Comment: In the name of justice
- Paul Chartrand | August 21, 2015
How should Canadians react to criminal acts? What does justice demand in a ‘criminal justice system’? With a federal election looming, it is timely to reflect upon such questions.
When we elect politicians we are deciding who will go to Ottawa to decide what is best for us. Isn’t that what governments do when they enact laws? Of course in Canada it will be remembered, your local MP’s views and the views of his constituents count only if aligned with the views of the Prime Minister of the day. That is because Canada has the least democratic government system of the advanced modern democracies. The main reason is the centralization of power in the office of the Prime Minister. So let us start again. When we elect a party to govern, we elect the Prime Minister whose views will decide what is in our best interests.
The mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) gives us an example of how a government can decide what is good for a segment of the population. The folks residing on Indian reserves did not even have the vote when the Indian Residential Schools were established so there was not even the artificial link to the elector’s view on what is good for him. The government’s view was that a formal system of education based upon the values, beliefs and ways of the English-French coalition that governed Canada then was necessary. Once that goal was established then the dilemma was how to educate children of families who did not live in the communities ‘settled’ by the ones who controlled the country and its original nations. The government decided what was good for the First Nations and then went on to decide how to do it.
There is another group of Canadians today that has next to no influence on government decisions about what is good for them: prisoners. Among the results of government decisions about what is good for them and for us are solitary confinement policies and statutory minimum sentences, abominations that shame and disgrace governments that have them. Well-known victims of the harsh Canadian system include Eddie Snowshoe and Ashley Smith, the troubled teenager who had committed no major crime but was tasered and pepper-sprayed in prison and ended up killing herself in ‘segregation’ while prison guards watched.
Eddie a 26 year old First Nation man from the NWT hanged himself in a solitary confinement cell in which he had been kept for 162 consecutive days. This type of cruel torture to social animals, condemned by international standards, would not be tolerated here for dogs. Or lions, for that matter, if you have been inundated with news flashes about Cecil the Lion. But the current government likes it and keeps it. Why do we seem to care so little for our own species? Is the government acting in our best interests?
Minimum sentencing is another abomination in the name of ‘justice’. Some time ago the Australian Northern Territory government adopted minimum sentences that resulted in 15 year old Aboriginal children being sent to prison for stealing pencils. I happened to be attending a legal forum in the bush of Arnhem Land near the Arafura Sea about a decade ago when on the first day of the forum a new government was voted in and three delegates from the new government came to the forum to announce the death of the minimum sentencing law. That law had been a major reason for calling the meetings which included Law Men and Women from the district’s Aboriginal communities.
Back in Canada I was invited to comment on the Minimum Sentencing bills introduced by the Conservative minority government where I described the problems with that approach, which treats every accused the same, regardless of age or circumstance or blameworthiness. The bill was quashed by the opposition but was reborn in an infamous Omnibus Bill which the opposition parties did not dare challenge on account of their perceived electoral chances on a confidence matter. So in Canada it is the politicians who decide on the length of sentences targeted for minimum sentences not the judges who see and hear the evidence in court in each case. Why have judges then? Let the pollies decide the fate of individuals from their Ottawa hilltop. They know best what is good for you and good for me and good for every accused.
It is the Aboriginal people, families and communities that are most affected by these approaches to ‘justice’. Who should decide what is good for us and our communities?