Faculty Blog

 Originally published on April 6, 2021 in Policy Options

The under-resourced Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP did a valiant job in substantiating the discriminatory treatment of a Cree mother grieving the killing of her son. In its <a href="https://www.crcc-ccetp.gc.ca/en/commissions-final-report-cic-pii-ColtenB..." and interim reports, the commission also raised a number of questions about how the investigation into 22-year-old Colten Boushie’s death was handled by police.

Still, the commission’s recommendations for improvements, including for cultural awareness training of officers, were not terribly ambitious. Indeed, the RCMP in Saskatchewan was able <a href="https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/news/2021/saskatchewan-rcmp-commits-implem...">quickly to respond</a> that all of its recommendations would soon be implemented.

Much more reform of the RCMP is, however, required to improve its relations with Indigenous peoples and respond to systemic discrimination against them. These reforms need to go far beyond cultural awareness. They should attempt to change the very culture and governance of the RCMP.

Our government is asking parliament to ignore its statutory-based commitment to evidence-informed policy making under the existing MAID law

If the majority of Canadian Senators, some psychiatrists, and our government have it their way, physicians in Canada will soon be asked to offer patients with mental illness the option to end their lives as a therapy for their mental health related suffering. The Canadian Senate removed the clause that excluded mental illness from Bill C7, a bill which extends “medical assistance in dying” [MAID] (the increasingly less accurate Canadian euphemism for euthanasia and assisted suicide) to persons who have a disability or chronic illness but who are not close to their natural death. The government just announced it largely accepts the Senate’s amendment for inclusion of mental illness, which would enter into force with a sunset provision of two years. What is extraordinary is how the government thereby allows an unelected Senate to introduce a sweeping broadening of MAID, and this while the House of Commons itself had no detailed evidence-informed review and debate on this specific issue, since it was not part of the original Bill.

Populist and Liberal Democracy

Alan Brudner

                Many see the authoritarian bent of Donald Trump’s presidency as a threat to liberal democracy—not as great, perhaps, as the populist dictatorships of Poland, Hungary, and Russia, but certainly on the spectrum.  Those who hold this view typically contrast populist democracy with liberal democracy. Populist democracy is the personal rule of a leader who draws direct support from the masses.  Liberal democracy is the rule of laws authorized by the masses’ civic-minded representatives, administered by public servants, and endorsable by all subjects viewed as free and equal.

[cross posted from https://cfe.ryerson.ca/blog/2017/05/our-anxious-supreme-court]

One gets the sense that the Supreme Court of Canada does not have a good feel for free speech questions. It took some time, for instance, for a majority of the Court to acknowledge that legal constraints might ‘chill’ free speech. The Court confidently proclaimed, on more than one occasion, that civil and criminal legal prohibitions should not be expected to deter speakers. 

Only recently did the Court acknowledge this possibility and, accordingly, relaxed the law of libel so as to allow a new defence of responsible communication on matters of public interest. The Court did so only after other commonwealth Courts had taken a lead in relaxing the common law of libel. It was this reform that enabled the press to report freely on the misdeeds of the late Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford, without the worry of a lawsuit.