Grief is not a policy platform. When the parents of a victim from the HUB mall shooting demand a rewrite of Canada’s parole eligibility laws, they are acting out of a raw, visceral pain that every human can understand. But compassion for victims does not equal sound public policy. In fact, the push to extend parole eligibility from 25 years to something more punitive is a classic example of "legislating by emotion"—a practice that feels good in a press release but fails every metric of systemic efficacy.
The "lazy consensus" here is that longer sentences equal safer streets. It's a comfortable lie. It suggests that if we just lock someone away for 40 years instead of 25, the universe somehow balances its scales. It doesn’t. Revenge is a finite resource; justice is an ongoing social contract.
The Illusion of Deterrence
We need to stop pretending that a 20-year-old with a gun is conducting a cost-benefit analysis of parole eligibility dates before pulling the trigger. The "deterrence" argument is the first casualty of reality. Hardened criminals and those in the grip of psychotic breaks or ideological fervors do not check the Criminal Code for sentencing updates.
Research consistently shows that the certainty of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than the severity of the punishment. By the time a judge is handing down a life sentence for a triple homicide at the University of Alberta, the system has already failed. Extending the wait for a parole hearing from 25 to 40 years doesn't prevent the next HUB mall shooting; it only increases the bill for the taxpayer to house an aging inmate.
The Math of Incarceration
Let’s talk about the "battle scars" of the legal system. I have watched provincial and federal budgets get swallowed whole by the Corrections Service of Canada. It costs roughly $120,000 per year to house a federal inmate in a maximum-security facility. If we move the goalposts on parole, we are essentially committing to a multi-million dollar geriatric care plan for people who, by the age of 60 or 70, pose a statistical risk to society that is near zero.
Criminology 101: Crime is a young man's game. The "aging out" phenomenon is one of the most consistent data points in social science. As men age, their testosterone drops, their impulsivity fades, and their physical capability to commit violent acts diminishes. Keeping a 65-year-old man behind bars because of a crime he committed at 22 isn't public safety—it's expensive theater.
Parole is Not a Get Out of Jail Free Card
The biggest misconception being peddled by advocates for harsher sentencing is that "parole eligibility" means "release." This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the process.
- Eligibility is merely the date a prisoner can ask for a hearing.
- The Parole Board of Canada is not a charity. They deny thousands of applications every year.
- Life Means Life in Canada. Even if a person is granted parole, they are on parole for the rest of their natural life. One slip, one missed check-in, or one suspicious association, and they are back in a cell.
When we talk about extending eligibility, we aren't talking about keeping "monsters" off the street; we are talking about removing the only incentive for rehabilitation that exists in the prison system. If a man knows he will never see the outside world, he has no reason to follow rules, no reason to attend programs, and every reason to turn the prison into a more dangerous place for the staff who work there.
The Victim Centrality Trap
It sounds heartless, but the legal system cannot be centered on the victim’s desire for closure. If we allowed victims to dictate sentencing, we would have a chaotic, inconsistent mess of "eye for an eye" rulings. The Crown represents the State, not the individual. This distinction exists to ensure that justice is dispassionate, objective, and focused on the long-term stability of society.
The parents of the HUB mall victims argue that the current 25-year limit is an insult to their loss. But no number of years will ever be "enough." If the killer got 50 years, would that feel like a "win"? If he got 100? The thirst for a "proportional" sentence is a bottomless pit because you cannot quantify the value of a human life in years served.
Dismantling the People Also Ask Queries
Does Canada have a "Life without Parole" option?
Strictly speaking, no. In 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. v. Bissonnette that "sentencing stacking"—giving a killer 25 years for each victim consecutively—was unconstitutional. It was deemed "cruel and unusual punishment" because it removed all hope of redemption. The contrarian take? The Supreme Court was right. A justice system without the possibility of redemption isn't a justice system; it's a warehouse.
Are Canadian sentences too soft compared to the US?
This is the wrong question. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the Western world and some of the highest violent crime rates. If long sentences worked, Baltimore and St. Louis would be the safest cities on earth. They aren't. We should be looking at Norway or Germany, where shorter, rehabilitation-focused sentences result in lower recidivism rates. We are asking how to punish better when we should be asking how to make fewer criminals.
The Downside of the Rational Approach
I'll admit the flaw in my own argument: This approach offers zero emotional satisfaction. It doesn't give a grieving mother a "moment of victory" on the evening news. It requires us to look at a murderer as a human variable in a social equation rather than a demon to be exorcised. That is a hard sell in a populist political climate.
But we have to choose. Do we want a system that provides "catharsis" for the few, or a system that manages resources effectively for the many?
Stop Chasing the 25-Year Ghost
We are obsessed with the wrong end of the timeline. Instead of arguing about whether a 50-year-old man gets a hearing, we should be eviscerating the lack of mental health intervention in our universities and the collapse of community policing in our malls.
The HUB mall shooting was a tragedy. But changing parole laws is a hollow gesture that masks our inability to prevent the next one. We are fighting over the length of the funeral instead of trying to stop the murder.
If you want a safer Canada, stop looking at the Parole Board. Look at the broken social structures that produced the shooter in the first place. Anything else is just noise.
The state’s job is to protect the living, not to endlessly avenge the dead.
