Tiny court adds to injustice
Inquest into 7 aboriginal deaths
A coroner’s inquest of huge public interest that has been years in the planning will open in Thunder Bay Monday in a tiny courtroom with seats for only 10 spectators.
The inquest is probing the deaths of seven Aboriginal young people who left their far-flung reserves in Northern Ontario to attend school in Thunder Bay, making it the single largest joint inquest into Aboriginal deaths in Ontario history.
The seven — Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Paul Panacheese, Robyn Harper, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morriseau and Jordan Wabasse — died between 2000 and 2011.
All were from some of the remote reserves that make up the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a political organization that represents 49 First Nation communities in Northern Ontario with a population of about 45,000.
Yet despite pleas from NAN and its Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler, Postmedia and even Ontario Chief Coroner Dirk Huyer himself, the best venue provincial judicial officials have been able to muster is courtroom 501, which has little room for any member of the public, including potentially the dead youths’ families, or press.
It effectively sends a signal that inquests are a secondrate form of justice, that public access isn’t a priority and, most gratingly, that aboriginal lives appear to matter less.
After repeated requests, the government has arranged for a video room on a different floor of the courthouse for spectators and the media to remotely watch the proceedings.
Originally, at least parts of the inquest, which is slated to run almost six months, were to be held in a Thunder Bay office building that also houses the regional coroner’s office.
The next proposed solution from court officials was an even smaller courtroom, which couldn’t even accommodate all the lawyers for the 10 parties with standing at the inquest — courtroom 504.
“As you know, this inquest is one of the most anticipated, complex and sensitive inquests our government has assembled in years,” Chief Coroner Dirk Huyer wrote the two Thunder Bay senior judges, Judge Doug Shaw of the Superior Court and Judge Joyce Elder of the provincial or Ontario Court, on Sept. 24, expressing his dismay at the size of the proposed room.
“It is of particular interest to the public and specifically the Aboriginal community.
“There will be expectations that members of the First Nations community will have the opportunity to support those at the inquest and witness the information firsthand, which is not possible in Courtroom 504.”
But neither will it be possible in the new courtroom, 501, which has room for the lawyers, but only 10 seats for the public.
Both Shaw and Elder, who are the regional senior judges for northwestern Ontario, told Postmedia in an Oct. 2 email that “criminal, family and civil matters” scheduled for the courts must also “proceed in a timely fashion.”
As an added ironic touch, Thunder Bay has a spanking new courthouse, completed just last year at the cost of $247 million, which proudly boasts “the province’s first Aboriginal conference suite specifically designed to respond to the needs of the region’s aboriginal population.”
As well, the building received what the chief coroner described in his letter to justice officials as “appropriate Aboriginal blessings and practices.”
Yet, push come to shove, the courts can’ t or won’t properly accommodate an inquest of real importance to the Aboriginal community.
As Grand Chief Fiddler said in one of his several letters, this when he was objecting to the inquest being held in the office building, such a location “would send a message to the First Nation community that the inquiry into the loss of our youth does not rank in importance alongside traffic tickets and small claims as deserving of a quality space devoted to the administration of justice.”
Julian Falconer, lawyer for NAN, said in a recent email to presiding coroner Dr. David Eden and the lawyers who will be acting as his counsel that the inquest shouldn’t consider any new applications for standing (Ontario has made one such) until and unless court and justice officials have arranged for an adequate space.
“This is not simply a question of convenience,” Falconer wrote Oct. 1.
“Rather, the denial of reasonable access by the families to the hearing room is a question of substantive access and substantive fairness.
“The denial of access to the hearing room as it pertains to the media runs contrary to the mandatory public nature of the proceedings.”
Three of the dead young people — Anderson, Wabasse and Bushie — were just 15, while the oldest was 21.
Like hundreds of other Aboriginal youngsters, the seven came south to Thunder Bay to attend school, often to live in boarding houses with strangers.
The bodies of several of the dead teenagers were pulled from local rivers. It’s because of the similarity in the circumstances surrounding the deaths that Huyer moved to a joint inquest.
A question of substantive access and substantive fairness