Renaude Morin:
I was struck by the connection between story telling and justice in your post. It reminded me of one of my previous comments about the victims of the Huronia Regional Centre who wanted to tell their stories at trial. Their lawyers considered it a victory to reach a settlement with the Ontario government and pay each victim instead of giving them their day in court. Because of the harm to their dignity from the abuse in the government-run institution the victims saw the chance to tell their stories in open court as a way to heal and reclaim their agency. The nature of class action lawsuits privileges getting a huge settlement (which is how lawyers get paid) over going to trial and allowing victims to testify about their experiences.
Your post also made me think about another area of law in Canada that fails to let victims tell their stories publicly. Most of the time when an individual makes a complaint to their provincial human rights commission the matter is settled by mediation. There is no public record of the dispute and a condition of settlement may be a non-disclosure agreement. I know of an individual with a disability who made a human rights complaint when she was unable to vote in an election at her local polling place because it was inaccessible. In the end the barriers were removed but she was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. For such a basic right – the right to vote – it astounds me that the settlement with the government should be private. One of the basic principles of our legal system is that it be public. In fact litigants must apply for a sealing order to avoid their court case being in the public record. Yet we have created a procedure for human rights complaints that is completely hidden from the public. We do not know, for example, how many disabled people are being disenfranchised, nor can we use these cases as precedent. These stories of discrimination remain untold.
Rose Adams:
I was excited to read in your post about the program for new indigenous law students that is taking place at the U of S this summer. While increasing education for judges and lawyers about Gladue sentencing is important, I am convinced that increasing the number of judges and lawyer who are indigenous is necessary. Law schools across Canada are making more efforts than before to ensure that their student populations reflect the actual Canadian population. My own experience with disability has really heightened my awareness about how difficult it is to fully understand the discrimination that others experience when you have immense privilege. Before my car accident I was aware of my privilege but it was not until I became a wheelchair user and began to experience the city of Montreal as a person with a disability that I fully understood privilege. As we (hopefully) move towards including indigenous legal perspectives and remedies in the Canadian legal system we absolutely must do so under the leadership of those who have embodied experience with what it means to be indigenous.