Kyla Lee

​​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.

Not a day goes by when we do not read stories about the carnage that fentanyl is wreaking on our communities. The BC Court of Appeal has issued a stern warning for those who traffic in fentanyl: the starting point for sentencing is a jail sentence in the range of eighteen months. And given the evidence and attention about fentanyl deaths, it’s hard to cry foul at these guidelines.

As a result of the severe consequences of fentanyl trafficking, the BC Government has been repeatedly asked about what they are doing to address the situation. Some have suggested a pro-social approach, enhancing opportunities for rehabilitation for drug users. Others have pointed to studies that have shown that decriminalizing hard drugs actually leads to a decrease in deaths associated to those drugs. Others still think the answer is to arrest all the traffickers, round them up, and throw them in jail.