Our constitution places limits on the state’s power to punish. The death penalty. Torture. Corporal punishment. Castration. Lobotomization. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has protected people from these forms of punishment because they are an unacceptable affront to basic human dignity and our value for human life.
CCLA appeared before the Supreme Court in R v Bissonnette to argue that the imposition of a life sentence of imprisonment, with no chance of release, is similarly an affront to basic human dignity. People change. Rehabilitation is possible. All people hold, at all times, their fundamental humanity
