Jamie Sarkonak: Expect more injustice from the Liberals’ forthcoming Black Justice Strategy

Sarkonak continues her focus on the excesses of some advisory panels in recommendations that cross the line between recognizing different experiences and issues and developing separate bodies or processes to accommodate them:

…The report amounts to a socialist manifesto advancing cliché policy ideas that were all the rage during the Summer of George Floyd. Which is probably what the Liberals hoped to get out of the process: some kind of document that allows them to run the “experts said” defence when they ultimately propose to vandalize the Criminal Code.

Indeed, Canadians are overwhelmingly in favour of colourblind (rather than colour-conscious) policy at a rate of 70 to 30. When it comes to drugs and crime, a 2023 Leger survey found that nearly 80 per cent believe that too many violent offenders are being given bail, and about the same amount believe that the justice system is too lenient on criminals. About 70 per cent wanted more policing and tougher laws on drugs.

Beyond being plain offensive to the general public’s sense of justice, the ideas currently being weighed in Minister Arif Virani’s office likely miss some number of their target audience, too. One prominent voice, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, is one example in the “no” camp.

“Black Canadians, like all Canadians, deserve a justice system focused on community safety,” he wrote last week on X.

“If the policies contained in the so-called ‘Black Justice Strategy’ report are adopted, there will surely be more crime, drugs and disorder in our communities. There will also be more victims of crime, and black Canadians will be affected along with the rest of the country.”

If the final Black Justice Strategy looks anything like what handpicked experts envision, it will be painfully out of touch. It will cost. It will reek of unfairness, diverting even more public resources to a fraction of Canadians to the detriment of everyone else. And it will be genuinely harmful by hamstringing the state’s ability to separate bad actors from the law-abiding public — by imprisonment or deportation.

Perhaps worst of all, it will promote the corrosive conception of Canada as a confederacy of racial groups rather than a unified state for Canadian citizens.

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: Expect more injustice from the Liberals’ forthcoming Black Justice Strategy