Why not a thought for the victims?
National Affairs
Claire Hoy

Poor Ron Smith. Currently Canada's most infamous cold-blooded killer, he says he feels "kicked to the curb" by Canada because the Conservative government has no intention of intervening on his behalf to try to halt his execution in Montana.

His lawyer, Greg Jackson, called the government's reversal of a long-standing Canadian foreign policy an "egregious" abandonment of its only citizen on death row in the United States.

Most of the mainstream media - along with the federal opposition parties - are screaming their heads off because the Tories have taken the position they have.

Apparently, we're supposed to feel sorry for Smith. Not me. And, it says here, likely not the healthy majority of Canadians who continue to be appalled at this country's namby-pamby approach to violent crime and criminals.

This is a man who in August 1982 picked up two Blackfeet Indian men - Harvey Mad Man, 20, and Thomas Running Rabbit, 24 - and, by his own admission, murdered them because he just wanted to know what it felt like to experience the ultimate evil.

For many years, Canada has actively intervened in cases where Canadians are sentenced to death. That's because Canada, in a free vote in Parliament in 1976, rejected the death penalty. Our policy until now has been to petition the Americans in the hopes they spare the death penalty either by commuting the sentence to life imprisonment or - and this is what all criminals want, given our country club approach to justice - have the criminal sent back home to serve his time in one of our penitentiaries. That's certainly what I 'd want I went down the U.S. - or any other democracy which has capital punishment - and murdered some of their citizens.

The argument is that since Canada opposes capital punishment, we should not stand idly by while other countries are offing our citizens. Mind you, despite the aforementioned parliamentary vote on the subject, no government, or political party, has ever asked Canadians directly how they feel about the death penalty.

But the United States, or at least many of the States, believe that the death penalty is appropriate in some crimes. Certainly, this has lead to some injustices in the past, particularly in the area of race relations where poor black men have not been given the means - or in some cases, much opportunity - to defend themselves properly.

But this is not the case here. Smith murdered these men for a thrill. He admits it. He's been duly tried and convicted. He is about to reap what he sowed.

Just to set the record straight here, your correspondent does not personally believe in capital punishment - I see it as part of the continuum of life which makes me oppose abortion and euthanasia as well - but public opinion polls have shown for years that more Canadians do support capital punishment than oppose it. It's just that the elites who rule on these things don't care what they think.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told the Commons last week that, "We will not actively pursue bringing back to Canada murderers who have been tried in a democratic country that supports the rule of law . . . It would send a wrong message. We want to preserve public safety here in Canada." This, of course, has sparked opposition parties - and a hostile media - to begin shouting again about the Tories having the dreaded "hidden agenda," i.e. accusing them of planning to reintroduce capital punishment. Prime Minister Stephen Harper flatly denies any plans to do that, but that doesn't stop the "honorable members" opposite from continuing to make the claim, just as it didn't stop them in their decade of smearing the Reform Party and the Tories alike with the spurious claims of a so-called 'hidden agenda." Many people may not like their agenda, but it was never hidden that 's for sure.

And even though there is little doubt that many in Harper's caucus likely would like to see capital punishment reinstated in Canada, the political reality is that it's just not in the cards.

Nor does it follow that because the Tories have changed an ongoing policy - and their critics are acting as if they don't have the right to change policies, even though they obviously do have that right - that they are about to get themselves embroiled in a hot button issue such as capital punishment. They're not.

What they are doing, however, is recognizing that the American justice system is different from our system, but in cases such as Smith's, where there can be absolutely no question that he is a cold-blooded killer, it's not for us to moralize to them about what their citizens think is the proper punishment to fit the crime.

Smith is not the victim here. The two young men he murdered for fun are the victims.

Instead of wringing our collective hands about Smith, how about a thought for the men he murdered and for their families?