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Colby Cosh: Liberals join Supreme Court in sticking up for mass murderers

Judges bumped up the parole hearing of an Edmonton man who killed three coworkers in 2012 by 15 years — with little pushback from Parliament

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On Tuesday morning, CBC’s Wallis Snowdon brings the latest in “Does Parliament govern Canada?” news with a short feature on a Conservative private members’ bill, Kerry Diotte’s C-243. The bill has been nicknamed “Brian’s Law” in memory of Brian Ilesic, a security guard killed in a 2012 mass murder at HUB Mall on the campus of the University of Alberta.

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A little platoon of guards were changing bills in a bank machine, not suspecting that one of their number, Travis Baumgartner, had decided to slaughter the others, grab the cash, and go on the run. He killed three of his co-workers, including 35-year-old Ilesic, and left a fourth with permanent brain injuries. Baumgartner made it to the Lynden border crossing near Langley, B.C. before getting busted with what was left of about C$400,000.

Colby Cosh: Liberals join Supreme Court in sticking up for mass murderers Back to video

This was, in other words, a crime of extreme perfidy layered on top of extreme and premeditated violence. Baumgartner violated the trust of his victims, but also the trust of his employer, the trust of the financial system and of everybody who ever depends on a bank machine, and the trust that the law itself places in armed and trained security guards. In an ideal world he would be executed on the 55-yard line of a packed football stadium. This option not being available, an Alberta judge gave him life without parole for 40 years, supposedly the harshest criminal sentence imposed on anybody since Canada’s last hangings.

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Well, faithful reader, you know where this story’s going: in 2022’s Bissonnette ruling, the Supreme Court unanimously lost its marbles and decided that judges could no longer stack up life sentences in multiple-murder cases for the purpose of delaying parole eligibility beyond 25 years. This means, effectively, that there is no marginal added punishment or deterrence for a second murder or a third in a case like Baumgartner’s, and it reels the date of his first parole hearing back from 2052 to 2037.

Here’s the thing. Diotte’s private bill doesn’t propose to adjust any of this. Bissonnette is the final word in criminal justice forever unless some federal government works up the nerve to use the notwithstanding clause. But Baumgartner, once parole-eligible, can ask for fresh parole hearings annually under the current law — hearings that inflict new pain on the Ilesic family, the other loved ones of the slain, and on the survivor of the attack, Matthew Schuman. C-243 would impose a minimum five-year period between hearings for convicted murderers.

All righty: can Parliament do this? Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, the state into which our Constitution has bonelessly slumped. Parliament can no longer determine criminal sentences as such. Any judge (trial or appellate), at any time, can find a sentence disproportionate or cruel or just plain uncool: the Criminal Code, which specifies clear sentencing ranges for each enumerated crime, is now more of a Suggestions Code in this regard. But does Parliament still have some vestigial power to adjust parole policies? Parole is not a guaranteed Charter right, and its very existence arises from statute alone.

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Well, C-243 has been through first reading, so you can read the official Liberal reply to the bill, delivered on the floor of the House in October by Jacques Ramsay, a medical doctor who is parliamentary secretary to the public safety minister. Ramsay, it turns out, could not speak highly enough of C-243. He called it “an important piece of legislation.” He observed that “Repeated applications for parole force families to constantly relive the worst moments of their lives, compounding their suffering indefinitely.” He said “We have a duty in the House to listen to these victims and take action” and that the “premise” of the bill is “a necessary measure.”

“That being said….” Uh oh! Ramsay warned that the bill is certain to be challenged in court if enacted, and may not “pass the Charter test,” which of course changes every few weeks. This is the cue for Ramsay to begin preaching the familiar Liberal litany: offenders have to earn parole, and if they get it they are still technically serving a sentence, with only their mere bodies set free; and rehabilitation is super important, you know, and the opportunity for parole is a big part of providing incentives for that, in order that our penologists can “address the root causes of … criminal behaviour, such as substance abuse or mental health issues, and develop a credible release plan with community support measures.” He failed to suggest that sometimes the “root cause” of a crime is that a broke guy realizes he can make off with nearly a half-million if he’s willing to kill a few co-workers.

The member concluded by suggesting that “further analysis (of C-243) is needed” before it can become law, even though he really does agree that it’s the best idea since chicken parmesan. It goes without saying that nowhere in the written Charter will you find anything remotely resembling a principle that parole hearings must be annual, and for everybody, rather than quinquennial. (Again, it does not, in fact, specify that parole must exist.) It’s 2026, and the document is full of invisible ink, and judges are adding more every day.

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