Justice Mandamin stated that the worldviews between the Euro-Canadian sense of ‘Justice’ and the “Sacred Teachings,” the traditional framework upon which Indigenous… These Courts divert matters from the traditional criminal justice system within Canada. The (in) justice system and Indigenous people. This turns traditional non-hierarchical Aboriginal justice on its head, and insidiously enforces western European values of hierarchy and authoritarianism in Aboriginal communities. The report also found that Aboriginal people are sentenced to longer terms, spend more time in maximum security or segregation, are less likely to be granted parole, and are more likely to have their parole revoked. Understanding the Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the Criminal Justice System. Racism in the justice system is the root cause of wrongful prosecutions and the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in prison today. In that release, Ivan Zinger, the Canada’s correctional investigator, reported that Indigenous people make up over 30% of the incarcerated population in Canada, the first time it has ever been that high. The Canadian criminal justice system has failed Indigenous peoples, said the Honourable Tony Mandamin during his keynote on Tuesday, Mar. It focuses on the experiences of Indigenous peoples residing in the four major Anglo-settler-colonial jurisdictions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Almost half of the people in Manitoba agree there is a problem with the Canadian justice system when it comes to treatment of Indigenous Peoples according to a recent report in the Winnipeg Free Press ("Manitobans divided on justice system," April 16, 2018). [Simpson] jurors have gone on lots of television shows. Almost half of the people in Manitoba agree there is a problem with the Canadian justice system when it comes to treatment of Indigenous Peoples according to a recent report in the Winnipeg Free Press ("Manitobans divided on justice system," April 16, 2018). A 2010 Environics Institute study found that more than half of urban Aboriginal people had little or no confidence in the justice system and were more than twice as likely as the general Canadian population to feel this way. An October 2012 report by Canada’s Office of the Correctional Investigator found that Aboriginal people constitute only four per cent of the Canadian population but 23 per cent of the federal prison inmate population, and that the population of Aboriginal people incarcerated in Canada has increased by 40 per cent between 2001-2002 and 2010-2011. Wilfrid Laurier University has launched a new course, Gladue Principles: Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian Criminal Justice System, which will be offered for the first time starting on Jan. 15, 2021. The Supreme Court has said the fact that more than a quarter of our prisoners are Indigenous is a crisis in the justice system, so then when the same criminal justice system appears to fail either the missing Indigenous women and girls or, many people would say, Colten Boushie, then it’s kind of a ground for despair. Canada was created on top of Indigenous territories. There are countless and painful examples of where the justice system has failed, including the cases of Colten Boushie, Tina Fontaine, Kristian Ayoungman, Everette Patrick, … A separate report found that the city’s police had “failed to recognize ... against Indigenous people is not given the same level of care and attention in the Canadian justice system,” said The history Canadians don’t like to tell is that Canada’s nation-building has come at the expense of its Indigenous peoples. Prime Minister Trudeau is paying very close attention to this case as well. Specifically, we need to talk about the racism that is so natural and so ingrained in much of the population that most of you don’t realize it is even there. Clearly the mainstream justice system is failing Aboriginal people, and the situation has reached a breaking point. The increasing status of Indigenous overrepresentation is a clear indication of the failures of the Canadian Criminal Justice System. ‘one size fits all’ approach to sentencing, Bill C-10 adopts a formalistic approach to equality that will serve to perpetuate the historic disadvantage of marginalized groups.”. However, Canada’s federal government has begun to address the widespread neglect and failed policies felt by past generations of indigenous people. Greg Horn. Socio-economic disparities between Aboriginals and non-indigenous Canadians … When an accusation has been made against an individual, legal advisers representing plaintiff and defendant confront one another before an impartial judge or jury. There’s been a big reaction to this verdict, but are we asking the right questions? Gladue Court is a special court for people charged with a crime and who self-identify as Indigenous, Métis, First Nations, or Inuit. Throughout Canada, a number of courts have been created that deal specifically with these forms of justice. Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil apologized Tuesday to Black and Indigenous Nova Scotians for systemic racism in the province's justice system, and said the government is committed to reform. Canada has had a long-standing problem with both societal and institutional racism against Indigenous peoples, especially within the justice system. They have all come to the same conclusion, that the criminal justice system in Canada … News by. The western European model of criminal justice was forcibly imposed upon them, as was the Canadian state itself. Clearly, the system lacks legitimacy in the eyes of Aboriginal people… Designed by and for European newcomers who sought to institute their own legal orders, the justice system has functioned as an integral part of the structure of settler colonialism in Canada. Although overt bias against Indigenous peoples in the justice system was more prevalent in the past, systemic discrimination remains a serious problem. Are there other problems, in addition to the jury selection? Kent Roach, a professor of law and public policy in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, says many Indigenous people are excluded from juries through peremptory challenges. It’s a huge challenge. The Supreme Court of Canada helped pave the way for a solution, but several communities including Williams Lake seem reluctant to apply a renewed Indigenous law approach . Since that time, it has failed to live up to its ameliorative intent as evidenced by a steady increase in the rate of over-incarceration. Canada has failed its Aboriginal peoples, leaving both sides ensnared in a broken relationship. 1 Rudin J. We've known about those systemic problems for an awful long time. This July, Paul initiated a Parliamentary petition on creating a national database on police use of force , which disproportionally impacts Black and Indigenous people. National data that does exist to identify Indigenous people in the criminal justice system include the General Social Survey (GSS) on self-reported victimization, police-reported homicide statistics, and data on provincial/territorial and federal custody. Statistics show that the percentage of indigenous people in conflict with the justice system is extreme and in many places those numbers may be on the rise. They represent only 3% of the Canadian adult population, 3 and this proportion has been increasing – in the late 1990s, it was slightly more than 10%. In this case, because the accused was charged with second-degree murder and because they were going to impanel 14 jurors, not 12, because they wanted alternatives, both the accused and the Crown had 14. Decades ago, the Marshall Inquiry found the police and justice system were systematically biased against Black peoples and Indigenous peoples, but little has changed. There are basically two kinds of challenges to prospective jurors. . ] To be fair, some defence lawyers will oppose that, but I don't think there’s a Charter right to peremptory challenges. Special to The Globe and Mail . 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The over-incarceration of Indigenous people in Canada is a crisis that begins earlier than adulthood as Indigenous youth (under 18) represent a disproportionate number of children behind bars. So therefore you get an acquittal on murder, but the way it works is we have an extremely broad manslaughter offense in Canada. We know that three or four visibly Indigenous prospective jurors were subject to a peremptory challenge by the accused. I’m a little worried that this will just result in comments of sympathy as opposed to concrete action. “The Canadian criminal justice system has failed the Aboriginal peoples of Canada — First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, on-reserve and off-reserve, urban and rural — in all territorial and governmental jurisdictions,” the commission said in 1996. And we need to have the humility to recognize that our criminal justice system has failed Indigenous people both as offenders and as victims, and to have the humility to say to Indigenous communities: Maybe you can do better with your own Indigenous justice systems. Katerina Tefft will be presenting on the topic of Aboriginal justice at the Whose Winnipeg? Why did the prosecution seek a second-degree murder charge, and why couldn’t the jury compromise on a lesser charge? As I wrote in the Globe and Mail, reform has come too late in the Boushie case. The final report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba unequivocally summed up the relationship between Indigenous people and the justice system in the following statement: The justice system has failed Manitoba’s Aboriginal people on a massive scale. The concern about jury selection is a real one. The traditions that are left are fragmentary and watered down, further whitewashing Aboriginal identity. Share. The paper argues that an understanding of the dynamics of this relationship helps explain the way in which attitudes and responses to events such as the occupation of Ipperwash Park can be understood. Colten and Tinas cases are not isolated. In fact, investing in health and education instead of incarceration would benefit not only Aboriginal people but the Canadian economy as well. Usually academics agree that we need to study something, but the failure of the justice system for Indigenous people has already been studied to death. In 1999 in R. v. Gladue, the Court found that the over-representation of Indigenous people in Canada’s prisons was a “crisis in the Canadian criminal justice system.” The Court found that over-representation was “only the tip of the iceberg insofar as the estrangement of the aboriginal peoples from the Canadian criminal justice system is concerned.” In In a way, that might actually not deal with either the immediate problems we have with juries or the much larger problem we have with the justice system. Comments. Systemic racism in our justice system is: The Canadian justice system, like other justice systems in the European tradition, is adversarial. Canada’s courts are barely hiding their disdain for Indigenous people. Kent Roach (above) is a professor of law at U of T. He has represented Indigenous groups in interventions before the court, including in R. v. Gladue, which advises that lower courts should consider an Indigenous offender’s background when making sentencing decisions (Bernard Weil/Toronto Star via Getty Images). Given that there is going to be under-representation of Indigenous people among prospective jurors, something like the peremptory challenge becomes even more pernicious because, as in this case, it appears like it was used to keep all the Indigenous people off the jury. And it applies whenever someone is doing an unlawful act like careless use of a firearm, which seems to have been present here, pointing a gun at a person’s head. Unfortunately, Parliament – and this goes for governments both Conservative and Liberal – did absolutely nothing about that. Restorative justice, the alternative to incarceration, can take many forms, including community sentencing circles, victim-offender mediation, community service, sweats and other cultural activities, counselling, healing circles, essays written for self-reflection, restitution, formal apologies, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Gladue Courts don't handle trials or preliminary hearings. D ear Canada, We need to talk. Is it the accused or their lawyer who makes the challenge? In 1989, the Report of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr., Prosecution on the wrongful arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of a Mi’kmaw man, found that the justice system failed him at every turn due to the fact that he was native. Indigenous people are overrepresented in Canada's criminal justice system as both victims and as people accused or convicted of crime. Like many problems, it's complex and the way to resolution starts with understanding the many issues. Upon colonization, the Crown deemed these systems illegitimate and subjected cases to judgment by the Queen. Colten Boushie in a photo posted Nov. 6, 2011 (photo via Facebook), Ellie Hisama named dean of U of T’s Faculty of Music, ‘They shall not be forgotten’: U of T marks first anniversary of Flight 752 tragedy, Brain cancer linked to tissue healing: U of T researchers, AMD’s supercomputing partnerships with U of T, other universities to take centre stage at CES, Over-policing in Black communities to be explored in new U of T public health course, Urban studies course forges bond between students and seniors during COVID-19. One problem that has often been highlighted is the under-representation of Indigenous people on juries. Their experiences within the system are interwoven with issues of colonialism and discrimination. Cries for justice for Indigenous people killed by police or failed by the legal system are reverberating across Canada, from coast to coast to coast. Obviously, that’s something that’s going to have to be done on a case-by-case, community-by-community, nation-by-nation basis. After 15 hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Gerald Stanley, a farmer, of second-degree murder in connection with the death of Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man from the Red Pheasant First Nation. . I think we need to approach these things on a nation-to-nation basis. Over a long career in the law, Roach has won awards for his pro bono work and has represented Indigenous groups in interventions before the court, including in R. v. Gladue. Locking up minor drug offenders will not close the 28.8 per cent income gap between Aboriginal people and other Canadians; it will only perpetuate the well-documented cycle of crime and poverty. Not only did the correctional investigator’s report find “no new significant investments at the community level for federal aboriginal initiatives,” but Sapers has said that the government’s response to his report has been to either disagree with every recommendation or simply reinforce what the correctional service is already doing. Importantly, Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice provides crucial background that many who weighed in on Stanley’s criminal case failed to recognize: an analysis of Treaty 6, the legal agreements between Indigenous peoples and settlers on the land where Boushie was killed. Indigenous court provides a solution to overrepresentation in Canadian justice system. Furthermore, according to the findings of the 1991 Aboriginal Justice Inquiry, Aboriginal people, if convicted, were greater than 2.5 times more likely than non-Aboriginal people to be sentenced to some form of incarceration; this rate is considerably higher for Aboriginal women. The Viens Commission’s report plainly states that the Quebec justice system has “failed” in its dealings with Indigenous peoples, and discriminates against them in a systemic way, whether they are victims or accused. I’m a little worried because the minister of justice has said this requires study. It also focuses on strengthening the offender’s personal relationships, rather than isolating them from loved ones. After anger over Stanley’s acquittal spilled over into protests, and Boushie’s family went to Ottawa to advocate for legal reform, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to “fix the system in the spirit of reconciliation.”. I think this is obviously going to play out, but as a person who has taught criminal law since 1989, I've seen the ability of Parliament to amend the Criminal Code quickly when they get serious about an issue. Canada has a very high remand rate; there is blatant discrimination against Aboriginals because their rate is significantly higher in comparison to their counterparts (Mildren, 2008). In her opening remarks, Marcia V.J. The relationship between Aboriginal people and the Canadian criminal justice system is broken, and evidence is mounting that a radical change is necessary. Gladue Courts deal with all criminal offences. 1. That the Canadian justice system has failed Aboriginal peoples at every turn is by now well known. I’m a little worried that in the last day or so public debate has really gotten sidetracked about whether Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister of Justice Wilson-Raybould have overstepped in their comments. I don’t know whether communities in Saskatchewan were expecting a murder conviction, but personally I was surprised that the jury did not come back with a manslaughter conviction. 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