Justice is Blind
© unknownThis is Lady Justice. Her scales represents equality and her sword decisive and just punishment. She is blindfolded to guard against bias. Be it because of race, gender, religion, or politics, she is immune to all the things that differentiate people. Lady Justice does not care about who comes before her. She cares only about their relation to the law and the law only.
Justice is supposed to be blind, or at least that's the way it used to be. However, if it were up to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he'd rip off that sacred blindfold faster than his own T-shirt at a gay pride parade.

New Legislation

At the end of March, the Liberal government tabled Bill C-75 in the house of Commons outlining major criminal justice reforms. While some aspects of the bill seemed positive, like the promises to speed up the trial process, other measures introduced were taken straight from the identity politics playbook, and threaten to undermine the objectivity and impartiality of the Canadian judicial system itself.

The most questionable item in the legislation was the complete removal of peremptory challenges in the juror selection process from the Criminal Code. This provision used to allow lawyers to remove a potential juror without giving reasons. The government's justification for this move was likely in response to the Colten Boushie trial, where many left-leaning activists felt the predominantly white jury were overtly racist in their decision to acquit Gerald Stanley.

Ex Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould
© Justin Tang/Canadian PressEx Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould fired by the Trudeau government for saying no to corruption.
Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould claims that these changes are an effort to reform jury selection so that jury panels are "more representative of the Canadian population." Many prominent lawyers argue that, in fact, it will have the exact opposite effect.
"This one case is going to strip away peremptory challenges, and it's only because of the [Boushie] backlash, which should tell you how crassly political this whole bill is," Solomon Friedman, a prominent Ottawa-based defence lawyer, said in an interview with CBC News.

"The fact that this bill was pushed out in the afternoon before a long weekend, when Parliament is going to rise for two weeks, tells you how ashamed the government really is of this bill."

Wilson-Raybould pitched the proposal as a way to initiate "a necessary culture shift" in the country's justice system, and reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in the country's criminal justice system. [...]

"I use peremptory challenges to get a more diverse and representative jury, to see if I can get racialized individuals on the jury. That is now gone. We cannot do that now." [...]

Another defence lawyer, Michael Spratt, said he's also troubled by the move to eliminate peremptory challenges.

"When you have 100 people lined up, potential jurors, only a very small percentage, a disproportionately small number, are people of colour," he said. "We will often use preemptive challenges to excuse white jurors or non-minority jurors so we can get to those racialized jurors that look like our client."
Scale, gavel and books
© Postmedia NewsThe National Judicial Institute was established by the Canadian Judicial Council to provide continuing education for judges. Topics include gender sensitivity and "social context issues."
Social Justice Agenda Infects Canadian Law Schools and Societies

Before Trudeau's government introduced this new identity-politics driven legislation, some Universities and Provincial Law Societies in Canada had already begun foisting their own form of politically correct thought policing upon their students and respective members.
One might expect Justin Trudeau and his ministers to jump on ideological bandwagons, but it is telling when law schools want to ride along too. [...]

The Law Society of Ontario has begun to compel its members to expressly acknowledge an obligation to promote progressive values. Individual liberties are no longer fundamental. Everyone is not subject to the same rules. The legal ground is shifting.
As Barbara Kay writes in her essay for The Post Millenial:
The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) has, hewing to the Marxist playbook adhered to by identity-politics campus militants, transmogrified their mission to promote actual "justice" into the promotion of "social justice," a very different animal. Justice guarantees equality under the law and the right to a fair trial for individuals. Commitment to social justice confers a responsibility to protect the feelings of acknowledged victim groups, at whatever cost to the alleged offender and often producing the opposite of real justice. In its new incarnation of "thought crime" police, the LSUC has lost sight of its legitimate function and caused harm. [...]

Pardy notes that forced speech "is the most egregious violation of the freedom of expression," which is protected by section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Laws in free countries are meant to govern action—not opinion. The Supreme Court of Canada, Pardy points out, has said compelling individuals to express opinions they do not hold "is totalitarian and as such alien to the tradition of free nations like Canada, even for the repression of the most serious crimes."
In addition to Provincial Law Societies, some Canadian Universities are also jumping on the Social Justice bandwagon. As Christie Blatchford writes in The National Post, the University of Victoria Law School is leading the pack when it comes to post-secondary virtue signaling.
No law school in the country may be more frank about producing social justice warriors than the University of Victoria, where Dean Jeremy Webber says in his welcoming message the following: "...this faculty has prided itself on its commitment to social justice. [...]

With a few exceptions, Canada's law schools are increasingly determined not to be left behind by other faculties, such as education studies and social work, where SJWs, as they're often called, make no bones about being all about anti-racism, gender equity and wholesale reform to the institutions of the country.
Other Universities were soon following suit by using the Colten Boushie verdict to denounce the Canadian legal system.
The University of Windsor's law school statement about (the case), in which the school pronounced the legal system as oppressive and said "a reinvention of our legal system is necessary." [...]

Adam Dodek, the dean of the common law faculty at the University of Ottawa, sent a message about the Boushie verdict to his students, extending "our deepest sympathies" to the Boushie family and Indigenous people, which is fair enough.

Then he said, in part, "We recognize that the legal institutions of this country have not only failed to deliver justice to Indigenous peoples of this country but have in fact continued to perpetrate many injustices. We acknowledge that racism still very much exists in our justice system.

As one U of O law student said, the email made clear that "There are acceptable and unacceptable views at Canada's universities."
Bruce Pardy is a Professor of Law at Queen's University and he also writes for The National Post.
Legal education should expose students to a diverse set of perspectives so that they can figure out what they think. That is quite a different thing from law schools advocating an ideology and telling students what to believe. Rather than teaching intelligent critical thinking about the politics of law, law schools have themselves become political torchbearers for social justice dogma. The result is as much indoctrination as education. [...]

Any law professor can legitimately express her own views. Attempting to impose those views on others and to restrict their speech accordingly is quite another thing.

When a university adopts a political stance, it imposes an ideology on its professors and students. [...]

By adopting social justice mandates, universities become combatants in the culture wars. This strategy is especially insidious at the law schools because they are responsible for training tomorrow's lawyers and judges, who will graduate from publicly funded institutions teaching that legal justice and progressive values are synonymous and that Western legal principles are oppressive. The problem is especially acute because Canada's law schools do not profess a variety of political convictions. They now largely preach together from the manifesto of the progressive left.
A Real World Example

Two days prior to the announcement of the government's new anti-crime legislation, a defense lawyer in Ontario argued that her black client should be sentenced differently solely because of the color of his skin.

Jamal Jackson
© Toronto StarJamaal Jackson pleaded guilty to possession of a prohibited firearm and breach of a prohibition order. He made a passionate appeal to the judge asking for leniency and pledging to live a lawful lifestyle.
An Ontario Superior Court judge has been asked to adopt a new way of sentencing Black offenders, similar to how courts must consider the impact of the social and cultural history of Indigenous Canadians when determining punishment.

On Tuesday, Toronto defence lawyer Emily Lam told Justice Shaun Nakatsuru her case is an opportunity to address the problem of over-incarceration, which has been viewed as a relevant sentencing factor in cases involving Indigenous offenders, who, like Black people, are over-represented in prison.
Perhaps they are over represented because they commit more crimes?
"We can't continue what we're doing, clearly something needs to change," Lam said concluding her argument on behalf of Jamaal Jackson, 33, who is originally from Nova Scotia.

Jackson is Black and believes he has Indigenous ancestry.
Sure, according to the diktats of SJW philosophy, as long as he 'believes' that he's of Indigenous ancestry - it must therefore be true.
He pleaded guilty last November to possession of a prohibited firearm and breach of a prohibition order. He has a lengthy criminal record and has been incarcerated for much of his adult life.
Forget about his lengthy criminal record and documented history of reoffending, he deserves special treatment because he's black.
Across Canada, judges regularly request "Gladue" reports — named for a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada case — in cases involving Indigenous offenders. They encourage sentencing judges to be sensitive to the disadvantages and systemic racism faced by Indigenous people and consider alternatives other than incarceration.
"Systemic Racism" - a meaningless and patently absurd ideological buzzword which mistakenly assumes that the insidious, imaginary and all-inclusive PATRIARCHY is wholly responsible for people's poor life choices.
The IRCA report includes interviews with Jackson, and his family members, about his childhood in Cole Harbour, N.S., and his path to the justice system which was "complex and tragic. A light-skinned African Nova Scotian with an absent father and a mentally ill mother, his psycho-social and racial identity development was impaired from his earliest years," the report states.
The science is clear, being raised by a single parent, more than any other factor (race, gender, income, religion) is a strong determinant of later criminal activity.
In her factum filed in court, Lam wrote that "Black Canadians ... have some important shared experiences with Aboriginials, including slavery, colonialism, segregation and racism, which has contributed to their involvement in the justice system."
The only experience they really share is continuing to see themselves as victims of oppression.
Crown attorney Sue Adams, who is seeking a sentence in the range of 7.5 to 9 years for possession of a loaded firearm and one year consecutive for breach of probation, told the judge she is not opposed to the courts having more information.

Courts already rely on a plethora of pre-sentence reports, including psychiatric assessments, psychological and cultural assessments, "but they consistently say background factors and systemic issues do not allow for mitigation of sentence in very serious cases," she argued.

When asked if he had anything to say, Jackson delivered a passionate, 20-minute appeal to the judge asking for leniency and pledging to live a lawful lifestyle.

"I actually am someone that can successfully reintegrate back into the community and it's just not talk, or mumble jumble," he said. "I just swayed the wrong the way and I want to come back and I need that opportunity."
Sure buddy, but considering extensive criminal background, perhaps you should include a huge grain of salt with that whopper.

Nakatsura said he will sentence Jackson April 23.

Expect to see more of this type of progressive nonsense coming from Trudeau's government and related post-secondary institutions in the months and years to come.

At one point not too long ago, the Canadian legal system could have been viewed as a paragon of rational, even-handed objectivity when it comes to trying cases and dispensing justice. Based upon the simple premise that "all are equal and treated the same in the eyes of the law", this particular system, borrowed from its British colonial counterpart, was seen as a shining example for the rest of the world to emulate and follow.

Alas, those days are no more. As the truly frightening and reprehensible Marxist ideology of "diversity, equity, and inclusion" creeps into the once impartial and objective halls of the Canadian legal system, we can look forward a dismal Orwellian future where 'wrongthink' becomes the most heinous crime of all.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
~ George Orwell