Why Canada can’t jail terrorists for life

On 29 January 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette had breakfast, browsed the internet, had dinner with his parents, went to a mosque in Quebec city, and started shooting worshippers as they were praying. When his rifle jammed he pulled out a pistol and kept shooting. He first murdered two brothers by shooting them in the head, then murdered four more men in cold blood. Twenty-five worshippers were shot that day; more would have died had not Azzedine Soufiane, a greengrocer and Bissonnette’s final victim, tackled the attacker at the cost of his own life.

You might well think that a man like Bissonnette, who murdered six of his fellow citizens out of pure religious and racial hatred, has forfeited any claim to spend the remainder of his natural life in anything but a cage. And that is what, until recently, Canadian law allowed. The courts were able to sentence someone to 150 years’ in prison, or a minimum of 25 years without parole per life taken.