 Hi, everyone. I think I'm going to get started here. I'm Adelina Iftene. I'm a law professor here at the Schulich School of Law at Delhouse. And it is my great pleasure to welcome you for our first event in our inaugural Criminal Justice Speaker Series here at Delhouse. The series has been created by the law school together with the Criminal Justice Coalition at Schulich, which is new. And it brings together faculty, students, alumni, and community interested in criminal justice in the broad sense, criminal justice as social justice. So we have an absolutely phenomenal event to kick off our series with and a very timely one. I would like to send a big shout out to the Criminal Law Students Association, particularly Ellie Sutton and Maggie McCain, that have worked very hard on the series. So I'm very, very proud to be working with them on this. And I'm talking to you today from IGMACI, which is the Ancestral and Unceded IGMA Territory. And I would also like to extend an invitation for you to consider and to think of the territories that you are all watching from and the people that have inhabited these territories from immemorial times. It is particularly important, I think, to do so as we're talking about a very, very important issue today. And that has to do with how criminal justice system, very purely, very strongly colonial institution, is engaging with and impacting indigenous people, not only here in IGMACI, but across Canada. We have two amazing speakers today. We are very pleased to be hosting Professor Kent Roach from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. And my wonderful colleague, our own Professor Naomi Metallic, Professor Roach is going to be talking about his book, Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice, for the first part of the event today. And that will be followed by Professor Metallic's remarks on the presentation and on the issues brought up. There will be a bit of a conversation between Professor Metallic and Professor Roach. And we will save the last 10 minutes for your questions. So I'm going to invite you to use the Q&A option that's at the bottom of the screen to submit any questions you may have during the event at the end of the talks. And I will come back in the last 10 minutes of the event and fill the question and put them to the speakers. So before I switch my camera off and let the event begin, I will introduce Professor Metallic. And then Professor Metallic will introduce Professor Roach. So Naomi Metallic is a law professor here at the Schulich School of Law. And she is from the Listogucci Mi'kmaqi First Nation in Gaspage Gwaggi. Was that correct? OK. She is also the chancellor's chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy. And she was a law clerk to the Honorable Michelle Basterash of the Supreme Court of Canada between 2006 and 2007. Naomi has been named to the best lawyer in Canada at least in Aboriginal Law in 2015 and was chosen for Canadian Lawyers Magazine in 2018, top 25 most influential lawyers in the area of human rights, advocacy, and criminal law. As a legal scholar, she is most interested in writing about how the law can be hardness to promote the well-being and self-determination of Indigenous peoples in Canada. So it is my great pleasure to now let Naomi take over. And I will see you at the end of the event. Well, Alan, thank you, Adelina. I'm very happy to be with you this evening and introduce my friend and colleague, Kent Roach. He holds a chair in Law and Policy at the University of Toronto. He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2015 for his advocacy as a scholar and litigator for human rights. He presented Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto in a variety of cases, including Gladue, and will be representing the Asper Centre in Shulan, defending the constitutionality of the abolition of peremptory challenges in response to the Stanley Colton-Bushy case. Canadian Justice Indigenous Injustice is his 14th book and was shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing. He is currently working on a book on Canadian policing. And I had the pleasure of getting to know and work with Kent as part of an expert panel a couple years ago who wrote on policing in Indigenous communities. And I'm honored to be involved in conversation with him this evening. Take it away, Kent. Thank you very much, Naomi. That was a very generous introduction. So I plan just to speak for about 20 minutes. So there's lots of time, both for Naomi and for all of you. I'm very grateful for those of you who have joined us. I'm speaking from the traditional lands of the Mississauga of the Credit. And I'm very grateful as a settler to be on these lands. My book really starts off, and this is something that I learned from Indigenous colleagues who wrote about this case, really starts off with history. And what happened in the Gerald Stanley Colton-Bushy case happened on Treaty 6 land. And in many ways, what happened that day and subsequent events, I think, were a violation of the spirit of Treaty 6. Now, two of the people that were involved in the negotiation of Treaty 6, you see on the screen, Alexander Morris. I know he looks a little bit like Sir John A. McDonald. He article for Sir John A. McDonald. But it is not Sir John A. And the person on my right is, and I apologize for my pronunciation, Miss Tamaskawa, better known as Big Bear. And in 1876, Big Bear refused to sign Treaty 6. And one of the reasons he refused to sign Treaty 6 is that when he asked Morris, will there be a noose around our neck? Morris, in a way of kind of white settler defensive lawyers, said, well, of course, there will be a noose around your neck if you kill someone illegally. But I also promise you that there will be a noose around the neck of someone who kills one of you illegally. So that's not what Morris, that's not likely what Big Bear meant. It was likely a mistranslation of the Cree. But Morris did make a promise of the equal rule of law. And a promise that we will see is quite strained, both in history and in the Stanley Bushy case. The next is a grave marker for eight indigenous men who were hanged at Battleford, where the Stanley Bushy case took place in 1885 in the follow-up to the 1885 uprising. Again, in the book, I talk about how the settlers in Fort Battleford assumed that the indigenous people would attack them, even though many of the indigenous people took the treaty seriously and did not join with Louis Rial and the other Métis and the uprising. These eight men were hanged publicly, even though that was illegal in Battleford in 1885. They were tried before an all-white jury. They were tried really without any defense counsel and without translation from the Cree. Some might be tempted to say, well, that's ancient history. And how is that relevant to the Stanley Bushy case? But as this poster demonstrates, it is still very much relevant. So in the book in chapter three, I go through a series of cases that I was not aware of before I started researching the book, where cases from Saskatchewan involving all-white juries and acquittals. The Alan Thomas case you may be familiar with, it went to the Supreme Court of Canada on a coroner's inquest in 1965 and looks very much like jury nullification of white men who killed a Cree man. The other cases, I mentioned the Donald Marshall case, although it's not from Saskatchewan, but obviously from Nova Scotia. Donald Marshall wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury and the Helen Betty Osburn case where peremptory challenges were used in Manitoba to ensure an all-white jury. One of the things, and I was very fortunate to have John Burroughs share with me some of the work that he had done in Saskatchewan with treaty elders, but the only sort of upbeat note in the book is really an argument that we have to go back to the treaty in order to find any sort of common ground. And this is also something that I hope to work on with respect to policing. There was an argument in Saskatchewan in 2014 that the peace and good order clause in treaty six and treaty four required a jury of six indigenous people and six non-indigenous people. And I go into the history, even in colonial Canadian law, of mixed juries, both mixed juries that included six citizens and non-citizens in cases involving non-citizens and six anglophones and six francophones in cases before there was simultaneous translation. So even within the colonial system, the mixed jury, which in some ways I think replicates some of the aspirations of treaties, especially when it's considered that the jury requires unanimous consent to bring a verdict, but that was rejected by the Saskatchewan Queens bench in 2014. And I just leave with you as a thought experiment of what would have happened had there been six indigenous people and six non-indigenous people on the Stanley jury. In fact, despite the underrepresentation of indigenous people on juries for various reasons, including that many indigenous people do not want to serve on juries, which in some ways I think is quite understandable, we almost had a six and six jury. If you imagine what would have happened if the peremptory challenges were not available. Moving to the jury selection with respect to the Stanley case, 750 people were summoned to Battlefield in January 2018 to serve on the jury. Only 178 showed up. So there likely was an underrepresentation of indigenous people right there. Saskatchewan uses health cards, but the judicial district of Battlefield extends all the way to the border with the Northwest Territories. Piecing together from press reports, which of course are not completely accurate, but it seems to me that at least 20 of the 178 were in indigenous people. There were 12 who were excused for hardship reasons, as of course many people are excused from jury duty for hardship. Three people were excused because they were related to the Bushy Baptiste family. And of course there were five who were subject to peremptory challenges by Mr. Stanley. So moving on, there was no challenge to the fact that although indigenous people constitute about 30% of the adults in the Battlefield district, that there were likely not 30% of the 178 were indigenous. And I think that if there had been a challenge to the 178 people there, the fairness of the array, unfortunately, it would have failed under the cacophonous decision, which to my mind, and I did represent one of the interveners at the Court of Appeals, so it may be sour grapes on my part, but really rejects ideas of substantive equality, which have been mainstream in really all other parts of Canadian law since the 1980s. Even more shocking, there was no questions asked of the jurors in Stanley Kay's about whether they would have racist bias towards an indigenous victim or if they had been influenced by pretrial publicity. And in my research, I was very surprised to find that the prosecutor in the Stanley Kay's had actually convinced the court in an earlier case stemming from the Saskatoon Starlight Tours, where a police officer was charged and the victim was indigenous, to ask the Williams Parks question, which basically is, are you such a racist that you will not be able to decide the case on the basis of the evidence that you hear? I'm going to get into a little later, and I'm happy to take questions about whether that's an adequate question. Even though I was involved with Williams, that was a long time ago. I'm very old, and I don't think that it is an adequate question. But the fact that it wasn't asked is really quite shocking. And it is quite shocking in light of this Facebook post, which in 2016, after Mr. Stanley's arrest, the picture is of Mr. Stanley going in for a bail hearing. Brad Wall, then the Premier of Saskatchewan, posted on Facebook that there had been racist and hate-filled comments on social media, and these must stop. It's a betrayal of the very values and characters of Saskatchewan, and they are dangerous. And given this sort of pre-trial publicity, it really is astounding that no questions were asked of the jurors before they were in panel. And then, of course, as you know, when five visibly indigenous people came forward to serve as jurors, they were subject to a peremptory challenge by Mr. Stanley and his lawyers, meaning that they simply said challenge, and that was accepted without any reason being given. One of the things that I found rooting around in social media is how much there was social media polarization about the case. And this reflects GoFundMe sort of pages. And again, this raises a question of how jury selection needs to change in an era where no longer does pre-trial publicity come from the local newspaper with the possibility of a change of venue as a way of getting away from that publicity, but now is spread through social media, often inaccurate, hateful, racist, and polarized way. So I mean, for example, why were people not asked if or a request was not made to the trial judge to ask people whether they had contributed to either of these funds? It may be that they could still be impartial, but it would seem to me that this is something that is very, very relevant. So moving on beyond jury selection, you may recall that Mr. Stanley's defense was actually not a formal self-defense. It was rather that it was a hangfire or an accidental discharge of the old pistol that he obtained from his shed. And this crime scene photo is, I think, quite important in understanding that hangfire defense. And as I wrote about this, I really drew on my teaching and writings and those of others, including Emma Cunliffe from the University of British Columbia on wrongful convictions and the issue of science. So let me just take a moment to explain. Mr. Stanley's testimony, and I had access through the generosity of David Tanevich and the University of Windsor Faculty of Law to the full transcripts of the preliminary inquiry and the trial transcript. Mr. Stanley's testimony was that he fired two warning shots when he was approximately here at the far forward explorer. The two indigenous people who had exited the vehicle and were running away testified that they were not warning shots. They were actually shots at them. Mr. Stanley then testified that he ran from that vehicle first to the front of this vehicle and looked under this vehicle to see if it had run over his wife because his wife was on a riding mower somewhere to my left of the picture. His testimony was then that he came back and that he reached in with his left hand to turn off the ignition while his right hand with the pistol in it was behind Colton Bush's head and that at that point the pistol accidentally discharged. He also testified that he did not have his hand on the trigger after firing the warning shots. His son's testimony was substantially similar, although his son said he walked. Now, the reason that I'm kind of belaboring this point is that it became apparent at the preliminary hearing that the hangfire defense was probably going to be Mr. Stanley's main defense. And this person was an RCMP expert, a forensic expert. And in between the prelim and the trial he did some research on the available evidence scientific evidence about recorded hang time. And unfortunately, as is the case with much forensic science, there's not a lot of research. But the research that he found, and I was able to kind of duplicate it because there's so little research out there, is he found two articles, one actually written in the NRA's magazine. So that was unusual reading for me. But both of these confirmed that in experimentally induced hangfires, the delay between pulling the trigger and the bullet exiting amounts to no more than half of a second. Now, he brought those articles to the trial. I think he would have been prepared to adopt them as his evidence, but he was never asked to do that. But he did testify on the basis of that, that this was the observed scientific evidence about hang fire. If you accept that and you go back to this, I think the hangfire defense becomes much more difficult to believe. But at the other time, what was entered into evidence by the accused and was an exhibit, so it was actually something that the jury took back or had available to them during their deliberation, was a hunting manual. And the hunting safety manual said, if you pull the trigger and nothing happens, keep the gun in a safe position for 30 to 60 seconds. Now, if you think a hangfire could occur 30 to 60 seconds after pulling the trigger, perhaps, perhaps you would have a reasonable doubt about this. But of course, the hunting manual had absolutely no scientific basis. It was a precautionary principle. It could have said, keep the gun in a safe position for 60 to 90 seconds or for 60 seconds to 120 seconds. And so it seems to me that the jury was not left with precise enough argument on this issue. And of course, the jury acquitted Mr. Stanley of both murder and manslaughter. And the theory of the manslaughter was through a careless use of a firearm. And usually having a gun at the back of a person's head is careless use of a firearm. But the judge said, if you have a lawful excuse. And so although the judge never instructed the jury about self-defense, he kind of left lawful excuse completely undefined to the jury. So did the jury think that the lawful excuse was 30 to 60 seconds? Maybe. Did the jury think the lawful excuse was self-defense? I would submit that it's not reasonable self-defense. But the jury was never told about self-defense nor the legal requirement that it had to be reasonable. So obviously, this is guessing at what the jury thought. It's a crime in Canada for the jury to disclose what they thought. Still remains a crime under the criminal code. But this was part of my attempt to dissect the Stanley trial after. Now, the other thing that enters into this is I make an argument in the book that although the self-defense was never formally plaid, and although the jury was never instructed about self-defense, there was a phantom self-defense hanging in the air. And here, the social context is extremely important. There were a lot of concerns about rural crime. There's a lot of racial polarization in Saskatchewan about the issue of rural crime. There were concerns that I think three RCMP detachments had to be called before someone came. There's also the expanded self-defense laws, which came not from a rural crime and self-defense area, but from this case, from Toronto, where the Harper government expanded the laws against self-defense. And in the trial transcript, Mr. Stanley testifies as to his subjective fears about people using their vehicles to crash into crowds. And what happened on the Stanley Farm happened approximately a month after this happened in Nice, France. So again, Mr. Stanley may have been thinking about that. Whether this is a reasonable analogy, I would suggest it isn't. But he was allowed to testify about that. He was also allowed to testify that as he was walking towards the car in which Colton Bushy died, that he was thinking of a 1994 rural crime murder with a connection to the Red Pheasant First Nation, which is where Colton Bushy lived. Now, again, how is a 1994 murder relevant to a reasonable perception of self-defense? That was really never explained to the jury. I don't know whether the jury put the dots together with the connection to Red, Red, Red, Red Pheasant. But it seems to me that given that Mr. Stanley testified that he did not know that there was a gun in the car, that this raises an issue, an issue that we've seen in the United States of unreasonable and arguably racist self-defense. And that is, as with the Bernard Getz case in the New York Subway, self-defense that is animated by racist fears and stereotypes. And similarly, in the Trayvon Martin case. Just to conclude, I include a chapter in the book on how the Indigenous witnesses were treated at trial. And again, this goes back to the Donald Marshall Junior case, which I've always included in my criminal law materials in over 30 years of teaching criminal law. And so much, I think, in both the Marshall case and in the Stanley case, depended on issues of credibility. And of course, as people in Nova Scotia know well, those are very complex issues and really involves both the background of the trier of fact and also the need for diversity among the trier of fact. And so there was a lot of cross-examination of the Indigenous witnesses that was extremely hostile. The witness who testified, who was sitting in the back seat with Colton Bushy, the one, there were two Indigenous women in the back seat. One was too traumatized to testify at trial. The second one said that she heard two shots. And the forensic evidence suggests that it is only one. So she was accused in an aggressive cross-examination of lying. And eventually, the crown prosecutor said that he would not rely upon her evidence. And again, I mean, I fortunately have never been in a back seat when someone has died beside me. But I don't, you know, the assumption that the two shot was a malicious lie seems to me at least to be questionable. Another factor is that all of the Indigenous witnesses were arrested at the scene, as was Mr. Stanley. And they were charged with various offenses that were later withdrawn. And discrepancies between their original statements to the police and subsequent statements at the prelim and at trial were used to impugn their credibility. When you read the transcript, there is no mention or no allusion to the Indigenous presence in the courtroom, except on two occasions. And press accounts suggest that this was a racially polarized court with Indigenous people on one side and white settlers on the other. But the two references were to this eagle feather that was brought into the courtroom by Colton Bush's uncle. And the second reference was just before Gerald Stanley was subject to the Crown's cross-examination, arguably the most critical element of the case. And the trial judge instructed this man not that he had been asked by the jury not to have the eagle feather waved. So that's something that at least gave me pause. Now, of course, the acquittal, murder, and manslaughter was as polarized as the lead up to the trial. Although 30% of people in Canada in an Angus Reed poll thought it was a good and fair verdict, 63% in Saskatchewan thought that. Although 32% in Canada thought it was flawed and wrong, 17% in Saskatchewan thought it was flawed and wrong. And although there is not a breakout as to who these people were, 17% of people in Saskatchewan are Indigenous. Now, there was a subsequent case that many saw as the Stanley II case. It happened very close to where I live, near Six Nations. And Peter Kill, the man on my left, was acquitted both of murder and manslaughter for killing John Steyer, who was attempting to steal his truck. A new trial has been ordered by the Ontario Court of Appeal, but the Supreme Court of Canada has a granted leave. And so this will eventually be heard in the Supreme Court and may be really the first test of the Conservatives' 2013 self-defense law. One of the issues is the Court of Appeal in Ontario found that the trial judge aired by not instructing the jury to consider Mr. Kill's actions, which were to grab a gun, not to call 911 to approach Mr. Steyer's in the middle of the night. And then when he thought he saw a weapon to fire two shots. Another issue may be whether Mr. Kill's military experience is relevant. Who is the reasonable person? That's an issue that the law students in here listening to me will grapple with, especially in first year. But the last issue is whether we can actually do better. And Bill C-75 was included an abolition of peremptory challenges of jurors. And the Supreme Court will hear a case dealing with its constitutionality and whether it applies retroactively or prospectively, I believe, on October 7. I support the abolition of peremptory challenges because I believe that it is impossible and that the American experience demonstrates that it is impossible to control their discriminatory use. But I do have to say that I don't see this as a panacea. I testified before the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-75 and outlined a whole other host of jury reform proposals, all of which were rejected. But I have a new article in the Canadian Bar Review that discusses that. But at the end, I'm left with the understanding that the jury is really a symptom. It tells us that something is fundamentally wrong with the colonial Canadian criminal justice system. And I think that we need to look to broader justice policing and other treaty-based reforms. So I've spoken too long, and so I'll hand it over to Naomi. Thank you so much, Kent. That was wonderful. I really appreciate it. And in fact, I am going to ask you some questions about law. But you're talking brought me back to the day that I heard about the acquittal and how I felt. And I kind of felt like I was punched in the stomach. And I wrote an article about that in the conversation. And I think I spoke on behalf of many indigenous lawyers who work in this system trying to make it better. But have these moments where you have these moments where you're like, why am I doing this? It just doesn't seem that this system is fair or cares. And so the things that you were talking about about the witnesses and I also think about how the police treated the family and how they lost evidence about the car and the dehumanization that occurs in that case. And then speaking for indigenous lawyers, we sort of pick up the pieces and go on and keep fighting. But that's how we felt this summer as well with what happened with the police shootings in New Brunswick. And so it can be a challenge. So I'm not going to stay on that emotional point, but just to kind of acknowledge that. Sorry about that. I live in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, stuff happens. I guess the other thing I wanted to say with that was respect to students to get the perspective of the families. There's a great movie by an FB called We Will Stand Up. And I recommend that it gives, you know, I think a really important perspective from the families as well. OK, so getting back to law, I do want to ask you a little bit about the Shulan appeal. We assign it to read for our students in our mandatory Aboriginal Indigenous Law Force in first year. We also assign King, which is also being appealed, I understand, but not being heard at the same time. And I have to say, I agree with Shulan. I am with you on preemptory challenges. But I'm interested in your perspective of the court's decision in King and these types of arguments, because there was an Indigenous offender. And the way I read the court's decision, it almost seemed to be saying, the judge just saying, well, you know, preemptory challenges are minority groups, the last sort of bastion of hope because we, the judiciary, are not good enough. I kind of got the sense that he was saying, like, I'm not going to, nor can I really police racism in my court. So that's why we need preemptory challenges. And I'm just wondering what you think about that kind of analysis. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that that's a very perceptive reading of King. And look, I mean, I'm not, you know, I think you have to get rid of preemptories, but I think a lot more else has to be done. And so one of the things that I'm hoping is that we don't rely on the one, are you a racist question? I just think that, you know, that may have made sense in 1993 and 1998, but given our understanding of implicit bias, we really have to have more of a conversation with prospective jurors. And so one of the things that I'm hoping is that one of the other changes in Bill C-75 is now the judge has to make the decision, whether the juror is impartial or not. And I'm hoping that the judge will recognize that he or she needs a lot more information. And hopefully we can get around this idea that we've really stressed traditionally that, you know, we're not the states and we don't want to invade the privacy of prospective jurors. So I think that that's one. But, you know, I mean, I have to say that, you know, it pains me that a lot of that racialized groups are on different sides of Shuland. And people that I respect like Nader Hussain are on the other side. And, you know, they're arguing that peremptory challenges are really the only thing that we can use in order to have a more representative jury. And, you know, that may work in some cases and it may work in Toronto. But I think that in many cases, it's not going to work. That if it's a battle of peremptory challenges, you're going to keep those who are in the numerical minority off the jury. And, you know, one of the things about the we will stand up documentary is, you know, that there's one of the jurors that were prospective jurors who was subject to a peremptory challenge and they interviewed him. And, you know, here's this person that despite all this kind of colonial history is willing to do his part as part of the jury. And yet, you know, they just kind of said, you know, we don't like the way you look. We don't like the fact that you have your hair and braids and go home. All right, exactly. I could talk more about that in both these decisions. But I would like to, with the time, recognize and we're going to have some time for questions, move on to another topic that I wanted to chat with you about, which is one of our mutually shared love topics of, you know, accountability and policing. So let's talk about that and several events this summer. I think everyone listening knows what I'm talking about. Deaths here, deaths in the US and leaving several groups calling for greater accountability. And I want to ask you, what do you think needs to happen in order for there to be effective police accountability? And we can talk about education and, you know, these sorts of things as well. But I'd be interested from your perspective, from a legal perspective, because the constitutionality and legal sort of dynamics of how policing works is super complex. A lot of people don't understand. And we've also seen, I saw it in New Brunswick, we saw it in Nova Scotia with Porta Pick. Jurisdictional issues kind of get used as an excuse for inaction. So, well, we can't do anything. It's the other government's ability to do so. So just wondering, what do you think some of the things that need to happen in terms of the strength and accountability? Well, I mean, one of the things is I think that we really have to rethink whether we want the RCMP to do the contract policing that they do. I really think that, you know, we need more democratically accountable police forces and done in a kind of transparent way. And I think that if we did that and we took some of the money that is used for contract policing and put that into, you know, self-administered forces or forces that were more responsive to local communities that that would be important. I mean, look, you know, the rule of law, the SIU, the, you know, the Bureau Delantet investigation that is kind of the absolute minimum, right? That, you know, and it goes back to self-defense. I mean, I also think one of the things we need is to amend self-defense laws to say self, you know, it's not reasonable self-defense if it's influenced by racist stereotypes. And I think that we can learn a lot from feminist approaches to law reform, which, you know, with no means no has actually named these myths and stereotypes and declared them to be errors of law. Because, I mean, you know, again, I, you know, and then finally, I think we really need to rethink use of force policies because it seems to me that we've gone on a kind of mechanical sort of thing where everything leads to force, right? So I, you know, I tried the taser, I tried the mace and the next step is, you know, three, four shots center mass. And I just think that we have to have to rethink that. And I think the only way we're gonna do that is if police forces are more locally accountable. So more in a kind of democratic politics sort of, sort of way. Now that's great. I like that idea of the, particularly the self-defense that, you know, you have to have a reasonable reason to be acting in self-defense and a racist reason is not an acceptable one. Adelina, I'm seeing it's 10 to six. Of course, I could go on asking Ken questions all night but I know that you wanted to leave some time for question. Yes, thank you for that amazing presentation, Ken. And thank you for your intervention, Naomi. I think that I could just sit here and listen to you. I actually didn't even look at the watch. I was just sitting here listening to the two of you talk. So we do have one, we have a couple of questions that are coming up now. And I think that if that's okay with you, maybe we can go a couple of minutes over and allow for, you know, for both of you to answer the questions. So I encourage everybody in the audience, if you have questions, just use the Q&A. Just a very quick question here from somebody is asking if, Kent, you have any information about who was the first indigenous person who sat on a jury in Canada and when? I actually don't, although I think I've seen something recently. I don't think it was from Naomi, but someone knows that, but it's not me, I'm afraid. Okay, I just, I don't know, Naomi, do you have a different answer? I don't have it off my head, sorry. The last question asks, and I think that could be from, for both of you, do you think the sentencing should be taken into account the indigenous background of an offender in wheat First Nation Metis, or is that more harmful? So I mean, I think that goes into Bleduabit, I'm not sure, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do think that it should be considered, but I also think, and this may go back to Naomi's question about what accountability is for the police, is it seems to me that, although I've tried to smooth out some of the rough edges at various times during my career, I have to say, as it starts to wind down, I'm starting to have more and more doubts about the entire adversarial system. And I think that one of the things that we need to think about is a much more holistic way to deal with issues of misconduct. And I say that also with respect to the police, because I mean, one of the reasons why I'm now trying to write a book about the police is I think that, that the accountability, including things like the mandatory for your sentence, if you're found guilty of manslaughter and the use of a firearm, almost kind of backfires because it gives people an excuse to avoid acceptance of responsibility. And it means that in many ways, they don't have a safe place in order to accept responsibility. And what's more important to undertake to make changes in conduct so that it will not occur again. I mean, so some of my despair about accountability in the adversarial criminal justice system is how many mentally ill people who have access to knives, which we all have in our homes, how many of those people have died? And I'm sure from the police officer's perspective being brought before a criminal court, being brought before a civil court, being brought before disciplinary proceedings, some police officers, Robert Christmas from the Winnipeg police office, police agencies written a book where he talks about quadruple jeopardy. So I see lots of colonial accountability mechanisms, but not a lot of accountability. And so one of the things that I think we really need to think about is when we're attempting to punish people and impose hard treatment on them, we're giving them incentives to say, I did nothing wrong and I don't have to change anything in the future. And it seems to me that those are very different questions, but I'd be very interested in what Naomi thinks about this. So I won't take up too much. I mean, a lot has been written about Gladue. And I mean, if we just focus on the current system, there's provinces where Gladue reports are not happening. There are concerns about how Gladue is occurring, where it is happening. And so there's sort of those inside the system, but perhaps Elizabeth's question is, does it maybe part of the answer, and I've heard other things such as, it's having to collect all that evidence and put that in front of a justice can also be very challenging and taxing. And then that's on the public record. So there's all kinds of Gladue issues, but the one thing that comes to mind is that it's tinkering within the system. It's been looked at for 20, 30 years as almost a panacea, even though the court said it wasn't supposed to be a panacea, it hasn't been, but it's also focusing our attention away from talking about like indigenous justice systems, right? And so it's a distraction in some regard. I mean, I think it has played an important role in some respects. I'm not completely throwing it out the window, but it is also, I think distracting and has been distracting the conversation from actually talking about indigenous justice systems. Yeah, I mean, look, I think that that's fair. I mean, one of the things about getting old is you start to learn that things that you thought were great victories are maybe not great victories. And certainly Aboriginal legal services experience was, when Gludu came down, we really couldn't believe what it said, but within a week or two, we realized that it wasn't changing what was happening to our clients. And so as some of you know, there have been efforts to set up Gludu court workers, Gludu courts, and ALS has played, I think, an important role, and I don't speak for them, but I think that they would say there are some real limits. And yeah, so I mean, I do think, both with Williams, which allowed the one, are you a racist card? I mean, I still remember with Victor Williams that there was an affidavit, and I later found out that he was a person who had FASD and he participated in a robbery in Victoria, partly as people with FASD are very sometimes very suggestible and he was kind of brought along. But he had this affidavit that I really thought if I had the guts, I would just read the affidavit in my then 10 minutes as an intervener and sit down. And the affidavit was, my lawyers have explained to me that there's probably not gonna be any Indians on the jury, that was his words. I just hope there are no Indian haters. And to me, he captured in a way that Justice Jacobucci also does, but in a much longer report, the fact that the jury is really a symptom and the jury is a symptom of a dysfunctional colonial relationship that is not working for either sides. And I think that's why we need to think about going back to the treaty, because with this idea of polarization, I think we have to grab upon whatever we can as potential calm and ground to move forward together. But I agree with Naomi that we can't let this distract from the bigger issues, but at the same time, we can't let cases like Stanley Bushy go unanswered. The Saskatchewan government didn't even hold a public inquiry or a coroner's inquest. If it had a coroner's inquest, it could have had a jury of six indigenous, three indigenous people and three settlers. That's available under Saskatchewan law. So one of the reasons why I wrote the book and others, I mean, I would really recommend to you Harold Johnson's peace and good order book, which really responds to that gut kick feeling that Naomi so eloquently responded. I was actually hoping that he would win the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, but the former Chief Justice beat us both out. So she needs the money. So anyway. Thank you for that. I mean, somebody is asking, but I think this ties in and you partially answered that already when you talked about the jury as a symptom really of a much bigger problem, somebody is asking how you suggest to circumvent the online pretrial bias forming that forms from online media and that really cannot be avoided. And I think, I don't know if you want to add anything on that, I think it really ties in with what you were already saying that it's part of a more complex issue. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, we don't use the jury nearly as much as many other countries. And I think in those cases where we're using the jury, we have to take the time and ask people what they participated in online. Right. And one question also that ties in, we also have a couple of questions regarding the self-defense. And I do want to get to them. But before that, one question here asks, when you say go back to the treaty, what changes or alternative setups do you envision working better? And perhaps this would also be appropriate for both of you. Right. Well, I mean, the material that John Burroughs was generous enough to share with me really thought of the peace and good order clause as something that contemplates two justice systems and talks about responsibilities of both. And so it would be much more like relationships based upon extradition if I had to take an analogy from our law. And so I think there's arguments that, because both Stanley and Colton Bushy were treaty people. And I think that there are arguments that they may have both violated their obligations under the treaty. And maybe this really speaks to the importance of understanding the treaties. I mean, there was no mention, obviously, of treaty six in the Stanley case. And I think that there should have been. Yeah. And so I think there's a couple of different situations. I think there are situations where you have both settler and indigenous conflict that maybe a treaty can inform, some of my colleagues say a trans systemic approach where you're considering both treaty obligations and Canadian obligations and trying to figure out how to balance them. I think another part of this is also a lot of what we consider to be crimes happen within indigenous communities. And they have the criminal codes that have been posed on them and for the longest time, people have been saying that it's not the right solution. And they're saying it outside of indigenous communities as well. But indigenous people are saying that their treaty relationship also recognizes their self-determination, that the fact of having nation to nation agreements recognizes them as nations that had the ability to self-determine. And so there's a great big self-determination aspect to this about indigenous people addressing safety and security issues within their own communities. And if we look to our neighbor to the south, which we often like to compare ourselves to saying that we're better than them, I mean, the tribes have had a far more self-determining there and many of them address their own criminal justice dispute. So it's not as if this is something completely impossible. Excellent, thank you. Just briefly, Kent, I think I know you're addressing this elsewhere, but I think also for our students, this might be particularly important for you to answer. Somebody's asking if it was such an extensive issue of systemic racism present in the jury process, why was this not appealed by the crown? Well, I think the crown could have appealed, but the crown can only appeal on an error of law. And because the crown didn't ask for questions to be asked of jurors, because the crown did not insist on the jury being instructed about self-defense, there wasn't the same legal basis for that appeal. So, in the Kill John Steyer's case, the appeal is going all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, but that's only because of allegations or of errors of law in self-defense. The problem in Stanley is there really were a kind of bare bones sort of instructions to the jury because the crown had been so passive at trial. So there wasn't a lot of kind of raw material. Now, an argument that I make in the book is maybe the crown should be able to appeal a miscarriage of justice and particularly a miscarriage of justice that's related to equality rights. I mean, one of the big conflicts in the Shuland case, which is gonna be heard in a few days is kind of an understanding about equality, right? And that those who are supporting abolition, at least the interveners, which include lawyers representing Debbie Bates, who is Colton Bush's mother, are arguing that equality kind of applies both ways. Whereas the interveners and others who are opposing the abolition of parliamentary challenges really sees it as a one-way street where it's all about the rights of the accused and the accused has always had this right and therefore should always have this right to engage in parliamentary challenges. One of the reasons why I argue for an expanded crown right of appeal isn't because I'm particularly crown-minded. A lot of my friends would tease me about why I wasn't teaching a course on wrongful acquittals as opposed to wrongful convictions. But I do think that when equality is breached and that is the reason for a wrongful acquittal, that is a miscarriage of justice. So I have learned from my feminist colleagues that we have to bring section 15 into the criminal law, even though decisions like cacoponous and many of the arguments that are being made for the accused now really want to keep the criminal law as an equality-free zone. Just a quick add on that, the decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal recently in Sharma is at least, I think, gives us some hope perhaps of seeing section 15 do some work in criminal law. Exactly. Okay, so we made it to the last two questions. I know we're over time, but I do want to ask you this, they both goes to the issue of self-defense. So before we conclude, I'm gonna put this to you. One of them asks, what in particular do you think should be altered in the current legislation regarding individuals using guns for self-defense? Yeah, so I mean, I think we need greater clarity about if a person brings a gun to, that their first impulse is to bring a gun. I think that's what the Court of Appeal was trying to get at in Cahill, but I think we need to spell it out. So I really do think that we need to spell it out. And the problem is that the Conservatives really flirted with this growing gun culture in parts of Canada. And I really think that we need to put some rules down about the use of guns. I also think though that we also have to say that what is reasonable cannot be based on a racist stereotype about fear and propensity to violence. Excellent. I don't know if Naomi you want to add anything on the other. And the last question, was it ever considered by either the defense or the prosecution that the double shot her by the woman seated behind Mr. Bushy was the supposed hand fire itself? Meaning that a delayed ignition sequence with the primer going off first and then the propellant? Yeah, no, I mean, that's a good question. There's nothing in the transcript. So again, this goes to this issues of how we judge credibility. So certainly what was put to the witness on cross examination was basically that she was lying. And at one point the trial judge kind of said, you gotta tone down the cross examination. But that was never really put either that or also just misremembering because of trauma or the fact that the witness when she made her initial statement to the police had been charged with assault herself and that that might have entered into her thinking. None of that is present on the transcript. I want to thank both of you so much for joining us today and for helping us kick off this series with a very, very important, probably one of the most important criminal justice issues that we have at the moment in Canada and we have many. So, and we'll discuss many of them throughout the year, but I am very happy that you were both here and able to even if it was just for an hour to start to open this conversation. And I strongly recommend Professor Roach's book if you haven't read it already. We, the library has a few copies as well as Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice. And this session has been recorded. It will be available on the YouTube channel of the Law School and as well, if you are interested in the recordings or in the future events, we have an event at the end of the month on the last Tuesday of each month from now on. I encourage you to follow the criminal justice coalition at Shulik run by our amazing students both on Twitter and Instagram. So on Instagram is criminal.justice.coalition and on Twitter it's Shulik underscore cream J. Our next event is gonna be on October 27 and it's gonna be on the issue of advocacy in the federal prison for women. Sarah Tessier is going to be joining us talking about her experience as a former incarcerated woman who has advocated for women both in by with habeas corpus and other forms both from the inside, the prison and now outside and she will be in conversation with Senator Kim Pate and Emily Quill who's the executive director of the Ifri society. So hopefully you're gonna join us for that event. Again, thank you so much Kent and thank you so much Naomi for this very, very rich conversation. And we'll talk soon. Thank you so much Adelina for organizing it. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much Adelina for organizing it. Thank you. Bye. Go blue jays.