"The Trudeau government’s pledge to fill the Supreme Court of Canada’s impending western vacancy with a bilingual jurist who can function in French is liable to block the historic appointment of its first Indigenous judge, lawyers say.
The Indigenous Bar Association (IBA) has pressed Ottawa for years to make an Indigenous appointment to the 142-year-old court and will do so again for the spot that is opening up when Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin retires Dec. 15, said IBA president Koren Lightning-Earle of Maskwacis, Alta.
However the Trudeau government’s insistence that all its Supreme Court appointees be able to read and understand French, without translation, is an additional and unfair hurdle for Indigenous candidates and a “detriment to Canada,” Lightning-Earle told The Lawyer’s Daily.
If the government “starts to think outside the box on what the language prerequisite actually means to Indigenous people, and [to] truly understand history and reconciliation … then they’ll understand why the [French] language prerequisite is ridiculous,” she explained. “Our first language is our Indigenous language. And then we were sent to residential school where we were told we were not allowed to speak our language, and we were forced to speak a colonial language [English]. And now we have to speak another colonial language — just to get a seat at the table!”
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Borrows kayaks, hikes and cycles. He has made it a habit for 30 years to run one hour each day."
Sen. Murray Sinclair, the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba who later headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Canada’s residential schools, has been called upon to investigate the Thunder Bay Police Services Board.
His probe comes after First Nations leaders called for a review of the police services board on May 31, in light of a series of deaths involving Indigenous youth in the city and concerns over how they were investigated. Most recently, the bodies of two Indigenous teens were found in waterways in May, while a 34-year-old mother, Barbara Kentner, died on July 4 after being struck in the stomach by a metal trailer hitch on a Thunder Bay street.
The police service is also being investigated by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director over allegations of “systemic racism” concerning how it handles Indigenous deaths and disappearances. At the same time, the city’s police chief is facing charges of breach of trust and obstruction of justice, and the mayor has been charged with extortion and obstruction of justice.
Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 First Nations communities in Northern Ontario, said in a statement he “welcomes” Sinclair’s appointment.
"We have raised serious issues over the actions of the Thunder Bay Police Service and the role of its civilian oversight body,” he said. “We are dismayed by the dysfunctionality of the police services board, and we are pleased that the provincial authority over police boards … has taken swift and meaningful action to address this crisis of confidence in policing."
The commission, an independent, quasi-judicial agency, said in its statement that it’s concerned with “board representatives stating that the public’s concerns about systemic racism existing within the service and the quality of the service’s investigations are without basis."
Sinclair, who is to release an interim report on Oct. 31 and a final report by March 31, 2018, will also be examining whether the board is fulfilling its duty to ensure “adequate and effective” police services, in accordance with the Police Services Act, and is upholding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights legislation.
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