On Monday's live stream, David Menzies and Sheila Gunn Reid went through a string of recent court rulings in which judges reduced sentences because of an offender’s race, Indigenous heritage or immigration status.

Sheila pointed to a National Post “First Reading” column by Tristin Hopper that combed through 15 days of rulings on CanLII, the public database of court decisions, and found an identity-based sentence reduction roughly every day a Canadian court was in session. Indigenous offenders receive Gladue reports itemizing the traumas of their background, Black offenders can receive impact of race and culture assessments, and judges may weigh the immigration consequences of a conviction for non-citizens.

At the Supreme Court of Canada, a 5-4 majority upheld a reduced three-year sentence on Oct. 9 for Harry Arthur Cope, a Mi’kmaq man who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault against his partner, who is also Mi’kmaq. The four dissenting justices would have restored his original five-year sentence.

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In Ontario, a man convicted of trying to mail crack cocaine to what the court described as a vulnerable Northern Ontario community received two years less a day. The Crown had sought four years. The judge found his moral blameworthiness was reduced in part because he grew up in a Toronto community afflicted by drugs. “You should throw the book at him worse, because he knows what it does to communities,” Sheila said.

In Alberta, Court of King’s Bench Justice Derek Jugnauth sentenced Kendall Delaney to six years for trafficking fentanyl and methamphetamine, even though the decision found she knew her drugs were killing people. As Sheila reported at Justice Watch, the longest section of the ruling covered Delaney’s Métis background, including her grandmother’s time at a residential school. “Do we not have personal autonomy in this country anymore?” Sheila asked.

David said that in Canada, Lady Justice “isn’t wearing a blindfold. She’s wearing X-ray glasses,” and argued the rulings insult Indigenous people by treating them as unable to tell right from wrong.

In another Alberta case, a man who pleaded guilty to luring an 11-year-old girl he lived with was sentenced to 25 months, with the judge citing his Gladue circumstances at eight points in the decision. “Does anybody care about the victims here at all?” Sheila asked.

Sheila said cases like these make Premier Danielle Smith’s argument for Alberta appointing its own Court of King’s Bench judges. She tracks rulings like these every weekday at JusticeWatch.ca.