Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 13, 2012, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A10 EDITORIALS WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 2012 Freedom of Trade Liberty of Religion Equality of Civil Rights A 10 COMMENT EDITOR: Gerald Flood 697- 7269 gerald. flood@ freepress. mb. ca winnipegfreepress. com EDITORIAL EDITORIAL T HE trial of two Winnipeg police officers on charges of obstruction of justice, based on a Crown attorney's evidence they admitted fabricating evidence to build a case against a suspected drug dealer, awaits the presiding judge's decision. But it already has shown the standards that apply to the bad guys also apply to the good guys. Federal Crown attorney Erin Magas testified she had to drop charges against an alleged drug trafficker. She said the officers changed their original story about how and why they came to follow a 20- year- old man into a Redwood Avenue house, without a warrant, where they found cocaine and cash, and arrested him. She testified they admitted their original report, that they were on patrol when they witnessed a fourman fight in the home's backyard that led them to chase one of the fleeing combatants into the home, was false. The officers, on the other hand, maintain they and Magas had a " simple misunderstanding" about what they related to her in a pretrial meeting. In Canada, obstruction of justice prosecutions against police officers are rare. Convictions are rarer still. Unlike the United States, where both federal and many state laws govern obstruct- justice charges, obstruction of justice is exclusively a federal offence under the Criminal Code, and it can be tricky to prove. It's a crime where two classes of conduct are potentially in play. The first class is the easy one. It's composed of acts forbidden by the express language of the Criminal Code. It includes threatening, or bribing, or attempting to bribe, witnesses or jurors. The Code section conveniently lists these, and other, examples of obstruction of justice. The second class is the problematic one. It consists of acts not expressly prohibited, but wrong enough to be caught by the crime's broad, almost omnibus, definition. It criminalizes any act by anyone " who willfully attempts in any manner to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice." An abstract definition, but, given the right fact scenario, still readily susceptible of charge, proof and conviction. And its net is wide. In 1998, it caught besotted Vancouver juror, Gillian Guess. She was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to 18 months in jail plus one year of probation for sleeping with accused doublemurderer Peter Gill while she sat on the jury during his eight- month trial. The case was a cause c�l�bre. But it was also a precedent- setting example of the elastic reach of obstruction of justice. The key to successful prosecution of an obstruction of justice charge is proof the attempt to obstruct justice was " wilful," which the law pretty much interprets as synonymous with being intentional. An error or an honest mistake of fact, however seriously it interferes with the administration of justice, shouldn't result in a conviction. Despite the case against the two Winnipeg police officers being a difficult prosecution, falling as it does squarely in the problematic second class of obstruction charge, it was ultimately a healthy exercise all around. The criminal law sets limits on what citizens can do to each other. But it likewise prescribes limits on what police can do to citizens who happen to be suspects. Regardless of outcome, if the prosecution of these officers proves nothing else, it proves the same standards that apply to the bad guys apply to law- enforcement officers. And that's a credit to our criminal justice system. C HILDREN'S Advocate Darlene MacDonald recently bemoaned the expense of the inquiry into the death of little Phoenix Sinclair, wondering whether there is any more to be learned and whether the money would be better used to improve child welfare services. Ms. MacDonald should throw her support firmly on the side of public accountability. Phoenix died in 2005, in the basement of her mother's house after repeated beatings, torturous abuse and neglect. The girl was in and out of child welfare care. Her file was closed three times, the last just two months before she died. About $ 4.7 million this year alone has been spent on an inquiry that has yet to really begin its public hearings. Delays launched by the social workers union have held it up. Among the reviews of the system because of Phoenix's tragic murder - for which her mother and her mother's boyfriend are serving life sentences - only one looked expressly at the roles child- welfare staff and agencies played in this case. That review, called a Sec. 4 review under the Child and Family Services Act, was not made public, although its recommendations were released. The biggest question still in the public mind is: How could a child who had so much contact with CFS be murdered nine months before anyone in a position of authority knew she was missing? Why was she returned to her mother? Ms. MacDonald says things have changed since 2005. But the public is expected to accept the recommendations were appropriate to the findings, and that all the right questions were asked. In one breath, Ms. MacDonald, in a " clarification" of her remarks, says her office " fully supports the public's right to know the facts leading to the cause of Phoenix Sinclair's death." And in the next, she questions whether the inquiry can bring to light " deficits of which we are not already aware" after reviews that produced 200 recommendations. Manitobans will hear whether the recommendations have had an effect and whether more need be done. But if the Office of the Children's Advocate is truly supportive of the " public's right to know" it should ask the government to make Sec. 4 reports public. The unique release of the report into the death of toddler Gage Guimond shows that is possible. It is time to change the legislation to ensure public accountability. Then, perhaps, the need for long, expensive inquiries would be rare. W ITH all the attention that Luka Magnotta has received after he allegedly butchered his ex- boyfriend and sent his parts across the country; the focus of the world's attention went to the killer and not the victim, Lin Jun. That's his name. Look it up. He was a 33- year- old exchange student at Concordia University. He is described as being a tireless worker in both his studies and at the convenience store where he worked, but no one is talking about his life and the tragedy of his death. Instead, people are making endless jokes about zombies and the apocalypse, people are taking the time to compare Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct to Magnotta's crimes and yet the name Lin Jun isn't on the tip of our tongue, despite his body being gruesomely spread from coast to coast. Ronald Poppo. He was the guy who had his face chewed off by the " Miami face- eater" high on bath salts. Again, the limericks and quips were endless, and all we heard initially about Poppo was that he was homeless and his face had been " eaten down to the goatee." That's a lovely way to refer to a victim. The list of victims goes on and on, but very few of the victims' names ever make it into our lexicon like the names Dahmer, Manson and, of course, B. C.' s own Robert Pickton. On June 6, the Missing Women's Inquiry, which was meant to address how police handled the women who were listed as missing in the Downtown Eastside ( some of whom ended up at Pickton's pig farm) closed after 93 days of heartbreaking testimony in Vancouver. From the beginning, the inquiry was laced with strife and controversy when it was discovered the province was paying for lawyers for Pickton, his family and for testifying police officers, but not for aboriginals, sex workers or women's groups - the victims. Families and lawyers asked Justice Minister Shirley Bond for more time to hear key witnesses, including a cocaine- addicted associate Lynn Ellingsen, who testified seeing Pickton butcher a woman hanging from a chain, but those requests fell on deaf ears. It's time we all pay more respect and attention to the victims of crimes as well as the psychopaths who commit them. Perhaps it's because covering a rape victim's experience, or what an abuse survivor has gone through, isn't as sexy as discovering Magnotta filed for bankruptcy, auditioned for a reality show and he may have killed someone else in California. The six- day worldwide manhunt is over, Canada's latest psycho is behind bars. It would behoove us as a society to stop and reflect how frustratingly unfair it must be for families such as Jun's to constantly see their son's killer everywhere they look. We have to stop giving in to the megalomaniacal tendencies of people such as Magnotta and concentrate more on the lives he snuffed out. F OR at least three Conservative MPs, anything that smacks of creating greater financial equality should either be " smashed," is " far- left economic thinking" or " dirty bathwater." Here's former Conservative cabinet minister Monte Solberg writing in his blog recently: " For 40 years ' progressives' called the shots in Canada and their influence affected and infected everything... Anyway, that whole way of thinking must be smashed and ( Finance Minister Jim) Flaherty has made a start on it but only a start." Last Thursday, two more Conservatives chimed in. During debate on Liberal MP Scott Brison's motion to conduct a year- long investigation of growing inequality in Canada, St. Boniface Conservative MP Shelly Glover, Flaherty's parliamentary secretary, attacked the Liberal party's " embrace of far- left economic thinking" while Alberta Conservative MP Jim Hillyer likened Brison's motion to " dirty bathwater." All three might want to examine a new report on Canada's income inequality in the June issue of the journal Canadian Public Policy . It was authored by five economists from the University of British Columbia. Its most important revelation is a graph charting the share of total income earned by the richest one per cent of Canadians from 1920 to 2010. Not surprisingly, the most unequal decade over the past 90 years was the 1930s. During the Great Depression, almost 18 per cent of total income was concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest one per cent of Canadians. With the onset of the Second World War, the one per cent's share plunged sharply. By the mid- 1940s, their portion of total income was cut almost in half to 10 per cent. And it kept falling, reaching eight per cent - its lowest level - in 1979- 80. The year 1979- 80 was a political watershed for the Anglo- Saxon democracies. Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain and Ronald Reagan won the U. S. presidency. What the Trilateral Commission labelled " an excess of democracy in the western world" in 1975 came to an abrupt end and the neo- conservatism era began. It not only endures but strengthens to this day. Inequality in Canada and in the other Anglo- Saxon democracies began to rise steeply. By 2005, almost 14 per cent of total income was concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest one per cent of Canadians. Journalist and author Linda McQuaig says virtually all the income gains of the past 30 years have gone to the top- earning Canadians. The top one per cent have virtually doubled their share of national income. The top 0.01 per cent of Canadians quintupled their share of national income over that same 30- year period. This very top income group - roughly one in 10,000 Canadians - now has the largest share of national income in Canadian history. At the same time the very richest Canadians were making huge income gains, their taxes dropped significantly. Effective tax rates paid by Canada's top 0.01 per cent fell by roughly 25 per cent over the past 30 years, Statistics Canada figures show. Meanwhile, there has been virtually no growth in the incomes of everyone else once inflation is factored out. In 1978, the median Canadian family income was about $ 48,800 in today's dollars. By 2008, it had fallen to $ 46,700. There is no doubt earnings inequality has risen in Canada in the last three decades, a draft of the forthcoming Canadian Public Policy paper states. Inequality rises sharply during recessions because it's low earners who bear the brunt of bad economic times. Another factor in Canada's growing inequality is the erosion of Canada's social safety net - government income transfers designed to moderate market extremes by increasing disposable income. But governments cut taxes and transfers in the 1990s and inequality in disposable income started tracking inequality in earnings. In the 2000s, earnings inequality fell but disposable income inequality rose. Even those who care less about inequality may still have an interest in curbing its increase, the draft paper states. " While growth- oriented economic policies such as encouraging trade and deepening investment in new technology may provide the basis for economic success... these policies may also have the effect of exacerbating inequality. If economic gains from growth continue to accrue in a lopsided fashion, public support for pro- growth policies is likely to wane... In the same way in contemporary Canada, even those who don't care much for inequality itself may want to ensure that economic growth benefits everyone." The five economists propose a number of solutions including raising taxes on the rich, increasing transfers to the poor and curbing inequality before it starts by changing the minimum wage structure, removing obstacles to unionization and lowering Canada's high school drop- out rate. But these are bright red flags to Conservatives, especially Solberg, Glover and Hillyer. Frances Russell is a Winnipeg author and political commentator. Worthy cause for children's advocate FRANCES RUSSELL OTHER OPINION A credit to justice system Neo- con policies drive financial inequality The Prince George Citizen Quick! What is the name of Magnotta's victim? A_ 10_ Jun- 13- 12_ FP_ 01. indd A10 6/ 12/ 12 10: 13: 01 PM ;