November 2017

​​In 2008, the small country town of Merritt, British Columbia was rocked when news broke that Allan Schoenborn had stabbed his estranged wife and killed their two children while they slept. He had suffered a psychotic break, and believed that that his children were being sexually assaulted. He killed them, in the horrific, mistaken belief that doing so would somehow save them from the humiliation of the ordeal.

​The Attorney General of British Columbia, David Eby, was recently interviewed by the Vancouver Sun. One of the issues covered in the interview was the question of Legal Aidfunding. During his campaign, Attorney General Eby promised to restore funding to Legal Aid, which is a critical issue in the access to justice sphere.

That has not happened yet.

Unfortunately, Attorney General Eby’s response was less than comforting, particularly for those who cannot get legal aid funding for their criminal matters.

​This week, the Provincial Government announced changes to the distracted driving laws in British Columbia. Again. They are raising the fines and penalties again. If you don’t recall, I wrote about this last year when the fine amounts and penalty points were increased.

Now, the BC Government has decided to increase the penalty again, because drivers aren’t getting the message. This policy, however, actually amounts to a substitution of penalties and will not lead to a decrease in distracted driving overall.

Here’s why.

This last week, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin waded into the #IBelieveSurvivors debate. She made some startling but important and refreshing comments about the rights of an accused person in a sexual assault trial, and the rights of complainants in sexual assault cases.

Her comments that have been most quoted are these: “no one has the right to a particular verdict.” And she is absolutely right.

However, the Government has proposed a piece of legislation that seems to codify the opposite. With Bill C-51, the Federal Government is trying to make it so that sexual assault complainants are, in essence, guaranteed a verdict unless the defence shows that a sexual assault did not occur.