Death Penalty in Canada
Does Canada have the death penalty? As a fully abolitionist country since December 10, 1998, the only Canadians at risk of execution are in foreign countries.
Calls to abolish the death penalty in Canada go back to the very founding of Canada in 1867. However, the most concerted efforts in Parliament for abolition can be said to have started with MP Robert Bickerdike in the early twentieth century. Since John Diefenbaker in the 1950s, a long line of Canadian Prime Ministers, both Liberal and Conservative, openly opposed the death penalty with one exception. In 2011, Stephen Harper openly supported the death penalty. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau succeeded Harper, Canada returned to its tradition of opposing the death penalty in all cases.
Why capital punishment should be abolished
Amnesty International opposes the capital punishment in all cases, regardless of the offender’s characteristics, crime, or method of execution. The death penalty violates the right to life and the right not to be subject to cruel or inhumane treatment or punishment.
The death penalty violates human rights. The right to life and the right not to be subject to cruel or inhumane treatment or punishment are fundamental rights enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Does Canada have the death penalty?
The death penalty in Canada was fully abolished on December 10, 1998. On that date, all remaining references to the death penalty were removed from the National Defence Act. Between 1976 and 1998, the National Defence Act was the only section of the law that still provided for execution under the law.
The last executions in Canada were made under the Criminal Code in 1962 when Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas were hanged at Toronto’s Don Jail. The last time the Canadian military had a legal execution was in 1945 when Harold Pringle was shot at dawn in Italy in a controversial murder case (for more, read A Keen Soldier by Andrew Clark, Penguin Random House, 2004).
Key Dates
Since 1867, all civilian executions in Canada were conducted by hanging (military executions were traditionally carried out by shooting). However, there were some unsuccessful experiments with different methods of hanging (i.e. the Radclive gallows) in 1890. The traditional long drop was the standard until the death penalty abolition for ordinary crimes in 1976.
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1867
The Dominion of Canada was founded under the British North America Act.
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1945
The last Canadian military execution.
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1962
The last civilian executions.
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1976
The death penalty was abolished from the Canadian Criminal Code.
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1998
The death penalty was abolished from the National Defence Act (military law).
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2001
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2005
Canada ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Canada’s Path to Abolition of the Death Penalty
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1867–1962
Executions in Canada: 710 executions carried out.
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1879–1960
Commutations: 438 death sentences commuted.
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1914
First Call for Abolition: First private bill introduced to abolish the death penalty.
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1954
Reform: Rape removed from list of capital offences.
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1956
Juvenile Protections Proposed: Parliamentary committee recommends exempting juvenile offenders, guaranteeing expert counsel, and introducing mandatory appeals in capital cases.
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1954–1963
Persistent Advocacy: A private member’s bill to abolish the death penalty is introduced in every parliamentary session.
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1961
Murder Classification: Parliament divides murder into capital and non-capital categories.
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1962 (Dec 11)
Last Execution: Two men hanged in Toronto—the final executions in Canada.
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1966
Major Debate: First major House of Commons debate on abolition.
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1967 (Bill C-168)
Restriction: Capital murder limited to killing of on-duty police officers and prison guards.
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1975
Last Death Sentence: Mario Gauthier sentenced to death (later commuted).
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1976 (July 14)
Abolition: Bill C-84 abolishes capital punishment from the Criminal Code; replaced with life imprisonment without parole for 25 years for first-degree murder.
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1987
Final Debate on Reinstatement: House of Commons votes 148–127 against restoring the death penalty.
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1998 (Dec 10)
Full Abolition: All remaining references to capital punishment removed from the National Defence Act; death penalty formally abolished for all offences.
Death Penalty Legally Blocked in Canada
In 2001, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Burns that it would violate the constitution for Canada to extradite a prisoner who faced a death penalty where destined. In 2005, the Canadian government signed and ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. With no mechanism for withdrawal, this legally prevents any return of the death penalty in Canada.
Canadians are at risk of the death penalty in foreign countries
As a fully abolitionist country, the only Canadians at risk of execution are in foreign countries. Presently, Canadians in China and the United States are at risk of the death penalty.
Before the resumption of principled opposition to all executions, the federal government did not make consistent efforts to prevent the execution of Canadians from 2007 to 2015. While in some cases, such as Hamid Ghassemi-Shall or Canadian Resident Saeed Malekpour, the response was open and strongly opposed to the death sentence. In others, notably Ronald Smith, the government made little if any effort and sometimes only in response to a court judgment ordering effort.
Canada has since 2016 continued to advocate against the death penalty not only for Canadians but for all people.
Amnesty International has been following the cases of at least two Canadians on death row in foreign countries: Ronald Smith (USA – Montana) and Robert Schellenberg (China).
Canada’s leadership on Abolition reborn
In 2007, Canada’s previous leadership in international efforts for abolition crumbled – with a noticeable impact on traditional human rights allies. The long-time government policy to support efforts for clemency for Canadians who faced the death penalty was upended.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day announced in parliament that he “…will not actively pursue bringing back to Canada…” those facing the death penalty “…who have been tried in a democratic country that supports the rule of law.” This decision effectively permitted Canada to have a ‘death penalty by proxy’ through countries like the United States. Canada also reversed the previous practice of co-sponsorship of United Nations efforts for universal abolition.
Opposition parties roundly criticized the move. Ronald Smith successfully sued the Canadian government in federal court. The court ordered the federal government to continue to support clemency for Smith, as it had since Smith’s original death sentence in the 1980s.
The change in Canada’s stance in 2016 could not have been clearer. After failing to co-sponsor the UN General Assembly resolutions from 2007 to 2014, calling for a universal moratorium on executions, Canada joined the list of co-sponsors at the first opportunity in 2016. It has maintained consistent opposition to the death penalty since then.
How did the abolition of the death penalty affect Canada?
Canada and the United States shared a similar trajectory on the death penalty from the mid-20th century until 1976. Canada stopped carrying out executions after 1962 and, with some exceptions, had various moratoriums on the death penalty. In 1976, Canada’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty from the Criminal Code.
From 1972 to 1976, the death penalty in the United States was deemed unconstitutional. In Furman v Georgia (1972), the Supreme Court found the death penalty “unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” In Gregg v Georgia (1976), the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty could be revived in Georgia, Florida, and Texas and gave juries “sufficient discretion in choosing whether to apply it.”
Both countries, from about 1962 until 1976, saw a gradual rise in per capita homicide rates. This was attributed to the coming of age of the Baby Boom generation. Most violent crime is perpetrated by individuals from their late teens to mid-20s.
Starting in 1977, Canada’s per capita homicide rate began a gradual decline, to an all-time low of 1.76 per 100,000 people in 2018. The United States, on the other hand, did not see a constant steady decline in the per capita homicide rate. In 2018, the rate was 5 per 100,000 people. In recent years, it has declined.
Canada, as a result, is often cited as an example to demonstrate that the abolition of the death penalty, at the very least, does not cause an increase in violent crimes.
Amnesty International’s
Annual Global Death Penalty Reports
Death penalty facts
In practice, capital punishment regularly violates many other human rights:
Capital punishment disproportionately affects poor people.
It disproportionately affects visible minorities and other marginalized groups.
Death sentences in many parts of the world routinely result from evidence extracted through torture.
Innocent people have been executed, and nothing short of abolition can guarantee that no innocent person will be executed.
Capital punishment is often used for crimes or circumstances which international law or standards say should not have a death penalty.*
*An example of this would be against those who were under the age of 18 at the time of the offence, following an unfair trial and for non-lethal crimes such as drug trafficking or political offences.
Furthermore, study after study has shown the death penalty is:
• Ineffective at deterring crime
• Extremely costly, draining resources that could more effectively be used to solve and prevent crime
Every year, executions take place in several countries. Regularly, countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and the United States feature as countries with the highest number of executions worldwide.
List of abolitionist vs countries with capital punishment
Most people are familiar with climate change as an environmental issue. Climate change is already causing extreme storms and heat waves, droughts, floods, forest fires, sea level rise and more.
But what does that have to do with human rights?
The climate crisis is the greatest human rights challenge of our time. It affects many human rights, including the right to life, health, food, water, housing, security and the rights of Indigenous peoples. While climate change affects us all, poorer countries and disadvantaged communities will be hit the hardest.
Climate change compounds and magnifies existing inequalities, and its effects will continue to grow and worsen over time, creating ruin for current and future generations. This is why the failure of governments to act on climate change in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence may well be the biggest intergenerational human rights violation in history.
What countries have the death penalty?
Global executions hit their highest figure since 2015, as over 1,500 people were executed across 15 countries in 2024, said Amnesty International today as it released its annual report on the global use of the death penalty.
According to the report, Death Sentences and Executions 2024, 1,518 executions were recorded in 2024 – the highest number since 2015 (at least 1,634) – with the majority in the Middle East. However, for the second year in a row, countries carrying out executions remained at the lowest point on record.
The known totals do not include the thousands of people believed to have been executed in China, which remains the world’s lead executioner, as well as North Korea and Viet Nam which are also believed to resort to the death penalty extensively. Ongoing crises in Palestine (State of) and Syria meant that Amnesty International could not confirm a figure.
Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were responsible for the overall rise in known executions. In total, the trio accounted for a staggering 1,380 recorded executions. Iraq almost quadrupled its executions (from at least 16 to at least 63) and Saudi Arabia doubled its yearly total (from 172 to at least 345), while Iran executed 119 more individuals than last year (from at least 853 to at least 972) – accounting for 64% of all known executions.
Death penalty laws: the trend towards abolition
There is a reason for hope. Each year, more countries abolish the death penalty in law or practice. Several UN General Assembly motions have been passed in recent years calling for a universal moratorium on executions with a view to abolition. Far more countries have abolished capital punishment than practice it; each year, executions only occur in a few countries.
What are human rights? Stay informed & take action!
Read a summary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948. For more updates and additional resources on our death penalty work, subscribe for free to our SubStack newsletter or on BlueSky.
Frequently Asked Questions
On December 11, 1962, the last execution in Canada took place at the Toronto Don Jail when Arthus Lucas and Ronald Turpin were both executed on murder charges. The last person killed by military execution under Canadian military law was Harold Pringle on 5 July 1945 in Italy.
On May 14, 1976, Mario Gauthier was sentenced to be hanged for the murder of Georges Nadeau, a painting instructor at the Cowansville Penitentiary in Quebec. The sentence was commuted when Canada abolished the death penalty for murder in Bill C-84 on July 27, 1976.
There are no crimes punishable by death in Canada. The last crimes to be punishable by death remained in the National Defence Act until December 10, 1998. However, no military executions have taken place since 1945.
From 1867 to 1976, there were 710 executions recorded in Canada. A complete listing of the death sentences and executions passed in that period was compiled by the National Archives of Canada.
No – not legally. In 2005, Canada ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This binding legal instrument prohibits countries from carrying out an execution and, by its design, has no legal means to withdraw. Furthermore, in 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that even returning a prisoner to another jurisdiction where they may face execution is a violation of the Charter of Human Rights.
The last motion to return the death penalty was debated in Canada’s parliament in 1987. It was defeated by a vote of 148 to 127. The leaders of all major parties at the time opposed the death penalty but permitted members to vote freely.
Movements against the death penalty have been around since Canada’s founding. However, several factors influenced the substantial growth in abolition around the world.
Some high-profile cases of wrongful conviction and potentially wrongful execution brought particular attention to the hazards of a legal system that can result in execution. Two cases in particular were those of Steven Truscott and Wilbert Coffin.
Steven Truscott was sentenced to death at the age of 14 in 1959. Truscott’s sentence would eventually be commuted and much later overturned in 2007. Wilbert Coffin was executed on flimsy evidence and with the suggestion that the execution was made more for political motives rather than legal ones.
At the same time, the United Kingdom was also moving towards abolition, which took place in 1969. There was similar momentum in the United States. From 1972 to 1976, the death penalty was considered unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
Other factors undoubtedly influenced abolition, including the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The subsequent development of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights restricts the death penalty in those countries where it is still used for intentional crimes causing death (i.e., murder). Today, more than two-thirds of the world has abolished the death penalty in law or practice, with over half of the world’s countries abolishing it in law. Most executions today occur in just a handful of countries.
When asked, Canadian opinion polling about the death penalty has produced varying results depending on which questions are asked. For example, “agrees with the death penalty for murder” or whether the person “wants to see a return of the death penalty.” Other factors, such as perceived levels of crime or high-profile cases, may also affect opinion polling. What’s more, opinions on the death penalty, in general, are often not realized when applied to specific cases.
In the United States, for example, to sit on a jury in a death penalty trial, jurors who are opposed to the death penalty are automatically disqualified. Despite this, just 21 death sentences were imposed in the entire United States in 2022.
Support for the death penalty in Canada in recent years has generally found a slight majority. However, these same polls have revealed that the arguments made in support have generally been debunked, misinformed or not proven.
There is no evidence showing the death penalty to have any unique deterrent effect on crime. Correlations of the homicide rate with executions indicate the opposite. There are more per capita homicides in jurisdictions with the death penalty than those without.
The death penalty is also more expensive than a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in a modern country (see the numerous studies posted by the U.S. Death Penalty Information Center for reference).
