Lorne Gunter: Justice system discrimination against Indigenous offenders, victims a myth

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The University of Toronto’s Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) wants you to think our criminal justice system cares less about victims when they are Indigenous women than when they are white or other non-Indigenous races.

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The IJB wants to reinforce the frequently made “progressive” assertion that Canada’s justice system is systemically racist.

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As proof of the inherent racism in the courts and penal system, researchers from IJB point to the fact that among murder cases resolved in court between 2019 and 2025, in which the victim was an Indigenous woman, 46 per cent of their attackers were convicted of manslaughter, a lesser charge than murder.

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By contrast, just 24 per cent of killers of non-Indigenous women got off with mere manslaughter. Just over one-third of the murderers of non-Indigenous women were convicted of the tougher sentence of second-degree murder.

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The implication is that our courts care less about the killing of an Indigenous woman. Indigenous lives, especially the lives of Indigenous women, have less value than the lives of white women.

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But here’s a little twist not included in the IJB study: According to Statistics Canada, 86 per cent of killers of Indigenous women are Indigenous men. And like all Indigenous offenders, Indigenous killers are to be given maximum leniency by the courts.

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It is entirely likely that the racial bias is not against Indigenous women. Instead, the bias is built into our criminal justice system (in these cases in favour of Indigenous men) by a 1999 Supreme Court ruling in what is commonly referred to as the Gladue case.

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The Gladue ruling compels judges, in cases involving Indigenous perpetrators, to give the broadest interpretation possible to Sec. 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code which requires a sentencing judge to consider “all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of Aboriginal offenders.”

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Lawyers for most Indigenous defendants in murder and manslaughter trials file what are known as Gladue reports outlining how the accused’s experience growing up Aboriginal has made him or her more likely to commit crime.

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It is entirely possible the disparity between the sentences given to the killers of Indigenous women versus the killers of non-Indigenous women stems, not from racism, but from court-mandated leniency for Indigenous offenders.

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There is currently a case before the Supreme Court attempting to resolve the sentencing conflict when the victim and the accused are both Indigenous.