Elections Canada delayed shipping mail-in ballot kits to 123,000 voters until less than a week before election day, records show. Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault had boasted his agency was fully prepared to conduct a pandemic election: “Being ready to administer an election is at the core of Election Canada’s mandate.”
Sixth and seventh waves of pandemic infection will occur and “some will actually be quite severe,” says the Public Health Agency. Full vaccination with two Covid shots is insufficient, doctors said: “All policies need to be re-examined over time. This is one of them.”
The nation’s largest daily, the federally-subsidized Toronto Star, seeks millions more in taxpayers’ aid. The publisher petitioned MPs for new concessions including a $5,000 tax credit to train employees in how to use the internet: “The industry needs time.”
Uyghur Muslims have filed a Federal Court challenge of cabinet’s refusal to censure China for genocide. The Court claim was filed as cabinet celebrated Canadian athletes at the Beijing Winter Games: “Cheer on our athletes. Go Canada go!”
Taxpayers have now spent $10 million on a decrepit heritage building that has sat empty for 23 years. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 announced with fanfare the Ottawa landmark would become an Indigenous Peoples’ Space: “We have a lot of hard work ahead.”
In the year 2056,
Chapters will announce
a major expansion
to its gift section,
boosting the display of
decorative pillows, scented candles, and
specialty teas.
Books may still be found
on the remaining shelf
near the emergency exit.
Gillette will introduce its new
– and revolutionary –
17-blade razor,
in stores
just in time for Father’s Day.
You wouldn’t believe
the smooth, close shave it delivers.
Nothing like its predecessor, the
16-blade model.
And in the House of Commons,
the Minister of Public Services and Procurement
will announce
that the remaining 6,000 pay issues
will be resolved
by Christmas.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, writes for Blacklock’s each and every Sunday)
Buried in the files of Ontario District Court is R v. Anguei Pal-Deng, an unsettling case. The accused, a Sudanese Black man, 25, already on probation for common assault, was charged with savagely pushing an 82-year old grandmother down a flight of stairs at Toronto’s Dufferin Mall on March 6, 2014. Two eyewitnesses saw everything: the vicious attack, the bleeding victim, the thin blue line of criminal justice that separates civilized society from urban mayhem. “He grabbed my arm and threw me down the stairs,” the woman said. Pal-Deng spent 7 months in jail awaiting trial.
His case was assigned to Judge Melvyn Green, former co-president of the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted. Judge Green took an unusual interest in the case; he pulled mall security tapes and examined them frame by frame. “I feel compelled to note that absent the closed-circuit television evidence, the result may have been tragically different,” he wrote.
Video showed Pal-Deng minding his business, drinking a Coke, when the elderly woman approached the stairs, struggling with her cane, purse and shopping bag. Pal-Deng gently reached out to offer assistance when she “physically recoiled”, then tumbled downstairs. He rushed forward and knelt to comfort the woman.
Neither eyewitness saw anything; one was on an escalator several feet away, facing in the opposite direction. “It is of profound concern that justice could so easily have miscarried but for the good fortune that the very physical exchange at issue was preserved on videotape,” wrote Judge Green. He acquitted the defendant and apologized. “I regret I do not have the authority to do more,” said Green.
Miscarriages Of Justice In Canada examines phenomena that occur over and over in criminal courts: unreliable witnesses, sloppy police work, indifferent prosecutors. Not every defendant has the good fortune of appearing before a Judge Green. “It is a highly imperfect system,” writes author Prof. Kathryn Campbell of the University of Ottawa’s Department of Criminology.
Campbell’s work is meticulous and jarring. Miscarriages Of Justice counts scores, even hundreds of cases of wrongful conviction annually in Canada typically due to witness misidentification, “problematic police investigation”, failure of Crown prosecutors to disclose evidence, fabricated testimony, unreliable jailhouse informants, Court errors, false confessions, prejudice and poor lawyering.
The actual number of wrongful convictions is not known. Campbell identifies at least 32 cases in which Canadians were compensated after being jailed for crimes they did not commit. One victim, Clayton Johnson of Shelburne, N.S., was paid $2.5 million for spending five years in prison on allegations he’d murdered his wife. Investigators determined Mrs. Johnson fell down the basement stairs while Mr. Johnson was at work.
“Existing laws and evidentiary procedures are presumed to be in place to protect everyone, yet, regardless, errors frequently occur throughout the criminal justice process from investigation, arrest and trial all the way through sentencing,” notes Prof. Campbell.
Miscarriages Of Justice concludes officialdom alone is not to blame. Media representation of lawlessness “exerts enormous pressure on the police to solve these crimes, and to do so expeditiously”, writes Prof. Campbell. “While public pressure to solve a crime immediately does not always result in the wrong person being accused or convicted, police may, in their desire to solve these cases, cut corners in investigative practices.”
Perhaps. It is also true that police, prosecutors, defence lawyers and judges are never fired for participating in wrongful convictions through incompetence, indifference or malice. No party to the Pal-Deng prosecution suffered the loss of a penny’s worth of pensionable earnings let alone seven months in jail.
Miscarriages Of Justice is a darkly compelling book not because it is sensational, but because it is so matter of fact.
By Holly Doan
Miscarriages of Justice in Canada: Causes, Responses, Remedies, by Kathryn M. Campbell; University of Toronto Press; 544 pages; ISBN 9780-80209-4063; $40.76
The Freedom Convoy blockade at Parliament yesterday completed its sixth day amid MPs’ claims lawless truckers were attacking passersby on the streets of Ottawa. Preliminary data show police-reported street crime actually fell since the blockade began: “There have been no riots, injuries or deaths.”
The CBC yesterday clarified its claim the Kremlin was behind a Freedom Convoy truckers’ protest at Parliament Hill. The assertion was not factual, the Crown broadcaster said: “There is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, or perhaps even instigating it.”
Cabinet yesterday acknowledged widespread opposition to its proposal to censor legal but hurtful internet content. “This is a very important and complex issue,” Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement: “I will have more to say on online news and online safety in the coming days and weeks.”
Suspending MPs caught in ethical violations would be effective, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said yesterday. Currently the only consequence for breach of the Conflict Of Interest Code For MPs is a public apology: “It never went any greater than that.”
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos yesterday said protection of privacy was an “absolute priority” in a federal data scoop on cellphone users. Members of the Commons ethics committee said cabinet merely outsourced privacy issues to telecom providers: “The average cellphone user, unless they are informed, basically wouldn’t know.”
Environmentalists have won a key legal challenge over federal licensing of a bestselling weed killer. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled regulators failed to properly assess risks of glyphosate sold in Canada under the Roundup brand since 1976: “This is the first time this Court is called upon to review a decision of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday pledged to avoid any direct dealings with a federal lobbyist, the Canadian Mental Health Association, after it appointed his wife as “national volunteer.” The Association last year received millions in federal grants: “There is no consideration for talent fees.”
Federal managers billed taxpayers more than $150,000 for videoconference workshops with a consultant offering deep breathing exercises, records show. The spending followed questionnaires indicating many government executives complain they work too hard: “Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Why is it we all forget we can do this at any time?”
