Canada abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes in 1976, after a nine-year moratorium.

Death by hanging was the penalty for murder in Canada between 1892 and 1961.
In 1966, the government passed a bill that limited capital punishment to the killing of on-duty police officers and prison guards.
In 1976, the House of Commons abolished capital punishment from the Criminal Code and replaced it with a mandatory life sentence of 25 years for those convicted of first-degree murder.
Capital punishment for military offences was abolished on December 10, 1998.
In 1987, a vote in the House of Commons reaffirmed the abolition of the death penalty. Members voted 148 to 127 in favour of not reinstating capital punishment.
The last execution was in 1962. At two minutes after midnight on December 11, 1962, two men, Arthur Lucas and Robert Turpin, were hanged standing back-to-back at Toronto's Don Jail. They were the 709th and 710th people to be put to death since capital punishment was enacted in 1859.
For years Canada was the only western country that regularly handed over suspected criminals to the United Sates and other countries without asking for guarantees against execution.
The Supreme Court's ruling on the Burns and Rafay case, issued on February 15, 2001 brought about a major change in the Canadian extradition policy. Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay, both Canadian nationals, were wanted for murder in the US, where murder is punishable by death. For the first time Canada refused to extradite its citizens, putting an end to its policy of extraditing without asking for guarantees regarding the non-application of the death penalty, except in exceptional cases. The Supreme Court ruling reversed this policy, stating that guarantees against the death penalty must always be sought, except in exceptional cases.
On January 11, 2002 Canada's Supreme Court ruled that refugees who face torture in their homelands "generally" cannot be deported there, unless the evidence shows that their continued presence in Canada poses a serious security risk to the country.
On December 16, 2020, Canada voted again in favour of the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.