Ask most people if Canada has the death penalty, and the answer is no. But I have a friend who served in Intelligence with the Canadian armed forces who says yes. His claim is that a law still stands, under which a person can be sentenced to death for treason against the state.
Is this true? I don’t know how to find out. What is more scary are his further claims that terrorist-type suspects have been secretly tortured and killed under that law (he refers to years ago, not in the context of 9/11). I have no reason to doubt my friends sincerity, but I don’t know if any of this is true.
Your friend is wrong though his mistake is understandable. There was provision for the death penalty in the military code for treason and mutiny. They were removed from the defence act in 1998.
I would like a cite for this, because military law as of today very clearly allows for the death penalty for many offenses in wartime. Please refer to Section 103 of ther Queen’s Regulations and Orders.
It may be that capital punishment has been removed from the National Defence Act for peacetime offenses. In wartime, I assure you it’s still there.
The military justice provisions which called for the death penalty have been commuted to life in prison. This was done by government Bill C-25, given Royal Assent on 10 December 1998. Check out in particular Part III, division 2, “Service offences and punishments”.
Are you sure you’re referring to the Canadian version of the QR&O? I can imagine the British version might still have a death penalty lurking about, but by Bill C-25 (sections 24-32), passed June 11, 1998, the Canadian military no longer has the death penalty.
There are a few very specific circumstances in which an officer could, in theory, summarily execute a soldier. When we go to the rifle ranges and fire live rounds, the Range Safety Officer is wearing a sidearm and he/she has the duty to cap a soldier who starts menacing the other personnel with a loaded rifle. I can’t say I’ve heard of this happening to a Canadian, but I think the Americans have had a number of incidents (a fictionalized event occurs in the movie Tigerland).
I was pretty surprised when I learned upon joining the Reserve in 1989 that we still had the death penalty, but it’s truly gone now. It hadn’t been exercised since 1945, the last time we were officially “at war”. If a formal declaration of war was made, I don’t doubt that all kinds of hasty military code amendments might be passed, but this seems a remote risk at best.
Rick, it looks like they’ve not updated the QR&O in the 4 years since Parliament amended the National Defence Act: QR&O, c. 103. It’s the Act which creates the offences and penalties, not the QR&O, so it’s the Act which governs, even though they’ve not updated the QR&O - regulations passed under the authority of a statute cannot change the basic terms of the statute itself.
By gum, you’re right. Typical miltary bureaucracy at work, or should I say not at work. Nevertheless, the abolishment of the death penalty was widely reported in military newsletters and dispatches in 1998.
As an FPO and RSO, I was never trained to “cap a soldier” specifically. The theory was that if you’re in command of people carrying FN’s, you should at least be armed. I suppose the unspoken idea was that if someone got out of hand, you could blow her away, but noone ever said as much. I never once had to draw my sidearm on a range, although I did have to stomp on people’s rifles when they were waving them around too much. (“Sir, my rifle won’t fire…” as they’re madly pulling the trigger :eek: ).
