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CANADA

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Death penalty call
masks real crimes

With the federal Tories back in the saddle, the clamor for a
return to capital punishment is having a predictable revival.

It’s a noisy outcry the rednecks and vigilantes are conducting
to seduce fair-minded Canadians into endorsing the govern-
ment’s right to execute those convicted of murder.

What we are told by advocates of the death penalty is that this
would act as an effective deterrent to potential murderers. Yet no
one has ever produced a shred of evidence to prove that point.

“‘The people now calling for the return of capital punishment
have not suggested that capital punishment would have prevent-
ed these killings,’’ said Claude Thomson, head of the 32,000-
member Canadian Bar Association, Sept. 20.

But it is exactly that impression (without proof) that is left with
the public as promoters of the death penalty, use the murders of
three Metro Toronto area policemen in recent weeks as grist for
their campaign mill. It neither assuages the grief of families and
co-workers, nor does it help to secure a more just society, to try
to connect these deaths with the lack of a death penalty.

Thomson, who argues against capital punishment, goes on: ‘“‘It
doesn’t seem to me people should lose their lives depending on
the skill of a lawyer and the narrow choice a jury might have to
make.”

And that’s the kind of point that makes sense. Of the killers in
these three cases, one committed suicide immediately afterward,
one engaged in a shootout and was killed by other police, and one
is at large. Does anyone really see how a capital punishment law
would have altered any of that?

Get at the Causes

What is required to change Canadian society from a course of
violence and disregard of human values to one of security and
respect for people’s rights is more fundamental than just okaying
alaw to execute a given number of people each year — some later
to be proven innocent.

When the death penalty was abolished in Canada by an act of
parliament on July 14, 1976, by a vote of 130 to 124, all the New
Democrats and most of the Liberals, joined by Joe Clark and
aminority of Tories supported abolition. A Tory amendment that
would have retained the death penalty for murderers of police-
men and prison guards was defeated by 132 to 117 on an earlier
vote, July 8.

‘*See?’’ say the noosemen, and now look what’s happened.
But their taunts add no validity to their eagerness to hang some-
one. A reformed penal system with adequate, justifiable senten-
cing and, where possible, rehabilitation, is one step that is need-
ed, but that fails to look at causes.

During the parliamentary debate on the abolition law (Bill
C-84), then Prime Minister Trudeau, a lawyer of long standing,
asked eloquently: ‘‘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 vengeance as our penal
philosophy?

‘*Show me the evidence that capital punishment anywhere, at
any time, has deterred other people from committing murder . . .
The evidence does not exist, either in the Canadian experience or
in the experience of any other jurisdiction.”

Consider the System

The Communist Party of Canada, in its opposition to capital
punishment challenges those who see the death penalty as a
solution to violent crime, to consider the system we live in.

Present-day capitalism, wedding state power and the corporate
monopolies, is violent by its exploitive, imperialist nature,
whether it’s the exploitation of man by man, nation by nation, or
the multi-national corporations’ violent exploitation of whole
sectors of the globe. It is led, violently, by U.S. imperialism in
world-wide intimidation and military bullying.

These effects are felt in Canada, aided and abetted by the ruling

class here who offer a generation of youth nothing but useless-
ness ina useless capitalist circus. The system will not and cannot,
as presently operating, provide jobs for the 1.5 million enforced
jobless.
: Ruining education, ruining family life, robbing the people of
housing, generating poverty, the system’s rulers try to balance it
off by serving up pornography and bestiality as ‘‘culture’’, using
them to keep hatred bubbling just below the surface. This hatred
is designed to be used against other races, other ways of life and
— against those who explode into violence in such conditions and
commit crimes against the representatives of the ruling class.

It is this brainwashing that results in large numbers of other-
wise rational Canadians joining in the scream to hang the handful
who commit individual crimes, while those who commit the mass
crimes of imperialism take their spoils.

Capital punishment is not what is needed to cure Canada’s ills.
What is needed is a fundamental change in the political and social
system.

— J.L.

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—

University of Toronto students made sure they
brought in plenty of provisions when they occupied
the offices of the dean of arts and science. The

ws

students want the dean to publicly protest govern-
ment underfunding which is forcing them to queue
up outside classrooms to hear lectures.

Students protest crowding

By PAUL OGRESKO

On Sept. 20, University of To-
ronto students began a 24-hour
occupation of the offices of the
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences. The sit-in at Dean
Armstrong’s office was to protest
gross underfunding which has led
to the overcrowding of classes,
courses being totally eliminated,
and qualified students being
turned away from needed
courses.

Underfunding has created
alarming conditions in the
department. In one fourth-year
course, in a classroom meant to
hold 20 students, 100 showed up.
In another course, 40 students
found themselves crammed into a
classroom designed to hold 20.
Out of 46 fourth-year courses of-
fered last year, this year 21 had
been dropped from the cur-
riculum.

The overcrowding of classes
has led to students queuing up
outside the doors of some classes
to hear a lecture. Professors have
been giving personal interviews to
students and arbitrarily deciding
who can and who cannot attend
classes. Qualified students are
often denied courses which are
prerequisites to a degree.

The occupation has shown the
administration that students who
share the same concerns have the
ability to organize and protest
these conditions. Fiona Kieth, a
member of the ad hoc committee
of students which staged the sit-
in, said, ‘‘We can stand up and be
counted.””

List of Demands

The students presented the
Dean witha list of demands which
included: he go on record as
admitting that the measures so far
adopted by the administration are
inadequate and are impediments
for students attempting to acquire
a quality education. Also among
the demands greater student par-
ticipation in the policy making
process and in faculty hiring, and
that there be an extension in the
deadline for picking classes for
arts and sciences and political sci-
ence students.

The occupation of the Dean’s
office is evidence of a growing
student awareness as more stu-
dents are victimized by the On-
tario government cutbacks in
university funding. ‘““‘We want to
bring attention to the issue of
underfounding.”’ Kieth said, “‘to

make students and the general
public aware of what is going on in
the universities.”

Universities across the country
have become targets for govern-
ment austerity programs. In
British Columbia, as a result of
cutbacks by the Socred govern-
ment, the University of British
Columbia announced, in early
1984, that only the top 3,250
applicants would be admitted
regardless of how many students
met the basic admission require-
ments. This year Ontario Educa-
tion Minister Bette Stephenson,
stepped back from a _ long-
standing government commit-
ment that all qualified students
would receive post-secondary
education.

Government actions have been
backed in a recently released
book, The Great Brain Robbery
by Canadian professors; David
Bercuson of the University of
Calgary, Robert Bothwell of the
University of Toronto, and J.L.
Granatstein of York University.
The book is more than a plea fora .
return to the days of university’
elitism, it may well become the
bible of educational policy for
conservative governments in this
age of austerity.

Liberal System

According to the authors the
crisis in Canada’s universities is
not due to government cutbacks
but a “‘liberal’’ system that allows
too many ‘‘unqualified’’ students
the opportunity to enter univer-
sity. In addition to proposing
stringent entrance requirements
which would virtually close the
doors of Canada’s universities to

those of a working class or minor-
ity background, the authors also
complain of too much student
control in the running of admin-
istrative policies.

“The all-pervasive student in-
fluence that exists today should
be terminated. Democracy is a
fine thing, but too much democ-
racy is anarchy.”

The authors go on to say: “‘It is
an axiom that anything worth-
while is difficult to get. That is
why banks put money in vaults. It
is no trick to get hold of things that
have no value and that, of course,
is what makes them valueless. So,
too, with a university education.”’

Such arguments are increas-
ingly becoming the reasoning of
the various provincial ministries
of education.

It is an argument the students
who occupied Dean Armstrong’s
office could not disagree more
with. ‘‘Universities are not too
accessible,’’ stated Kieth, ‘‘they
are not accessible enough. That
kind of argument is their way of
passing the buck. The provincial
government has a very backward
way of looking at education. It is
simply not a priority with them.”

The occupation ended at noon,
Sept. 21. By the end of negotia-
tions with the students, Dean
Armstrong was willing to come
out publicly to say that there was
underfunding. The students also
won one week extension for
picking classes.

The Dean said he was in favor
of greater student input in
“‘principle”’ but not in the hiring
process.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 3, 1984 5

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