The wrongs of Canada’s justice system have been many and tragic over the last half-century and the likelihood of being failed by the law, often at horrific cost, seems disturbingly related to race or class.The furor over the latest controversial court ruling — the acquittal last week of white Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley in the 2016 shooting death of 22-year-old Cree man Colten Boushie — threatens to add new names to a dubious pantheon of celebrated miscarriages of justice.Steven Truscott. Donald Marshall. Guy Paul Morin. David Milgaard. Robert Baltovich. The list is long of Canadians robbed of years or decades of their lives by flawed justice.Most often, of course, such outrages involve wrongful convictions rather than acquittals such as Stanley’s — a decision that outraged First Nations leaders who suggest it had less to do with the merits of the case than a jury without an Indigenous member.Indigenous scholars from Western Canada issued a joint statement on the verdict this week, saying “few of us are surprised.“Most Canadians believe deeply in the image of Canada as a fair and tolerant nation,†they said. “The verdict gives the lie to that myth.â€The heads of Indigenous studies departments at the universities of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba promised to continue researching, teaching and encouraging Canadians institutions “to do better and to be better.But it is up to Canadians, they said, to educate themselves and to ensure such incidents are “held up to the same moral compass Canada uses to evaluate other countries.â€The Saskatchewan ruling did prompt a quick meeting between the Boushie family and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who promised to “fix the system in the spirit of reconciliation.â€It may be impossible, of course, to tease out where race ends and class begins as a contributing factor to such cases. But a recurring pattern seems to be the justice sys ...
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