‘Reforms are coming’, vows justice minister
OTTAWA • On Tuesday afternoon, surrounded by reporters in the foyer of Parliament’s Centre Block, the mother of Colten Boushie spoke just a couple of sentences to sum up a day of meetings with the most powerful politicians in the country.
“I am very honoured to be here and I’m happy that we got to meet the prime minister,” said Debbie Baptiste, holding a photo of her son who had been killed in August 2016. Boushie’s family and other supporters are in Ottawa to urge better treatment for Indigenous people in Canada’s criminal justice system.
“We continue praying that something is done, that we can go home and tell the people that we tried hard and we’re still going to keep trying,” Baptiste said. “And we’re going to keep going. And this ain’t going to stop until something changes for the better.”
Boushie was killed after he and four friends drove onto Stanley’s farm, about an hour west of Saskatoon. Stanley said he fired two warning shots from a semiautomatic handgun, before firing a third into the back of Boushie’s head.
Stanley’s lawyers argued that he believed the gun was empty when he approached the vehicle and that his shooting Boushie was a “freak accident.”
On Friday, a jury acquitted Stanley.
The acquittal immediately sparked heated debate across Canada, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has made a concerted effort to use it as an opportunity to discuss the challenges of reconciliation and to promise reforms to the justice system.
The public commentary by cabinet ministers has prompted criticism that they are interfering in the court case, but Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould insists they are only discussing the justice system as a whole, not this specific verdict.
Trudeau, speaking to reporters earlier, thanked the Boushie family for their “thoughtful sharing of the story” during the meeting.
“They are very much focused on making sure that we have improvements to our system so that no family has to go through the kinds of things they went through,” he said. “There’s very much a desire to work together on the path of reconciliation, on improving the system that is failing far too many Canadians.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Boushie family members met with Wilson-Raybould and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, where they shared their experience of rough treatment — first at the hands of the police, and then through the trial process where they say the defence team purposely blocked Indigenous jurors, leaving a jury that looked entirely white.
The focus is now on Wilson-Raybould’s ministry, which has long been working on broad reforms to the criminal justice system.
The reforms are expected to be announced this spring and will likely include changes to how juries are selected, but Wilson-Raybould didn’t make any concrete promises.
“Those reforms are coming,” she said Tuesday. “The reality of the Boushie family coming here and the elevation of the national consciousness on the challenges and systemic barriers that marginalized people face in the criminal justice system is very welcome.”
The family’s lawyer, Chris Murphy, said they have lodged a complaint with the RCMP Civilian Review and Complaints Commission over how they were treated by police officers on the day Boushie was shot. They allege the officers were callous in how they informed the family of Boushie’s death and then immediately searched the home.
The RCMP already investigated and dismissed the family’s initial complaint, so Murphy said they went to the oversight agency in January. “We have asked the civilian review body to review the RCMP’s decision and they’ve agreed to do that, so that’s an active file right now,” he said.
The family has more meetings in Ottawa planned, including one with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh later on Tuesday. They have also requested a meeting with Conservative MP Rosemarie Falk, who represents their Saskatchewan riding of Battlefords-Lloydminster, but a time hasn’t yet been worked out.
Earlier on Tuesday, Singh said he believes “justice was not served for Colten Boushie.”
“We have a young Indigenous man that was killed. There’s some underlying serious problems we have to address in society,” he said at a press conference. “There is clearly racism, there are clearly barriers and injustice that exist for Indigenous communities across our country.”
Singh pinpointed the under-representation of Indigenous people on juries as the primary problem and said people lose faith in the justice system when it doesn’t “have representation of an entire community.”
“Justice is not something that is just delivered. There’s also an appearance of justice,” he said.
Singh said he is considering whether to support the abolition of peremptory challenges, a tool that allows both the Crown and the defence to reject potential jurors without any explanation.
As a former defence lawyer, Singh said he had used peremptory challenges in his past work.
“In my case, I wanted to ensure that the jury was more diverse so I challenged folks that were not ... I wanted to have more diversity on the jury,” said Singh.
“I wanted to have more people of colour and more people of diverse backgrounds, so I would have challenged someone who wasn’t diverse,” he said.