Yes

People with criminal records are barred from medical and law school. Why should politicians be any different.

Committing a crime is a choice. How can we trust a leader of a country to take care of it's people if they make choices that lead to crimes?

Criminals should not have a say in government whatsoever. they made a choice to commit a crime, we made a choice not to.

So you want to stop illegal immigrants from coming into our country, but you're willing to vote one into office?

Criminals have disobeyed a law set by people in the past- a law which has not been protested, abolished, or considered bad enough for it to be taken to the supreme court. I agree that some laws make sense to be broken or abolished even if they haven’t been, but most criminal charges are due to someone consciously breaking a law that was, hopefully, put in place to protect citizens.

If the politician was unable to set standards and morals for their own life, how are they going to determine the standards and morals for our entire country?

The idea of Criminial Politicians in power is a horrendous idea because of two reasons. One reason is that they can use their position to erase their criminal record, if they can get ahold of it. The second reason, having criminal politicans in power deterates a nation's image and put a huge target over the heads of civilians as who know what goes on in the politician's brain? What is their overall plan? We do not know what anybody thinks and with criminal politicans, we do not know if they'll do the crime repeatedly and use their position as a way to get out of being punished for their crime. In general, it is a horrible idea that can put the government of the nation and civilians alike at risk.

if you have committed a crime, you do not know how to make this country better because you have already made it worse by committing a crime.

One counterargument to the "Yes" position on criminal politicians, which typically advocates for stringent penalties and accountability for elected officials convicted of crimes, could be:

While holding politicians accountable for criminal behavior is important, adopting overly punitive measures risks undermining democratic principles and the rule of law. It's crucial to ensure that justice is served impartially and that individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Implementing blanket measures targeting criminal politicians could lead to politicization of the justice…  Read more system and potentially infringe on individuals' rights to fair trial and due process. Instead, maintaining independent and transparent judicial processes to address allegations of wrongdoing ensures accountability while upholding fundamental principles of democracy and justice.

The military and other jobs will not hire people with a criminal background so why should politicians be able to be held in such high regard where they are given the power to dictate and make decisions in the government. When one receives power like this they could do anything good or bad. We need to be able to trust and faith in our politicians

Our Politicians should be the best of the best Canadians. Someone who has been convicted of a crime is not that.

Criminals with indelible offence should never run to be a politicians unless they commited a crime when they were teens

Why would you have a criminal politician potentially being prime minister. Just like Donald Trump, USA essentially has a convicted criminal as their president. If we had a criminal as our leader in Canada in the future, they could be untrustworthy and unreliable with money spending. Criminal politicians would try to negatively influence the voters in Canada, which could become misleading and end up becoming a big disaster.

It comes down to the Philosophy 101 question, would you steal bread to feed your starving family? In the case of politicians, the vast majority come from money, therefore it depends on the morality of the crime, the reasons behind the actions and the severity of those actions.

The Canadian parliament should be held at a high standard and allowing criminals to make decisions and run for a role in parliament is embarrassing for the country as they chose to do something against the law and got caught and are being punished they shouldn’t then be given a position of power in the country they betrayed.

Leaders in the military can't have criminal records and are held to very high standards. Why would we let someone run the country and expect less from them. We need leaders with integrity and honesty and I feel that someone with a criminal records would not have these qualities.

That people can change, and just because they made a mistake in the past dosent mean that they arent better people now

How is this even a question? Most people are not criminals. If a politician cannot navigate life like "most people" from a criminal perspective, they do not deserve to have influence or power.