Fresh off proposing a U.S.-style “three strikes and you’re out” law, Poilievre has now promised to invoke Canada’s notwithstanding clause to impose consecutive life sentences for people convicted of multiple murders. It’s a one-two punch of political theatre: tough rhetoric over sound policy, designed for applause, not actual public safety.

Let’s be clear. Nobody is defending violent crime. Canadians deserve to feel safe in their communities, and the justice system must hold people accountable. But that accountability must be grounded in evidence, fairness, and effectiveness—not emotion, ideology, or showmanship.

Poilievre’s “three strikes” proposal would bar anyone convicted of three serious violent offences from receiving bail, parole, probation, or house arrest. Instead, they’d face a mandatory sentence of at least 10 years in prison, up to life. Meanwhile, his consecutive sentencing plan would override the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that ruled consecutive life sentences without parole were unconstitutional, restoring a punishment the Court deemed cruel and ineffective.

It’s clear what this is about: wedge politics, not safer streets.

We’ve seen this story before—just south of the border. American-style three-strikes laws exploded in the 1990s, and the results were disastrous: people sentenced to life for stealing a jacket or a pizza slice, court systems backlogged, and prison populations ballooning with little public safety benefit. Studies found the deterrent effect minimal and the costs astronomical. Many U.S. states have since walked these policies back, recognizing the immense social and economic damage they caused.

The truth is, mandatory minimums and blanket sentencing laws remove the one thing our justice system is supposed to have: discretion. Judges are stripped of the ability to consider circumstances, rehabilitation progress, or whether the person poses an ongoing risk. A rigid “three strikes” law doesn’t differentiate between someone struggling with trauma and addiction versus a calculated repeat offender. It just punishes indiscriminately.

Poilievre’s use of the notwithstanding clause to bring back consecutive life sentences is even more alarming. It’s one thing to disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling. It’s another to declare you’ll override constitutional protections—pre-emptively, and permanently—because you disagree with the outcome. That’s not law and order. That’s law by political decree.

The Supreme Court was right to rule in R v. Bissonnette that consecutive life sentences with no realistic chance of parole violate human dignity. The decision didn’t mean early release—it meant parole eligibility after 25 years. In reality, parole is rarely granted on the first attempt, and multiple murderers seldom get out of prison. What the Court rejected was the idea that a person should be sentenced to die in prison without any hope of redemption. 

That’s not weakness, it’s consistent with what the research shows: hope and the possibility of reintegration are far more powerful tools for rehabilitation than despair and endless punishment. When people are told they are irredeemable, they have no reason to change.

If Poilievre were serious about reducing violent crime, he’d invest in what works: mental health supports, addiction treatment, gang prevention, education, housing, and trauma recovery. He’d expand successful restorative justice programs. He’d fund reintegration efforts that help offenders build lives outside the system. These aren’t soft-on-crime solutions—they’re smart-on-crime strategies that save lives and taxpayer dollars.

But that doesn’t get you a viral clip on X. So instead, we get Poilievre playing the tough guy, threatening to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and promising policies with proven failure records.

And here's the kicker: the Conservative Party claims to be fiscally responsible. But policies like these come with staggering price tags. Incarcerating a federal prisoner in Canada costs more than $114,000 per year. Longer sentences and more inmates don’t just mean more prison beds—they mean more public dollars diverted away from crime prevention and toward warehousing people.

This isn't leadership. It's political theatre—and real people end up paying the price.

Canada’s justice system isn’t perfect, but it should reflect our values—fairness, dignity, and evidence-based policy, not imported failures and fearmongering.

Three strikes? Let’s call it what it really is: a strike against fairness, a strike against evidence, and a strike against the very Charter rights Poilievre wants to casually override for applause.

Kylie Villeneuve is the Director of Operations at NorthStar Public Affairs, where she draws on years of experience navigating the federal government to help clients advance complex policy and regulatory goals. As a senior adviser to cabinet ministers in the Trudeau government, she worked at the intersection of public safety, health, and immigration, shaping evidence-based policies that balanced community well-being with effective governance.