Natives shut out of justice system
Shortly before releasing his study First Nations Representation on Ontario Juries, former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci told Postmedia News that he hopes action will come soon.
He spent more than a year looking into the lack of representation of First Nations people on Ontario juries, including on a coroner’s inquiry into the deaths of seven First Nations teens while they were in Thunder Bay to attend high school.
The judge noted that he isn’t alarmist by nature, but the systemic discrimination against aboriginals is so grossly unfair across Canada that something must be done quickly to rectify the situation. His 158-page report contains 17 recommendations on how to do that, ranging from establishing implementation committees that will include representation from First Nations, particularly youths, to changing the way governments look for and compensate jurors.
More than two decades ago, the Saskatchewan government tabled a 130-page report from an Indian justice review committee that identified many of the same problems. Its recommendations were similar to Justice Iacobucci’s.
A few years later, the province was stunned when an allwhite jury reduced to manslaughter the first-degree murder charges against Steven Kummerfield and Alexander Ternowetsky, who were found guilty of forcing a 28-year-old First Nations mother to have sex with them and then beating her to death.
Saskatoon’s police were put on alert some years later after an all-white jury reduced the charges against former police officers Ken Munson and Dan Hatchen. They were convicted of unlawful confinement, but not assault, for dumping an aboriginal man, Darrell Night, outside the Queen Elizabeth power plant on a frigid January night in 2000.
The trial was the focus of national attention because two other native men had been found frozen to death in the same area. A decade earlier, the frozen body of a young aboriginal man, Neil Stonechild, was found on the opposite side of Saskatoon after reportedly being in police custody.
The Stonechild case resulted in an inquiry that found police at fault, while the Munson and Hatchen trial convinced then Saskatchewan Justice minister Chris Axworthy to launch yet another review into the treatment of natives.
Such periodic studies have occurred in other provinces, too. Manitoba launched a massive study that resulted in a nearly 800-page report. Alberta conducted a study, and a Royal Commission in 1989 looked into the wrongful conviction of Donald Marshall Jr.
Yet this week, even in Saskatchewan where so much attention has been paid to the inequities, officials complain that native people are grossly under-represented in the justice system, except as victims and defendants.
As University of Saskatchewan professor Signa Daum Shanks told The StarPhoenix, it’s vital for the accused, the victim, the witnesses and the public to see their “peers” involved in Canada’s justice system. Even after more than a generation of hand-wringing over this issue, gains have been scarce while native people are disproportionately victimized by laws such as the Conservatives’ tough-on-crime omnibus bills.
One wishes Justice Iacobucci luck in advancing his agenda, but until governments are convinced to act rather than study, another generation will be lost. The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper’s editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.