Minister: ‘This is where I’m supposed to be’
Wilson-Raybould is the first aboriginal woman in federal justice portfolio
OTTAWA— Canada’s top lawyer has never smoked pot, has sat beside her dying grandmother and comes from a family where nearly all her relatives went to residential schools.
Jody Wilson-Raybould, a former treaty commissioner and provincial prosecutor in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside criminal courts, is the first aboriginal woman to hold the federal justice portfolio.
She has lots of perspectives on the legal challenges Justin Trudeau has tasked her with — everything from rewriting laws on doctor-assisted suicide and marijuana, to helping to reframe Canada’s national security and aboriginal law regimes. But in an interview with the Star Friday, Wilson-Raybould, 44, was hesitant to reveal her personal opinions and said she is determined to consult broadly on all the big legal questions.
Asked if she ever smoked marijuana, she nervously laughed, hesitated, looked at an aide and said: “I have never smoked pot, but I hope that’s not the whole story. It’s a personal decision for me.”
She will not say more, nor will she say how she thinks the law might regulate marijuana to keep it away from young people but allow its use to be decriminalized.
On other issues, it’s clear she will move more quickly. She’s expected on Monday to drop the federal appeal launched by the Conservative government to force Muslim women who wear the niqab to unveil at public citizenship oath-takings, and within a short time, to seek an extension from the Supreme Court of Canada on legalizing physician-assisted suicide.
Ten days into the job, she says it’s been “overwhelming,” a feeling she doesn’t expect will soon diminish.
Wilson-Raybould said when Trudeau first spoke to her about taking on the portfolio “the first thing that came to mind” was the challenge of legislating assisted suicide. “It’s incredibly emotional and I don’t profess to understand it completely,” she acknowledged.
She said her inspiration to be involved in public service was her grandmother, who died at 76 as Wilson-Raybould was in her first year of law school. She was following the steps of her father, Bill Wilson, an activist and outspoken lawyer. She described her grandmother as “the matriarch of our clan,” who lived with the effects of a debilitating stroke. Her death was “an incredibly difficult time.”
From it, Wilson-Raybould said she learned “we need to be incredibly respectful and that we provide the most substantive end-of-life care that we can. I recognize and acknowledge the (Supreme Court) decision that came out in (in the case of Kay Carter) and . . . we, in adhering to it, need to ensure that my experience with my grandmother and the experiences of people who are dealing with these critical matters are taken into account.”
Of the impact of residential schools on her grandmother and others in her family, she is circumspect, saying every family’s experience is different, and she was always supported by a loving and proud family, an experience she wants to help others to have.
On the walls of Ottawa’s justice department headquarters are framed portraits of many male justice ministers and just two other women — Kim Campbell and Anne McLellan. None was aboriginal.
Just two winters ago, Wilson-Raybould, then a B.C. regional chief, sat in disbelief inside the prime minister’s office with other chiefs as Idle No More drummers beat and voices of protesters could be heard outside.
Two seats away, she said Stephen Harper appeared deaf to a presentation she’d just made on proposals that “spoke to the Indian Act and spoke to rebuilding First Nations governments.”
“The prime minister spoke — I’m paraphrasing — ‘the Indian Act, we all know that it has to go, but nobody knows how to do that.’ And what I had just previously, however many minutes before, put forward was one solution that we’d come up with . . . I left the meeting feeling that my voice wasn’t being heard, and frustrated that the voices of the people I represented weren’t being heard.”
Despite the televised suggestion her father made to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau — that his daughter wanted to be prime minister one day — she said she didn’t have that conscious thought.
Upon her appointment to the jus- tice file, Wilson told CBC he was glad his daughter hadn’t gotten indigenous affairs, which he described as the “a--hole of cabinet” where she’d be “useless.”
“My father has a way with words. He certainly takes a different approach to communications than I do,” she says. She intends to give full support to Carolyn Bennett, who has the role of indigenous and northern affairs minister. She said had she gotten that job, expectations would have been “incredibly high among indigenous peoples, and likewise I would have incredibly high expectations of indigenous peoples and I think that would be a challenge for sure.
“This is where I’m supposed to be and I know that I have an opportunity to work with all of the ministers across government, and I recognize and embrace that opportunity.”