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| John L. Hill |
The first is an interview the Chief Justice of Canada, Richard Wagner, gave to Radio-Canada during an official visit to Washington, D.C. He described the reaction in the United States to a leaked draft judgment that suggested the U.S. Supreme Court might be on the road to overturning the landmark case of Roe v. Wade and allowing states to declare a woman’s right to abortion illegal. Wagner called the political storm that erupted as “catastrophic.”
He further commented, “Just like trust. It takes years and years to get people to trust institutions, and it takes a single event to destroy that trust.” He went on: “We can never say to ourselves. ‘We have judicial independence, we are in Canada, everything is fine, we have respect for the institutions.’ No, we have to be on the lookout.” Some have taken this as a veiled criticism of Conservative Party leadership hopefuls Pierre Poilievre, Patrick Brown and Jean Charest who criticized the recent unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada (R. v. Bissonnette [2022] S.C.J. No. 23). That decision allowed Alexandre Bissonnette, who had been convicted of killing six people in a Quebec City Mosque, to escape having to serve consecutive periods of parole ineligibility for multiple homicides. The leadership candidates condemned the decision and promised its overturn should one of them one day form a government.
Wagner was disturbed and he remarked, “As soon as an incident occurs that can attack judicial independence, we must react, we must denounce.”
Lawyers are taught, as early as their law school days, that members of decision-making institutions are not open to enter into debate, and it is the role of members of the bar to speak out whenever our institutions are attacked. It was surprising for the chief justice to have to remind us that while we all enjoy freedom of speech, once we lose faith in the justice system, it will be a short road to either anarchy or totalitarianism.
With this warning in mind, it came as a shock to read the criticism of federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller who criticized the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) and the Parole Board of Canada. He objected to the fact that Eric Dejaeger was released from prison in May without being referred for detention upon serving two-thirds of his sentence. Dejaeger, a former priest, was convicted in 2015 of 32 counts of sexually abusing people including children in Iglooik, a hamlet in Nunavut. The parole board came under attack for not imposing more drastic conditions to the release of the now 75-year-old inmate.
Under Canada’s Corrections and Conditional Release Act, federal penitentiary inmates have a right to be released on statutory release to be supervised in the community upon serving two-thirds of the court-imposed sentence. In certain cases, a referral is made to the parole board to consider detention until warrant expiry, then the inmate is released unconditionally. In the Dejaeger case, the CSC examined his risk and did not make a referral for detention, but the parole board did impose a residency condition requiring the offender to live at a halfway house under constant supervision to better manage community risk.
The crimes Dejaeger committed were horrendous, but he has received the punishment imposed by law. A criticism, especially from a minister of the Crown, shows either a lack of appreciation of how our correctional system operates or a pandering to populist notions that undermine our faith in the proper functioning of our institutions.
The chief justice was entirely right in expressing his fear of what may result if we lose faith in our institutions. Miller was wrong in his criticism of our correctional system. He should issue a public apology for his ill-considered remarks.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a J.D. from Queen’s and LL.M. in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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