years and if he does he will be declared a dangerous offender and denied parole. So let him have his pension and settle the lawsuits with it, insofar as possible.
He will be in solitary for that 25 years. He probably wouldn’t live 25 days otherwise. And I wouldn’t mourn him. (John Dunne had it wrong; there are some deaths that don’t diminish me in the slightest.)
Conrad Brossard was already on parole when he murdered a person and was sentenced to life in prison. Years later, he was let out on a day pass when he attempted to murder another person and was sentenced to twenty-three more years. Years later he was in a half-way house when he attempted to murder another person and received another life sentence. Years later, he was in a half-way house when he murdered a person.
Eric Norman Fish was in a half-way house from a life sentence for murder, when he murdered two more people.
Allan Craig MacDonald was paroled after 12 years for murdering for murdering a police officer and a taxi driver. He then beat, raped, stabbed, and murdered a woman and set her body on fire.
Robert Bruce Moyes was on parole from a life sentence. In the following year, he murdered seven people.
John Lyman Kehoe was on parole from a life sentence for murdering his two children. He then tried to murder a woman by choking her and slitting her throat.
Leopold Dion was paroled from a life sentence for rape and attempted murder, and previous parole violation for sexually assaulting a young boy. In the next year an a half, he sexually assaulted 21 more children and murdered four of them.
Kevin Humphrey was on parole from a life sentence for murder and three parole violations. He then tried to murder a person by stabbing him repeatedly and slitting his throat, causing permanent brain injury.
Chad Bucknell was paroled after six years from a life sentence for murdering four people. He disappeared, was recaptured, and granted parole again after a couple of years. He disappeared again and has been at large for the last four years.
Michael Hector was on parole six years into a 13-year sentence despite being highly criminalized. He then murdered three people, including a young gas station attendant. I was unnamed co-counsel in his appeal before the Ontario Court of Appeal for these three murders.
I have no faith that Russell Williams will remain in prison until he dies.
He’s serving his time in Kingston Penitentiary, an old-school 19th century maximum security joint smack in the middle of a high end residential area in Kingston, Ontario. I went to grad school at Queen’s and I rented a basement suite literally next door to this place…100m away. Always amazed me that that I was neighbors with Paul Bernardo and the worst offenders in Canada…yet the land values of the area were through the roof. Would walk by it almost everyday…creepy, especially when the families would line up outside for visiting hours.