GIESBRECHT: Thompson’s clogged courts

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Thompson Manitoba’s court system is terribly clogged. Those charged with offences and held in custody wait far too long for their bail hearings, the system is simply over-loaded. The problem has existed for years, despite past valiant efforts to fix it. Now, a group of despairing lawyers is petitioning the higher courts to act to improve the situation.

It is likely the higher courts will end up recommending hiring even more court personnel, increasing the number of flights between The Pas and Thompson, and possibly, building a remand center in Thompson. Unfortunately, none of those changes, or, for that matter any changes within the government’s power to do, will make much of a difference.

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Here’s why:

Thompson is surrounded by reserves (First Nations), and wildly disproportionate numbers of Indigenous people from those communities commit criminal offences. Most of the offences involve violence and alcohol – although, increasingly, other drugs are involved as well. The police servicing the reserve communities are chronically understaffed and over-worked. The perpetrators male, their victims overwhelmingly Indigenous and female.

To get a sense of how disproportionate the numbers are, a Saskatchewan study reported that an Indigenous male in Saskatchewan is 33 times as likely as a non-Indigenous male to commit a crime. Manitoba numbers are likely not different.

The reserves are characterized by large numbers of families experiencing welfare dependence and too many affluent families ‘suffering’ from transfer-payment dependence. Although many residents of the communities are decent and sober, too many others are involved in lives of idleness, binge-drinking and drug-taking. These are the people who continue to fill Thompson’s courts.

It wasn’t always this way. I remember working in Thompson in the 1960s; Thompson then was a young town and the surrounding Indigenous communities were still self-reliant. While the communities were poor, there was not nearly the dysfunction that is so apparent today.

Then, the Thompson court system was tiny compared to what it is today. In fact, one magistrate and a couple lawyers were able to look after the criminal justice needs of the entire northern Manitoba. Not so now. So, what changed?

Change came in the 1960s with the modern welfare-cheque President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty introduced. It came to Canada soon after. While some families used the monthly cheques to lift themselves out of poverty, making better lives for themselves, others sank into dependency.

As in the United States, where the African-American underclass was hurt very badly by the introduction of enhanced government welfare, in Canada the growth of welfare hurt Indigenous communities the most. One result was the binge drinking lifestyle that now afflicts too many reserve residents and keeps Thompson’s courts backlogged and spinning their wheels.

Noted African-American author Thomas Sowell detailed the destruction wreaked on poor families – how welfare cheques and welfare mentality sucked the life out of poor black communities. Families went from two parent families to single mother families in one generation. In Canada, it was the Indigenous underclass that has been the most negatively affected. Too many children are born into welfare dependence, often addiction issues are at play.

The Province has announced administrative changes; administrative changes won’t fix this.

Brian Giesbrecht, a retired judge, is a senior fellow at Frontier Centre for Public Policy.