Torture
Torture is inherently cruel and unusual under section 12. As the Supreme Court wrote in Suresh v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) (2002), torture is "so inherently repugnant that it could never be an appropriate punishment, however egregious the offence." The Court noted that the "prospect of torture induces fear and its consequences may be devastating, irreversible, indeed, fatal." This view of torture goes back to R. v. Smith, in which Justice Lamer said that "some punishments or treatments will always be grossly disproportionate and will always outrage our standards of decency: for example, the infliction of corporal punishment."
In addition to violating section 12, in Suresh it was found that torture violates rights to liberty and security of person under section 7, and shocks the conscience. Therefore, Canada may not extradite people to countries where they may face torture.
Read more about this topic: Section Twelve Of The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms
Famous quotes containing the word torture:
“The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one tiny creature, the little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears—would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
“Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)