Ian Mulgrew: Fixing structural racism with Indigenous justice
“What a lot of people are not aware of or don’t understand is that at the time of contact there was a vibrant, holistic approach to justice within First Nations communities.”

Chief of the Splatsin band and chair of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council, Wayne Christian, says that the federal commitment of $10 million to revitalize Indigenous law and traditions is an important step to erasing the historic racism of Canada’s legal system.

He said the money is being used by First Nations to move from research and reports to implementation of jurisdiction and control for children and families, welfare, land and resource management, and citizenship.

Indigenous people must practice and enforce their own traditional law in a modern context for it to survive, Christian maintains. It must be recognized that their legal traditions are braided together with language and cultural practices — ceremonies and dancing can be legal mechanisms.

“You need to be practicing law for it to be a living entity,” he said.

“Secwépemc legal traditions are part of and derived from the legal orders which are embedded within the social, political, economic, and spiritual institutions of our people. … The recognition and practicing of one’s traditional laws is an act of sovereignty and effectively serves as a process of decolonization through the assertion of the aboriginal right to govern oneself. We must be able to demonstrate the ways in which they have practicality in addressing today’s needs if we are to meaningfully breathe life into them once again.”

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Lawsuit claims CN and CP railways at fault for sparking fire that wiped out Lytton
A proposed class-action lawsuit alleges CP and CN railways caused or contributed to the wildfire that destroyed the Village of Lytton.

A woman whose home, art and cherished memorabilia were incinerated by the wildfire that destroyed Lytton has filed a class-action lawsuit against Canada’s two main railroads, CN and CP.

Carel Moiseiwitsch says she lost almost everything when the inferno razed the village and her one-and-a-half-storey, three-bedroom home on Alonzo Way that contained personal belongings as well as her art and rug collection.

In her B.C. Supreme Court statement of claim, she alleges the Lytton fire was caused June 30 by heat or sparks from a Canadian Pacific freight train operated by Canadian National Rail employees on tracks owned by CN.

The suit claims the trains have been causing fires for more than a century, and the railroads should have known it was unsafe to operate that day because of the high heat and winds.

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Ian Mulgrew: Man behind revenge website targeting ex-wife gets ‘limited’ support for latest appeal
Opinion: Decision is hard to fathom given Patrick Henry Fox is behind one of the worst examples of vile Internet revenge against his ex-wife

A man who has threatened and tormented his ex-wife despite convictions, jail time, and a restraining order — simultaneously insulting the courts and B.C.’s attorney-general — will get “limited” support for one of his latest appeals.

In a difficult-to-fathom decision, B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Gregory Fitch agreed “in the interests of justice” that a lawyer can be appointed to assist Patrick Henry Fox, who is behind one of the worst examples of vile Internet revenge.

The appointed lawyer will evaluate the proposed grounds of appeal from Fox’s conviction for breaching an Aug. 19, 2020, probation order.

Fitch concluded Fox did not need help with his sentence appeal, partly because he gets out this Thursday after his latest stint of incarceration.

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Ian Mulgrew: ‘Reasonable doubt’ should be scrapped
“It is an exacting standard of proof rarely encountered in everyday life, and there is no universally intelligible illustration of the concept.”

Another B.C. trial has been thrown out and a new one ordered because the judge failed to properly explain “reasonable doubt” to a jury — a perennial problem because juries misunderstand the term.

Maybe it is time for Canada, as the U.K. did last year, to abandon those words used to define the standard of criminal justice in British law for more than two centuries.

Another B.C. trial has been thrown out and a new one ordered because the judge failed to properly explain “reasonable doubt” to a jury — a perennial problem because juries misunderstand the term.

Maybe it is time for Canada, as the U.K. did last year, to abandon those words used to define the standard of criminal justice in British law for more than two centuries.

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Ian Mulgrew: Colonialism’s ‘success’ handcuffs courts
Although the incarceration rates for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous men have decreased, the Indigenous rate remains eight times higher.

Colonialism led to such alienation that Indigenous offenders can be unaware of or can’t document their ancestry and the effects of assimilation on their life in order to benefit from compensatory sentencing provisions, a B.C. Court of Appeal division says.

Judges do not function as “gatekeepers” of Indigenous identity, the three-justice panel noted in rejecting the appeal of a violent thug with more than eight assault convictions who argued his dangerous offender designation and indeterminate sentence should be overturned in part because he “recently learned” he was of Métis ancestry.

Justice Elizabeth Bennett explained the “methods of assimilation are often the very things that give rise to an Indigenous person’s alienation from their Indigenous community or culture.”

“Thus, not everyone with Indigenous roots can prove those roots,” she said. “The government’s system of assimilation was, in many ways, ‘successful.’ It resulted in many Indigenous people being partially or totally estranged from their Indigenous heritage and disconnected from their culture, their community, and their support. This disconnection is intergenerational and acts as a barrier to realizing the principles enunciated in (the Supreme Court of Canada decisions known as) Gladue (1999) and Ipeelee (2012).”

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