That was on July 21, 2011. And the irony was likely lost on De Young and his executioners that, only days before this execution was filmed in the interest of scrutinizing lethal injections, Canada was entering its thirty-fifth year without the death penalty.

On July 14, 1976, the House of Commons voted to strike capital punishment from the Canadian Criminal Code. The road to abolition had been a long one. The first time an MP had introduced an anti-capital punishment bill was 1914, and several more such bills would be shot down over the following decades. After 120 years, and 710 executions, Canada’s capital punishment laws were pretty well-ingrained into judicial society.

It wasn’t until 1956 that Parliament even considered removing the death penalty as a punishment for youth offenders. But by the end of that decade, politicians and the public alike had begun to question the humanity of capital punishment and its effectiveness as a deterrent. Anti-death penalty protesters had started picketing executions, serving as foils to the rabid crowds who had once gleefully swarmed public hangings.

As resistance to capital punishment grew, the death penalty was removed from several crimes, including rape and some murder charges. By 1963, it had become de facto policy for the federal government to commute death sentences and, in 1967, a moratorium was placed on capital punishment for all crimes except the murder of on-duty police officers and prison guards. Nine years later, total abolition was made official. The vote on the hotly contested bill, which had prompted Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau himself to take the floor and make a plea for abolition, transcended partisan lines, and split Canada’s MPs 131 to 124.

Canada, post-death penalty

Thirty-five years on from that landmark legislation, and nearly 50 years after the last executions were carried out, debate over the death penalty in Canada still rages on. Public opinion has almost always favoured the death penalty in theory, if not in actual practice. A poll conducted by a private research firm this past January found that 66 percent of respondents support capital punishment in some cases, though only 41 percent of Canadians surveyed actually want to see the death penalty reinstated. Those figures are still astonishing considering how long Canada has been without capital punishment, and that the only attempt to reinstate it was defeated in 1987, 148 to 127, an even greater margin than the one in the original abolition vote.

Is there an empirical reason for the continued support of the death penalty, or the need for harsher sentences in Canada? The numbers would suggest not. Canadian murder rates have been on a steady decline since their peak in the mid-1970’s, the years leading up to abolition. As of 2009, the murder rate was at its lowest in 40 years. There has never been any conclusive evidence that abolishing the death penalty directly results in lower murder rates, but the trend debunks the theory that capital punishment is necessary to keeping murder rates low. What’s more, according to Amnesty International, the conviction rates for first-degree murder cases doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent, within ten years of abolition, the implication being that the high stakes of capital punishment actually got in the way of justice.

And yet support for the death penalty remains. Amongst the cohort of Canadians who believe in capital punishment is Prime Minister Stephen Harper who, during an interview with CBC earlier this year, said he “think[s] there are times where capital punishment is appropriate.”

Although the PM also insisted he has no intentions of trying to reinstate capital punishment, his remarks sparked a minor furor during the recent election, as members of the opposition suggested that a Conservative majority would push the death penalty back into the lawbooks. But the most notable controversy surrounding the PM and his stance on capital punishment has been over the case of a Canadian fighting his own death sentence in the United States.

A Canadian on death row

In 1999, Alberta-born Stanley Faulder was put to death in Texas, becoming the first Canadian in almost 50 years to be executed south of the border. In the run-up to his death, the Jean Chrétien government tried to have Faulder’s sentence commuted, but the appeal was rejected by Texas’s then-governor, George W. Bush. Today, with another Canadian facing the death penalty in the States, the government is less interested in helping.

Ronald Allen Smith, of Red Deer, Alberta, has been on death row in Montana since 1983. His death sentence has been overturned three times and, each time, he has been resentenced with the same outcome: death by lethal injection. Just as they did in Stanely Faulder’s case, the Chrétien government went to bat for Smith. Throughout the early years of his appeals, Canadian officials had stayed in constant contact with Smith’s council, and made a formal request for clemency on his behalf in 1997.

Clemency requests for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries had been standard government policy at the time. But Harper’s Conservatives, who took power in 2006, changed that policy, announcing that they would not seek clemency for multiple murderers convicted in democratic states. They withdrew their support for Smith in late 2007, prompting Smith and his lawyers to appeal to the Canadian Federal Court. A judge there determined that the government had to follow the old policy until a suitable replacement was enacted, and Harper finally complied, and the Canadian government resumed its talks with Montana officials. Smith has currently been granted a stay of execution while he fights a civil court battle against lethal injections, which he argues are unconstitutional.

Looking ahead

Thirty-five years after it abolished capital punishment, Canada continues to soldier on without it, in spite of the opinions of 41 percent of its populace, and even the personal opinion of its prime minister. The U.S., meanwhile, continues to hand out death sentences in all but 14 states.

But American capital punishment laws are being challenged, as some people look to revive the brief ban on executions that existed between 1972 and 1976.

The execution of Andrew Grant DeYoung, was filmed in order to determine the effectiveness of the drug pentobarbital in sedating condemned criminals during lethal injections. The video will be used in the appeal of another inmate on Georgia’s death row who, much like Ronald Allen Smith, is fighting his death sentence on the grounds that execution constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

These men’s appeals will bring before American courts the same question that was put to Canada’s legislators 35 years ago. Is the death penalty fair and just in a liberal democratic country? At the end of that long debate, it was Pierre Trudeau who, as was so often the case, provided the most eloquent, definitive answer:

“I do not deny that society has the right to punish a criminal, and the right to make the punishment fit the crime, but to kill a man for punishment alone is an act of revenge. Nothing else. Some would prefer to call it retribution because that word has a nicer sound. But the meaning is the same. Are we, as a society, so lacking in respect for ourselves, so lacking in hope for human betterment, so socially bankrupt that we are ready to accept state violence as our penal philosophy? … My primary concern here is not compassion for the murderer. My concern is for the society which adopts vengeance as an acceptable motive for its collective behaviour. If we make that choice, we will snuff out some of the boundless hope and confidence in ourselves and other people, which has marked our maturing as a free people.”

This week the Green Party launched an anti-attack ad criticizing other parties for their sensational advertisements. The meta attack ad aims to benefit from Canadians’ supposed distaste for ad hominem vilification and mudslinging.

It’s commonly believed that the first attack ad was the iconic 1964 “Daisy Girl” commericial, which threatens American voters with the prospect of nuclear war (another long-held American political tradition). Attack ads returned in 1988 with the George HW Bush “revolving door” spot suggesting a candidate’s prison reforms led to an increase in violent crime.

That same year featured Canada’s NAFTA election, in which the Liberal party ran ads suggesting Canadian sovereignty was at stake. You can read about it in a CBC interactive feature documenting 10 prominent attack ads from the English-speaking world.

A 1993 Kim Campbell ad mocked Jean Chretien’s facial Bell’s palsy. Political figures decried the ad as “political desperation” and “totally inappropriate and in poor taste.” It’s a shame the same terms apply to today’s political discourse.

Conservative Senator Doug Finley, a “genius of political attack ads,” was interviewed by the Globe and Mail last month. Responding to those who believe negative ads turn off voters, his response: “Politics is an adversarial business. Kellogg’s doesn’t make their money by telling everybody General Foods are a great product.”

There’s little consensus on the effectiveness of attack ads. A 2007 psychological study suggests that although negative political ads make us want to turn away, we remember their negative messages. Some studies suggest negative and positive ads both have the same effectiveness.

Attack ads have made a lot of inroads south of the border. A study of the 2008 US presidential campaigns found that almost all McCain ads were “negative,” with many focusing on Obama’s personality over his politics. It’s gotten to the point where the hilarious “demon sheep” ad was actually used to sway voters, before it went viral and generated a spinoff.

In the past five years, attack ads have gained worldwide prominence.

An ad from the 2006 Mexican election compares one candidate with Hugo Chavez. Australia, a country with some really broken political discourse, saw the rise of attack ads in last year’s national election — including one monumentally stupid commercial.

Although such ads remain uncommon in UK elections, there’s been a recent increase in Europhobic ads — the word works for both definitions — attacking EU policy by airing stereotypes of continental neighbours.

TV ads in the 2006 São Paolo mayoral race speculated on a candidate’s supposed homosexuality. The tactic is eerily similar to a homophobic Tamil-language radio ad that aired in Toronto’s recent mayoral election.

The rollin’-in-dough Conservative party financed comparatively civil attack ads with funds allegedly arranged through the now infamous “in and out scandal” (that ironically focused on accountability and transparency). While it’s tempting to pin attack ads on one party or political persuasion, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP take part too.

These ads have repercussions on our democracy as a whole. In the 2008 election, the Conservatives made the daft choice of posting their pooping puffin ad online. The ad itself was intellectually (and otherwise) insulting. But more troubling: the Toronto Star ran a frontpage story about it.

Rick Mercer’s 2009 rant on the issue makes some pretty poignant points (and his parody ads are pretty funny, too). Attacks ads are bad for democracy. Instead of helping us debate serious issues as a society, it creates poisons our discourse with character assassination, the politics of fear, and a culture of sound bites over substance.

Nine months later, you’ll find Nelson busy planning ways to feed his new-found “obsession” with French-Canadian culture. Nelson credits the program for his change of heart. However, he’s not too impressed with Katimavik now. Like many, Nelson’s concern centres on recent “drastic changes” to the program. Starting this year, Katimavik is taking fewer volunteers, working in fewer communities and, for the first time, charging its participants.

Admittedly, Katimavik has been on the brink before. Launched in 1977 by Pierre Trudeau’s government, Katimavik was originally designed to solve Canada’s unity problem. Groups of youth from across Canada were cycled through three different communities, where they worked at non-profit organizations, lived together, and learned about the country’s cultural variety. Katimavik received its first blow in 1986, when Brian Mulroney’s government completely dismantled it. Jean Chrétien restarted it in 1994.

The program now has a three-year funding agreement with the Conservative government. Currently in its first year, the agreement will eventually cut Katimavik’s budget by a quarter, resulting in a yearly $4.7 million yearly shortfall. “Katimavik is certainly not as strong, and it is certainly not as able to create powerful Canadian citizens the way it could,” says Justin Trudeau, the opposition critic for youth, citizenship and immigration, and a former chair of the Katimavik board of directors.

The money isn’t the only thing that’s been cut. In order to balance its budget, the new funding agreement has forced Katimavik to cut back in many ways: it has reduced the number of participants to 1,000, down from 4,000 in the early ’80s; the program length has been cut from nine months to six; and, instead of being free, participants now must pay fees of up to $535, $350 of which is refunded upon successful completion of the program.

Trudeau doesn’t like the new fee structure. “It was something that was supposed to be accessible to all young Canadians,” he says, “regardless of social or economic status, regardless of education.”

Publicly, Katimavik has stated the cuts aren’t all bad, as they now have secure fiscal support, and are encouraged to diversify funding and look for new financial partners. But some former participants, such as Nelson, aren’t buying it: “I think we are seeing the beginning of the end for Katimavik, honestly.” For Trudeau, the changes are just another step away from his father’s vision. “Katimavik continues to fail to live up to it,” he says. “We haven’t had the capacity in this program to respond to the demand, to give opportunities to the tens of thousands of young people who would love to do this program.”

Clearly, it was not what Martin had hoped for. But for the rest of us, it might not be a bad thing. Although Canada has seen its share of difficulties with minority governments (think of Joe Clark’s short-lived Tory government in 1979), a lot of progressive legislation has come out of a centrist government forced to lean on the left for a little support.

Below, we’ve compared the legacies of Lester B. Pearson’s minority government, which sat for two terms from 1963 to 1968, with Jean Chrétien’s majority reign of power from 1993 to 2003.

Education Pearson created the Canada Student Loans Program in 1964 to make post-secondary education possible for lower-income families, providing eligible students with low-interest loans.

Chrétien cut $4 billion from federal funding for social services, including education. Thanks to Chrétien’s changes, the National Student Loan Service Centre, banks and even the government itself will now report delinquent grads to private debt collectors and take legal action if they default on their loans.

Medicare Pearson introduced universal medicare in 1968, due in no small part to the urging of Tommy Douglas and the New Democratic Party.

Chrétien was soft on two-tier health care, allowing private MRI, CT, orthopedic and ophthalmology clinics to grow across Canada.

Military Pearson resisted US pressure to participate in the Vietnam War and spoke out against the bombing campaign, angering then-president Lyndon Johnson.

Chrétien ordered troops to join the coalition to fight in Afghanistan immediately after September 11. Operation Apollo brought soldiers, patrols, frigates and other military equipment to the war against terrorism in the Middle East.

Like any other patriotic, cynical Canadian, I love to see   arrogant politicians get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. But surely I wasn’t the only one left yawning after weeks of banner headlines on the Liberals’ sponsorship scandal.

But was it really the most sleazy, offensive, wasteful and criminal thing the federal government did during Jean Chrétien’s three terms in office? Not even close. Clearly, the only reason this particular affair got so nauseatingly much air time was because it jibed nicely with the ideological predisposition of the corporate media and the right-wing opposition—namely, that the main function of government is to steal money from taxpayers and give it to their friends.

There are lots of other examples of the willingness of politicians to waste taxpayers’ money and line their friends’ pockets. There are lots of scandals out there that sucked up far larger sums of government cash than sponsorships ever did.

It’s just that, in these other cases, the friends getting their pockets lined are the rich and powerful of the land—the ones who also own newspapers and fund conservative parties. So these abuses don’t get nearly the attention—from the media, from the opposition, even from the Auditor General—that a bit of baksheesh for Liberal bagmen generated. And in contrast to the pious pledges of a beleaguered Paul Martin to usher in a new era of financial integrity in Ottawa, these other scandals are treated as water under the bridge.

So in case I am ever appointed Auditor General (not much risk of that—I can’t keep track of my grocery money), here are my five favourite financial abuses perpetrated by the federal Liberals since 1993. These aren’t just things the government did that I disagree with. They are programs or policies that were decidedly dishonest, shady and manipulative, and through which Ottawa delivered tens of billions of dollars to friends in high places, never coming clean to taxpayers about what was going on.

The total cost of each scandal on my list is symbolized by little bags of money. Each bag represents $100 million—the maximum unaccounted value of sponsorship funds over the whole 1997–2001 period, before the program was reined in. If they were really after missing bags of money, the Auditor General, the media and the opposition should have been sniffing around in some of these closets. But then, maybe that isn’t the point.

THE EI SURPLUS Workers in Canada pay two percent of their first $39,000 in wages into the Employment Insurance system, supplemented by a slightly larger contribution from their bosses. It’s a regressive tax, since income above $39,000 isn’t taxed. Even this would be okay if the money were used for its intended purpose: paying benefits to working stiffs when they are laid off. Problem is, thanks to repeated cuts in benefits, most unemployed workers (close to 60 percent at last count) don’t qualify for benefits. The result is a huge but artificial EI surplus every year since 1994 that has now reached $50 billion in total. The government says it is a cushion for EI payouts in a future recession, but its own actuary says it needs only $15 billion at most for that. At any rate, Paul Martin has pledged that his government will never run a deficit (even one resulting from EI payouts during a recession), and this implies he plans to hold on to the EI surplus forever. The Liberals used this money to fund other priorities (especially debt repayment and tax cuts). It was stolen from the pockets of unemployed Canadians as surely as any crooked ad agency skimmed cream off a sponsorship contract. Total Scandal: $40 billion excess surplus since 1994.

CAPITAL GAINS If you make money flipping burgers at McDonald’s, you have to declare every grease-covered dollar on your tax return. But if you make money by flipping stocks and bonds, guess what? You only declare half, thanks to the “partial inclusion” of capital gains. Since the wealthy (by definition) own most financial assets in Canada (especially those not sheltered in RRSP accounts, for which the capital gains exemption is meaningless), they pocket most of the value of this strange tax loophole. Incredibly, almost half the value of the exemption is claimed by those 100,000 lucky Canadians (0.5 percent of taxpayers) who earn over $250,000 per year—there’s no other loophole more targeted by the ultra-rich. When Paul Martin doubled the exemption to 50 percent (from 25 percent) in 2000, his officials estimated it would cost the government $600 million in lost taxes by 2004. But the cost of the exemption has actually ballooned by $2.5 billion (to $4.5 billion per year today from $2 billion in 1999). In other words, this measure is costing Ottawa almost $2 billion more per year than Paul Martin said it would. That’s a cost overrun that makes the BC fast ferries project ($500 million over budget) look like a marvel of fiscal probity. So why does Martin continue to enjoy a reputation as a tight fiscal steward? Total Scandal: $4.5 billion per year in lost personal and corporate taxes.

INCOME TRUSTS There’s a gaping loophole in Canada’s tax system that allows businesses to avoid paying corporate income taxes. If it restructures as an “income trust,” a corporation becomes non-taxable—even if its real operations do not change a bit. In recent years, financiers have marketed the concept of trust conversion to businesses ranging from oil producers to hotel chains to the Yellow Pages. Every new conversion generates millions in new commissions for Bay Street brokers—but costs the government even more in lost taxes. Income trusts are now worth $90 billion, and are growing fast. Lost taxes are valued at $400 million per year for the federal government (and more for the provinces), and are growing just as fast. Yet government looks the other way as the boondoggle continues. Federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale proposed some timid limits in his 2004 budget on income trust investments by tax-sheltered pension funds (a stance that would have only slightly slowed the future growth of the tax drain). Bay Street protested, and Goodale backed off. The power of high-rollers to preserve this rich, bizarre trough provides an insightful lesson for all of us in how Canadian democracy works. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians can protest loudly for years to have EI monies spent on their designated purpose (namely, EI benefits for unemployed people) to little avail. Yet all it takes is a quick, powerful twist of the backroom screws by Canada’s financial elite to send our finance minister running for cover. Total Scandal: $400 million per year in lost taxes, and growing.

BUDGET SURPLUSES The Liberals crow about how much they have reduced Canada’s public debt since 1997, when the budget was balanced. Since then, the government repaid $54 billion in debt through six successive budget surpluses. The debt ratio declined from more than 70 percent of GDP in 1994 to less than 40 percent at present (second-best in the G7). But five-sixths of that decline would have occurred anyway, thanks to economic growth and balanced budgets. Even with no debt repayment, the debt burden would be 45 percent of GDP today (still second-best in the G7). What’s scandalous about repaying public debt? About $3 billion per year of this debt reduction was “honest”: that’s how much the government sets aside each year in a “contingency fund,” explicitly earmarked for debt repayment unless required for some fiscal emergency. All the rest, however, was engineered through phony and manipulative accounting tricks. Finance Canada consistently underestimates Ottawa’s revenue; it also overestimates its costs. The end result is a budget so padded with wiggle room that an “unexpectedly large” surplus is inevitable. Then the finance minister gets to stand up in the House of Commons, to roaring applause from his backbench, and announce that—yet again—the government has exceeded its budgetary targets (thanks to phony fiscal projections, not tight fiscal control). The result: Ottawa allocated $36 billion more to debt reduction than it budgeted for. Convenient, isn’t it, that debt repayment is a fiscal goal that ranks near the top of Bay Street’s agenda (mostly because of its bullish effect on bond prices), but doesn’t rank in the top 10 priorities for average Canadians. I guess that’s why Ottawa had to lie about what it was doing with the $36 billion. Thanks to those lies, today our debt load is 40 percent of GDP (not 45 percent). Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Canadians have to boil the drinking water that comes out of their taps. Total Scandal: $36 billion in “unplanned” debt repayment between 1997 and 2003.

PRIVATIZATIONS In the world of IPOs, a “successful” privatization occurs when all the new shares are snapped up by drooling investors who subsequently bid up the company’s share price. This generates trading gains and commissions for the brokers, profits for the investors and lots of good publicity for the government. But does this mean the privatization is “successful” from the point of view of the taxpayers who used to own the company? Hardly—especially when government deliberately undervalues the companies it is selling off, in hopes of generating this sort of feeding frenzy in the financial markets. There’s growing evidence that Ottawa has sold off many prize assets for billions less than they were truly worth. Think of CN Rail, for example. Sold for $2 billion in 1995, it is now worth $15 billion on the stock market. Sure, Paul Tellier’s ruthless layoffs and cost-cutting explain some of that rise in value, but CN’s share price was soaring within hours of the privatization—not because of Tellier’s magic, but because savvy investors recognized a fire-sale when they saw one. The sale of the air navigation system to NavCanada was similarly rigged: Even the Auditor General estimated that taxpayers received $1 billion less than they should have. Petro-Canada is a more complex case; it was some years before its post-privatization market value took off. But even this later success can be traced in part to profits from mega-projects (like Hibernia) whose initial development was underwritten by the company when it was a Crown Corporation. The gurus of privatization argue government can’t manage economic resources efficiently. But what’s efficient about selling those assets off for less than their true value, just to make the privatizers look good? Total Scandal: At least $5 billion from undervalued privatizations.

There are oodles more cases of government waste and corruption waiting to be uncovered by a forensic accountant with a social conscience. In every case, the main beneficiaries were the wealthy and the privileged: investors, brokers and the high-income earners who capture most of the benefit from tax cuts. In every case, the government’s actions were disguised by manipulative accounting and cronyistic politics.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for a public outcry when these abuses are brought to light. Because when government waste and corruption benefits the rich and powerful of the land, it’s truly a “dog bites man” story.

Jim Stanford is an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers.