The Supreme Court of Canada is being accused of engaging in anti-Black and anti-Palestinian racism.
Three Black delegates were invited to the Supreme Court as a part of a delegation presenting to clerks of the court about the 2022 Halifax Declaration for the Eradication of Racial Discrimination and anti-Black racism in the justice system.
The delegation had been organized by former governor general Michaëlle Jean.
Three members of the delegation, El Jones, Derico Symonds and Benazir Erdimi were told only hours before the meeting that they would no longer be allowed to attend. The reason given by Supreme Court Registrar Chantel Charbonneau was because of “controversial” social media posts made by these three members of the delegation.
A statement sent by the Registrar to the three disinvited guests who were barred from the meeting, which was obtained by rabble.ca reads:
“As mentioned to the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean on Monday morning, we became aware of controversial posts and comments made about the conflict between Israel and Palestine on social media. These posts and comments had negative and concerning effects on a number of our law clerks. As such, we asked that the format be amended to ensure the focus remained on the important topic of racial discrimination in our society.”
In an interview with rabble.ca, Jones stated that the Court and the Registrar never identified any specific social media posts that they found objectionable.
“[They] said that we couldn’t present on anti-Black racism due to unrelated social media activity, which they won’t identify and then said it was a distraction to the presentation,” said Jones. “We know that there’s a deep repression of Palestinian speech in Canada. I think it’s particularly shocking coming from the Supreme Court for a number of reasons.”
“Number one is just the basic issue of free expression,” Jones continued. “The idea that the Supreme Court is policing the social media of experts coming in on unrelated topics.”
Jones explained that she believes she has never made statements that would warrant such a reaction from the Court.
“I think the inability to provide any actual evidence suggests that there is nothing shocking,” Jones said.
Jones said that once Michaëlle Jean’s staff learned about this reaction from the Court that they went through her social media and did not find anything objectionable.
In an email to rabble, Supreme Court Registrar Charbonneau did not acknowledge that any members of the delegation had been barred from the meeting for their social media activity, despite specifically telling Jones that this was the case.
“In furtherance of their own professional development, the law clerks invite eminent Canadians, such as Madam Jean, as guests for fire-side chats throughout the year. These guests reflect on their education, career path, accomplishments and lessons learned along the way. Members of the Court do not participate in fire-side chats,” reads Charbonneau’s emailed statement to rabble.ca.
“Exceptionally, Madam Jean asked to be accompanied by a group of young people. We allowed that she be accompanied by a representative of that group instead, to ensure the focus remained on the guest speaker. We were very grateful the clerks had the opportunity to hear from Madam Jean,” the statement goes on to say.
Supreme Court engaging in policing of Black voices
Jones told rabble that the policing of Black voices is nothing new, but is extremely concerning when coming from Canada’s highest court.
“It is anti-Black racism that Black people are regularly disciplined for including other people in our analysis,” Jones said.“The kind of disciplining and surveillance of Black people. The punishment of an exclusion without even evidence given. I mean, that’s extremely racist.”
Jones pointed out that this is just one example of how prejudice within the judicial system can exclude racialized voices.
She also pointed to multiple legal cases that are currently related to ongoing pro-Palestinian protests, including the charging of 11 individuals who allegedly defaced a Toronto Indigo Chapter’s bookstore due to the support the CEO of that company, Heather Reisman, has given to the Israeli military.
Jones explained that this reaction from the Supreme Court to her social media posts calls into question its ability as an institution to rule impartially on these cases if they come before the court.
“Just the very fact that you mentioned Palestine is damaging to us, and you can’t come,” Jones said of the Court’s reaction to her social media posts. “What does that say about their ability to rule mutually on these really important issues?”
Courts participating in anti-Palestinian bias
The behaviour of the Supreme Court of Canada in suppressing pro-Palestinian voices is not something new or unique to Canada’s highest court.
Increasingly, since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, and in the following brutal bombing campaign of Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, there has been a noted suppression of pro-Palestinian voices in public spaces.
One example of this was the expulsion of Hamilton-Centre MPP Sarah Jama from the Ontario NDP caucus. Another was the exclusion of Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) students, who had signed a letter in support of Palestine, from doing temporary education work placements at the Ontario Court of Justice.
The Ontario Attorney General’s Office required students applying for these placements to sign a letter swearing that they did not participate in an open letter in support of Palestine.
“That is a court itself participating in anti-Palestinian bias in hiring practices when it is courts above all other institutions, arguably that should be coming to these conversations with impartiality,” said Joshua Sealy-Harrington, assistant professor of law at TMU.
Sealy-Harrington explained that the reaction by the justice system in both of these cases is kafkaesque in that in both of these cases the justice system refused to provide any specificity around why they were sanctioning pro-Palestinian voices.
“No specificity is given as to what is wrong because it is at the moment at which specificity is given that accountability could be demanded or transparency could be demanded in terms of the justification of the response,” he said.
Sealy-Harrington said that the lack of specificity in both of these cases, whether it be Jones before the Supreme Court, or students being sanctioned for signing a pro-Palestinian letter, shows how the justice system’s accusations of wrongdoing falls apart on closer analysis.
“I know El, I know her social media, she’s not posting anti-Semitism. She’s posting critique[s] of Israel. Same with these students,” Sealy-Harrington said, pointing out that Independent Jewish Voices Canada had released a statement in support of the students.
For her part, Jones is disappointed in the Supreme Court for not being more transparent about their reasoning for barring her and her fellow presenters from the meeting in January and their refusal to even apologize for the negative experience.
“They need to affirm our right to free expression as Canadians, and that they respect that, and then they could do with some education on anti-Black and anti-Palestinian bias and their intersections too while we’re at it, because clearly they don’t understand,” Jones said.
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