COLUMN: Think Again – Murderers should be locked up for life

Suppose a man brutally kills his pregnant girlfriend by hitting her in the head 20 times with a monkey wrench. To ensure that nothing goes wrong, the man enlists the help of two accomplices, one of whom further beats the woman with a broken hockey stick. They then dispose of her body in a snow-filled ditch in the northwestern edge of Winnipeg.

The boyfriend carefully planned this attack for weeks before carrying it out. He was upset that the woman wouldn’t get an abortion on his terms and didn’t like the fact that the woman kept wanting to be in a relationship with him. So, he murdered her in cold blood.

Sadly, there’s nothing hypothetical about this scenario. Nathaniel Plourde was convicted of first-degree murder in 2009 for killing Roxanne Fernando in the manner described above. He received the maximum sentence for this crime, which is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.

And yet, there’s a possibility that you might see Plourde out in public soon. That’s because the Parole Board of Canada just granted him six months of escorted temporary leave so that he can work towards becoming a carpenter.

It’s bad enough that Plourde is eligible for full parole after just 25 years. But the fact that Plourde gets to leave the prison walls only 17 years after his conviction is an insult to the family of his victim and to broader society.

To make matters worse, Plourde started receiving numerous temporary escorted absences from prison back in 2022, only 13 years into his so-called life sentence. It makes a mockery of the widely held assumption that heinous criminals will stay behind bars for the rest of their lives.

Interestingly, in 2024 Plourde was denied parole under the “faint hope” clause that allowed convicted murderers to apply for early release from prison. While this clause was abolished by the Harper government, Plourde could still apply because his crime took place before the law was changed.

What’s particularly noteworthy is that one of the reasons that the jury denied Plourde’s request was because they still viewed him as a moderate risk to be violent with a partner or ex-partner. If this held true in 2024, it strains credulity that it would not be equally applicable a mere two years later.

Those who support more lenient approaches to sentencing argue that temporary absences from prison are key to eventually reintegrating offenders back into society. While this reasoning might make sense on one level, it fails to take into consideration the fact that some offences are so heinous that offenders should forever lose the right to re-enter society.

Anyone who wants murderers executed must remember that capital punishment was abolished in Canada by a vote in Parliament in 1976. Thus, there is little likelihood that capital punishment will ever become an option in Canada again. This is why it’s essential that life sentences mean what they say.

Some crimes are so heinous that the people who commit them should never be able to leave prison. Planning and carrying out the brutal murder of your pregnant girlfriend definitely fits into this category.

At a bare minimum, the parole board should stop granting temporary absences to convicted murderers. An even better outcome would be for Parliament to amend the Criminal Code to give judges the option of giving genuine life sentences to people who commit first-degree murder.

Anyone who does something as heinous as what Nathaniel Plourde did should never get out of prison. A life sentence should mean life behind bars.

Michael Zwaagstra is a teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.