Exclusion of natives from juries serious, says NDP Leader

JOE FRIESEN

From Monday's Globe and Mail

September 15, 2008 at 4:48 AM EDT

Native people have been left out of jury selection for years, and there's great reluctance within the Ministry of the Attorney-General to do anything about it, according to Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Howard Hampton.

Mr. Hampton, a lawyer who represents the Kenora-Rainy River riding, the northwestern portion of Ontario, said the consequences of the systematic exclusion of native people from jury selection are very serious.

"The jury system calls for a jury of one's peers. All of one's peers, not a selective peerage," he said.

Mr. Hampton said the recent revelation that only 44 people from native communities are considered for jury selection in the Kenora district, which has a significant aboriginal population, "calls into question the fundamental fairness of the jury system."

When he was Ontario's attorney-general in the early 1990s, Mr. Hampton said he asked ministry staff to examine the jury selection process because he was concerned, given his experience as a young lawyer in Northwestern Ontario, that native people were overrepresented as accused persons and underrepresented on juries.

"I remember the resistance I met when I was attorney-general when I started asking questions about the fairness of the jury selection system. Basically, officials said it would be very complicated if we were to open this up. It would take a long time and it would take a lot of resources. So there was a reluctance," he said.

Ontario's current Attorney-General, Liberal Chris Bentley, has so far ignored calls from native leaders and lawyers for a full inquiry. Mr. Bentley said Friday that the ministry has been engaged in continuing efforts, including written requests and visits to native reserves, to obtain names and addresses for an updated jury roll.

According to an affidavit filed by Rolanda Peacock, supervisor of court operations in Kenora district, the federal government used to provide band electoral lists to the court, but stopped doing so in 2000. In 2006 the court sent letters asking for electoral lists to 42 reserves, but received only four replies. In 2007 they flew to 14 remote reserves and received eight additional lists. The provincial ministry has not yet revealed how many people in total are on the jury selection list for the district, saying only that 44 are from native communities.

Patricia Valladao, a spokeswoman for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, said the federal government stopped passing along voters lists to the province in 2000 at the request of native bands.

The exclusion of native people from juries is an issue with deep historical roots in Canada. Jurors were selected from the list of voters, which, because they were denied the vote, did not include native people until 1952, and people living on reserves did not have their names included on jury rolls until 1971. Manitoba's Aboriginal Justice Inquiry concluded as recently as 1991 that "Aboriginal people are not properly represented on juries, even on juries trying an Aboriginal person accused of committing an offence against another Aboriginal person in an Aboriginal community."

The issue was again brought to light last week by lawyer Julian Falconer, acting on behalf of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto.

Mr. Falconer was representing those groups at a coroner's inquest into the deaths of Jamie Goodwin and Ricardo Wesley, two young men killed in a fire at the police station in Kashechewan. During motions before the inquest, Mr. Falconer questioned the adequacy of the jury roll in the Kenora district.

Ms. Peacock's affidavit was filed in response to that concern, which revealed that of the more than 12,000 native people on reserves in the district, only 44 could be called as jurors.