Top court judges to come to city

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This article was published 22/06/2018 (2132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court has chosen Winnipeg as its first stop in a new effort to connect Canadians with their judiciary, while also figuring out how to fix a hugely disproportionate incarceration rate for Indigenous people.

“I am pleased to announced that next year, the entire court will visit Winnipeg, for meetings with Canada’s appeal courts judges,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner told reporters Friday.

Wagner said the Supreme Court justices will meet with “local lawyers, law schools and community members,” during a September 2019 conference of appeal-court judges from various provinces.

Six months into his role as chief justice, Wagner said he wants to open the court to more Canadians to prevent people from losing faith in the legal system, a phenomenon he sees in other countries, regardless of whether they’re democratic.

It’s also what motivated him to give a rare press conference Friday that allowed press-gallery journalists to ask about myriad issues.

“The idea is to make sure people understand who we are, what we do and why we do it. Because ignorance is the cause of many biases. And the more people will know about the judicial system, the more they will keep faith in the system. And that’s very important, given the environment in which we live outside Canada.”

Wagner said it’s possible Canadians could lose faith in the judiciary. He noted that more than one-third of applications to the Supreme Court come from people representing themselves. Though some may not be able to afford an attorney, Wagner claimed others “have the financial means, but don’t necessarily have trust in the legal system to hire a lawyer.”

Ultimately, Wagner wants the court “to sit and hear cases in other Canadian cities from time to time.” The court has held all of its hearings in Ottawa since its 1875 creation.

Manitoba’s top judge said that idea would benefit both the public and the justices’ perspectives.

“It’s great news for the Supreme Court to come not only to our city, but to other cities across the country in the future, so that they really get the flavour and the context of how things are functioning and operating in other provinces,” said Richard Chartier, chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of Appeal.

“A lot of the decisions that the Supreme Court makes have a very direct impact on the way Canadians and Manitobans and Winnipeggers, the way we function and certain ways we will be governed.”

Chartier said he also supports the idea of his own court holding hearings in other areas of Manitoba, instead of just Winnipeg. That would echo a practice in Quebec and British Columbia, where the top courts choose a handful of important cases to hold outside their largest cities.

He said appeal-court judges previously held a hearing at U of M’s Robson Hall law school, and he’s been in discussions with lawyers in Brandon to hold appeal hearings there. For him it would require two or three relevant cases at a time, that together justify the added cost of the court sitting elsewhere.

“If there is an interest for us to go and sit in other parts of Manitoba, we would be most surely looking at it.”

Wagner also said the over-representation of Indigenous people in prisons is “a terrible situation,” one the court has tried addressing with limited success.

“The rate is too high; it reveals a serious problem,” he said.

The issue has seized Manitoba officials’ attention ever since it was revealed that an Indigenous man pleaded guilty to a crime he couldn’t have committed, as he was incarcerated in Brandon at the time of a robbery in Fort Richmond. The Manitoba Court of Appeal quashed Richard Catcheway’s conviction after he’d already served six months for the sentence.

Last fall, Winnipeg defence lawyer Zilla Jones unsuccessfully asked the Supreme Court to examine the implementation of Gladue rights, which are assessments presented when Indigenous people are sentenced, to detail how intergenerational trauma may have contributed to the accused committing a crime.

Gladue reports have existed since 1999, but have failed to stem a rising number of Indigenous prisoners in the Prairies. They typically mention residential schools, foster care and substance abuse and unemployment. But in Manitoba, those reports are paired with pre-sentencing reports that tabulate the risk of reoffending, meaning the same factors from the Gladue reports end up convincing judges to dole out harsher sentences.

Likewise, the Supreme Court ruled last week that the test used by federal prison officials to assess an offender’s risk level is culturally biased against Indigenous people, because it is based on similar factors.

“The court has a role to play whenever the case is presented to the court, to decide those issues,” Wagner said, adding that Parliament and society can influence many more systems.

“We are in the process of reconciliation; it’s going to be a long process. It has to be done; it has to be done the right way and it involves many stakeholders.”

Chartier noted that the Supreme Court hasn’t granted permission to hear any Manitoba appeals in recent years, but he said many of other provinces’ cases impact how Manitoba courts handle criminal and Indigenous law.

“The decisions of the Supreme Court impact all of us,” he said.

– With files from Katie May