I am here to shed light on an issue that is discussed far too rarely in Canada where I’m from: judicial racial bias. In Canada, although there has been increasing discussion about the over representation of Black and Indigenous people in Canadian prisons, there has been little discussion about the people who send them there: judges.
In Canada, like in the US, there are a number of things that contribute to the issue of judicial racial bias. The first is the deeply held belief in the legal profession in the impartiality of judges, even regarding cases involving race, despite most Canadian judges being white.
Second, is judges’ resistance to effective anti-Black racism training as they see such training as indoctrination by outside forces. Third, is the absence of race-based data on judges’ rulings so we have no idea whether judges are ruling differently for Black people and white people. And fourth is the lack of requirement for judges to do conflict checks, like lawyers must do, to avoid presiding over trials where they might have conflicts of interests with the parties involved.
Another issue is that the belief in the impartiality of judges doesn’t apply equally to white and Black judges. The one case provided to Canada’s legal profession on the Superior Court of Justice’s website dealing with accusations of a reasonable apprehension of bias – is against a Black judge…a Black female judge.
Why should people, especially Black people, have faith in a justice system that is so blatantly unfair?
In February, the Government of Canada released its implementation plan for Canada’s Black Justice Strategy. In his opening message in the Plan, Canada’s former Justice minister, Arif Virani, acknowledged that it is the advocacy of Black communities that led to the creation of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy.
The Justice Strategy implementation plan says the government commits to combatting anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination to reduce the overrepresentation of Black people in the criminal justice system.
However, the Strategy doesn’t explicitly address judicial racial bias, something it must rectify if it is to achieve its goal of making Canada’s justice system one that is truly just.
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