Chartrand, Paul L. A. H. --- "Manitoba's Aboriginal Justice Inquiry: 1988-1990" [1990] AboriginalLawB 7; (1990) 1(42) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 18

Manitoba’s Aboriginal Justice Inquiry:

1988-1990

by Paul L.A.H. Chartrand

Historically, Canada's legal system has imposed alien values upon the country's Aboriginal peoples. They have been clients and victims of the system, without significant input into it. In recent years, changing social and political circumstances have permitted the expression of criticism of a system that manifestly fails to provide justice and which appears not to conform to the principle that the interests of all citizens ought to be accorded equal solicitude by the state. The Canadian response to this criticism has been the establishment of a number of public inquiries with mandates to examine and report upon particular events which had triggered outcries from Aboriginal communities.

In the centrally located Province of Manitoba, the tragic events which led to the establishment of "the Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and Aboriginal People" in April 1988 were the deaths of two Aboriginal persons. In 1971, Helen Betty Osborne, a 19 year old Cree high school student, died of shock and haemorrhaging after being stabbed 56 times with a screwdriver outside the northern Manitoba town of The Pas. Two of the four men involved in her death were charged 15 years later but only one was convicted of second-degree murder at a 1987 trial. There was an outcry over the prosecution and investigation of the case, which was hampered by witnesses who did not come forward for many years. Then, on March 8, 1988, an executive officer of an Aboriginal organization, JJ. Harper, was fatally shot by a police handgun while walking home on the streets of the capital city, Winnipeg. According to the police officer involved, Harper was shot during a scuffle when he was wrongly suspected of being involved in a car theft. An internal police investigation hurriedly exonerated the officer.

These two events, added to the long-standing discontent over the shocking over-representation of Aboriginal people in prisons and the inadequacies of 'fly in' circuit court systems in remote northern areas, put tremendous political pressures on the New Democratic provincial government, which was facing an election. The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry which was established by order in council as a committee under the Attorney General Act, is remarkable because of the appointment of an Ojibway lawyer, C. Murray Sinclair, recently appointed Associate Chief Judge of the Provincial Court, as one of the two co-chairmen with Associate Chief Justice A. Hamilton of the Court of Queen's Bench. The Inquiry is also remarkable because of the broad mandate given to it, and because of the confirmation of that mandate by the subsequent Conservative government, which eventually passed special legislation in 1989 to counter attacks on the Inquiry's mandate by the local Police Association. In brief, the Inquiry (which was re-established as a statutory commission) is charged with the duty to investigate, report, and make recommendations to the Minister of Justice on the relationship between the administration of justice and Aboriginal peoples of Manitoba, in addition to its mandate to investigate events surrounding the two deaths and, in particular, to investigate whether there exists any evidence of racial prejudice in respect to the events surrounding the deaths.

Public expectations appear to run high in anticipation of the report of the Commissioners, which is not expected to be ready for some months yet. The Inquiry's public hearings have been the subject of much contentious debate and has attracted media attention from across the country. In fulfilling its mandate to deal with all components of the 'justice system', namely, policing, courts, and correctional services, the Inquiry has performed a very visible public education service. Its proceedings have been videotaped and appeared on a local television channel live, and at repeated intervals. The Commissioners also invited a number of American experts to brief them on the US system of Indian tribal courts, of which there are no counterparts in Canada, and the two-day symposium was also televised.

When the two Commissioners wound up their public hearings late in November 1989, they had heard more than 1,117 presentations, including 67 written briefs. They had accumulated 21,000 pages of transcript covering more than 700 hours of hearings. There are 1,200 items in the Inquiry's library. The Commissioners travelled over 20,000 kilometres using everything from aircraft to dog sleds, to 43 different communities as well as five prisons, five work camps and five youth corrections centres.

In addition, the provincially-funded Inquiry commissioned a number of research reports to help them in their work. At a time when even the Canadian Bar Association is recommending the establishment of special systems for Aboriginal peoples, the Inquiry's report may well herald a new beginning in Canada's official response to the involvement of Aboriginal peoples in the 'criminal justice' system.