Deporting Humboldt truck driver is cruel
Border Service denial smacks of cowardice
What earthly good will come of deporting the Humboldt truck driver?
Jaskirat Sidhu is the immigrant driver whose truck collided four years ago with a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team, killing 16 and injuring 13.
Last week, a faceless Border Services functionary denied Sidhu’s request to stay in Canada once he is paroled. Instead, he referred Sidhu to an Immigration and Refugee Board admissibility hearing that, if past practice is any guide, will order his deportation to India.
Avenues of appeal are available, but rarely succeed. Once begun, the admissibility determination process takes on the momentum of a runaway freight. The minister of immigration can intervene, but rarely does. The Federal Court of Canada could overrule a deportation order, but only on procedural grounds, and that would merely restart the process.
Four years ago, Sidhu made a small driving mistake with catastrophically horrific consequences. It’s the kind of mental lapse that most of us who get behind a wheel eventually commit — though we usually suffer nothing worse than a honked rebuke or a fellow driver’s middle-finger salute. Sidhu’s mistake killed 16 people, injured 13, and catapulted a hockey-loving nation into communal grief.
A novice driver with hardly any training, Sidhu was operating one of the most complex rigs allowed on Canadian highways, a tractor trailer-pup trailer combo. He was driving in a province with the highest accident rates and the skimpiest trucking regulations in Canada. (Saskatchewan tightened its regs after the crash.) He was approaching a notoriously unsafe intersection where six white crosses commemorated earlier victims. (Saskatchewan redesigned the intersection after the crash.)
Distracted by a flapping tarp on the pup trailer, Sidhu ran an oversized stop sign and collided with a bus on its way to a playoff game in Nipawin.
From the moment of the crash, Sidhu did everything we ask of offenders. He co-operated with police at the scene. He pleaded guilty at his first opportunity, thereby sparing family members the ordeal of a long court process.
He even refused to let his lawyers make submissions on sentencing.
Such tangible acts of contrition are vanishingly rare in Canadian courtrooms.
Prior to the collision, Sidhu had a spotless driving record. When the accident occurred, he wasn’t drinking, texting, stunting, or even speeding. Accident reconstruction showed he was travelling below the speed limit. The collision did not result from any deliberate act on his part.
Sidhu had the bad luck to appear before Saskatchewan provincial court Judge Inez Cardinal, a career prosecutor before her elevation to the bench. She took the sentencing hearing as an opportunity to binge on grief, allowing four days of heart-rending victim impact testimony before issuing an eight-year sentence — by far the longest ever handed out for similar cases in Canada. Drivers with multiple DUI convictions who got behind the wheel while plastered and killed multiple victims have, without exception, received lower sentences.
For an offence that barely met the Criminal Code threshold for “dangerous driving,” Cardinal meted out populist vengeance of the most vindictive kind. Her decision fetishizes the lowest common denominator of public attitudes to justice.
Having accepted Cardinal’s excessive punishment without complaint, Sidhu is now eligible for parole. Border Services must decide whether he can remain in Canada.
An anonymous Border Services poltroon apparently believes he can make Canada a better place by creating an additional victim. Or perhaps he fears a backlash from the noisy few who condemn any gesture of compassion toward the Humboldt driver. We don’t know because he gave no specific reasons for the decision, but merely recited the applicable rules.
Thus, while Canadians are busy admiring the courage of Ukraine’s government, our own government is quietly acting out a profile in cowardice.
Sidhu won’t be the only one to suffer. His wife, Tanvir Mann, recently obtained Canadian citizenship. She is free to remain here, but will leave if Sidhu is deported.
“I won’t be able to live alone in Canada,” she told CTV. “I will have to go back if he goes. This thought has been scaring me for the last few years — that I might have to leave everything. I really, really hope that my voice is being heard and things work out in some way for both of us.”
“I think Canada has always believed in mercy and second chances,” she said. “And I really wish that Jaskirat would be given that chance too. He has been remorseful from day one. We just really want one second chance to prove that we can be good Canadian citizens.”
Perhaps one of the authorities who still have the power to intervene — the Immigration and Refugee Board or the minister — will depart from the script and exercise some common sense.
There is no rational excuse for deporting Sidhu. Doing so is cruel and vindictive and not in Canada’s interests. If ever there were a case for an appellate authority to exercise mercy, this is it.
THERE IS NO RATIONAL EXCUSE FOR DEPORTING SIDHU.