Responding to public pressure organized by supporters of Robert Latimer to have the federal government grant a royal prerogative of mercy negating his mandatory 10-year sentence for the murder of his daughter Tracy, a Nova Scotia MP presented a private member’s bill opposing the granting of leniency to killers of people with disabilities.

Wendy Lill (NDP, Dartmouth) presented Bill M-372 on Oct. 26, which reads, “That, in the opinion of this House, the government should recognize and uphold, in its treatment of requests for the royal prerogative of mercy, the principle that the lives of all Canadians, including the lives of persons with disabilities, must be treated, and be perceived to be treated, equally under the law.” Lill said granting mercy to Latimer would discriminate against people with disabilities by demeaning the value of their lives.

The bill was not deemed votable but was discussed by five MPs: Lill, Jason Kenney (CA, Calgary Southeast), Grant McNally (CA, Dewdney-Alouette), Lynn Myers (Lib, Waterloo-Wellington) and Karen Kraft Sloan (Lib, York North). All but Myers, who provided the official government response by outlining the history and workings of the royal prerogative of mercy, spoke in favour of the bill.

Kenney made a spirited defence of the right to life, saying, “We cannot and must not make distinctions between human persons and their right to life.” Calling the sanctity of human life, the “first principle” of our legal system, he said it would be a violation of the “premise upon which a society founded on the rule of law exists” if it were permissible to “take the life of individuals because of the circumstances of their life, be it their ethnicity, religion, age, social or economic condition or their physical and mental condition.”

Noting that the Constitution recognizes the supremacy of God, Kenney said our rights “are not rights granted by the state, by a legislature or by a court, nor are they rights that can be abrogated by any of those institutions. Rather, these are rights that are inherent and inalienable in the human person. No man, no parliament, no father, even a father in great emotional turmoil and confusion, has the right to suspend and to violate the inalienable dignity of the human person.”

Lill, who has a son with a disability, said persons with disabilities and their families and caregivers have watched the Latimer case wind its way through the courts “holding their breath, holding their hearts really, to hear with what severity the highest court of the land would judge the murder of one of society’s most vulnerable, because the severity of the judgement would send a clear message out to all Canadians about the seriousness of committing a crime against a person with a disability.”

Lill praised the Supreme Court of Canada Latimer decision of Jan. 18, 2001 which recognized the equal protection rights guaranteed by the Charter to those with disabilities. She condemned an earlier court decision by a Saskatchewan judge who sentenced Latimer to serve just two years instead of the mandatory 10-year sentence for second degree murder. She said, “That is about 20 per cent of what a normal sentence should be,” creating a precedent where “the life of a person with a disability can be discounted like a T-shirt at Zellers.”

Lill said the federal cabinet must resist the lobbying efforts to grant Latimer an early release from prison. Lill noted that parliamentarians must uphold the law and that the law “is quite devoid of loopholes for murder.” To create a loophole for Latimer would be a clear signal that the law “undervalued Tracy Latimer.”

Kenney said he regrets the public support Latimer has and the belief that he was “morally justified if not morally obliged … to have killed his severely disabled daughter.” Kenney said cabinet should never “grant clemency to someone who has alienated the inviolable right to life of a person because of his or her mental or physical condition.” He said to do so would call into question “our right to claim we are a civilized society.”

McNally summarized the issue quite nicely: “Either we believe that all life is equal and there is an inalienable right to life by all or we do not.”

Lill has been a lonely voice within her NDP caucus (which includes noisy euthanasia proponent Svend Robinson) standing up for those vulnerable to so-called mercy killing. Earlier this year, Lill opposed the petition campaign by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in favour of Latimer’s early release, saying, “I do not understand how an organization which uses the motto of ‘The freedom of no one is safe unless the freedom of everyone is safe’ does not understand the inherent danger in saying there should be exceptions in our justice system available for ‘compassionate’ fathers who kill their daughters.”