Originally published in the Globe & Mail on July 9, 2026.
A new poll published in June indicates that public support for reinstating capital punishment for murder now stands at 60 per cent.
At a police gala during the Ontario provincial election February campaign in 2025, Premier Doug Ford told the audience what he’d like to see happen to home invaders. “God forbid they kill an innocent person. I don’t even go 25 years. I send ’em right to sparky.” This not-so-subtle reference to the electric chair was later described by a Progressive Conservative Party spokesperson as a “poor-taste joke.”
Courtesy of Britain, the colonial overlord that exported its criminal justice system to all its overseas possessions, death by hanging was entrenched as the ultimate punishment for odious crimes long before Canada became a country in 1867. So, although historically inaccurate in the Canadian context, the Premier’s words serve as a stark reminder of the Canadian public’s ambivalence toward the death penalty, which was outlawed in this country 50 years ago.
Battle lines between the pro- and anti-capital-punishment camps were drawn very early on, and little has changed over the years.
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