Manitoba’s Justice System #

The world is out of joint and something is rotten in Manitoba’s insular Justice System and cursed spite, Canadian officials and politicians have wantonly failed in their responsibility to put it right. Serious, endemic, cultural flaws appear irrefutable and in urgent need of radical reform. Manitoban’s are entitled to higher standards of Justice. It doesn’t appear as if Manitoba’s Justice System has the community’s best interests at heart.

Plato, in his Republic, citing Socrates, warned us that in a democracy, those who refuse to engage in politics are condemned to be ruled by their inferiors. We get the governance and the justice system we deserve.

Modern politics has descended into cautious, but ignorant, juvenile stunts - such as posturing, or strutting on international stages, that distract us from the real dangers facing democracy. Citizens, as opposed to subjects or slaves, have rights and obligations, so are forced to take up the burdens of insisting on domestic, responsible governance. The elites, rather than serving the greater public interest, are both poll driven, and pandering to vested wealthy multi-national corporattions. A myopic mentality underlies their conceptual fetishism, framing their hubristic, insular, bubble cultured mindsets. Their lack of decisive responsible action indicates a contempt for ordinary Canadians.

It’s time for the Justice system to remember that their social responsibility pre-empts judicial independence. Moral failures erode Judicial respect. Sub-standard cultures should not be tolerated - should be eradicated. Inveterate toxic cabals need to be purged. There are no quick fixes.

While many developing countries are experiencing military coup d’etats, the western democracies appear to suffering judicial coup d’etats. Both represent a collapse of national paradigms, a collapse of social purpose, illustrating the need for civic renewal of providing real Justice.

This is more likely a result of unambitious judicial regulations, lack of statutory enforcement and the absence of government will to assert the supremacy of parliament, our elected representatives, shouldering their sovereign responsibilities to the broader community. We are suffering due to a governmental “paralysis of Will”; either impotency or incompetency, to do the right thing. Political absurdity is never ending.

Benedetto Croce explained that in democracies, political problems are not external forces beyond our control; they are forces within our control.

“We need solely to make up our own minds and to act.”

We live in hope that responsible authorities will live out their pledged oaths of office to be of the people, act for the people and keep each other honest. We are frequently disappointed.

Those entrusted to uphold the Westminster system appear to have forsaken its fundamental principles. A frequent era of shamelessness regarding unwarranted entitlement afflicts all democratic institutions. Some appear determined to replace fairness with self-serving power. Curbing it by exposure, is the responsibility of all leaders and the sovereign duty of all citizens in holding the powerful to account. As a result the “catastrophic loss of faith in democracy” in the last decades, is indicated by the chaotic state of federal politics largely to blame. In 1996,, 85 per cent of people were satisfied with the way democracy worked in in the Western world. That number has more than halved, in two decades due to government inaction on many fronts.

As Aesop quipped, “we hang petty thieves; the great ones are appointed to high office”. How else do Manitoba’s chief justices get appointed to national positions? A bit like appointing Dracula to administer a blood bank. It is perplexing the lengths the government will go to, to protect the wrongdoers. Instead of resolute corrective action, those up the tree of power and responsibility, are content with posturing with empty gestures pretending to be doing something.

It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to attack it, to ask more of it, by way of criticism, protest, and dissent. (Jill Lepore)

The role of journalists (& citizens) is to penetrate the established version of events and tell unpalatable truths that expose establishment propaganda, or ‘official drivel’. (The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism)

Transparency in government requires more than duplicating existing laws and new commisions. It needs real courage and resolute, enforcing leadership.

Any secretive justice system, indicates civil liberties are under attack. If you’re not concerned, you’re not paying attention to fulfill your responsibilities as a citizen. Liberty requires eternal vigilance.

Canadians are facing a threat from many sources and yet, many politicians and citizens sleepwalk, as if they are living in normal times instead of in an ongoing crisis of institutional decay. We have become accustomed to so much in public life that we once would have found shocking. It all began with Beverley McLachlin’s audacious claim that judges, as demi - gods, were empowered to determine issues as they saw fit. Soon evidence became irrelevant. As Conan Doyle put it: “It’s elementary, dear Watson!” The question becomes one of the rule of law or the ‘rule of persons’.
Arbitrary decision making based on theatrical performances reduces judges to rhetorical adjudicators. In effect the best liars are rewarded by the courts. To the unscrupulous, go the spoils.

An independent judiciary does not entitle unlimited and immune abuse of discretionary power to finangle evidence or justify any resistant to scrutiny. Their primary purpose is to serve their citizens, not protect each other’s unentitled privileges. All civilisations decline when institutions become self-serving.

The Supreme Court is entirely within its entitlements to find any mandatory sentencing a violation of its independence, but that does not mean impunity for bad decisions making or deliberate mishandling of evidence.

The greatest threat to judicial authority is a lack of discerning judges who consciously fail to distinguish between hard, preponderant evidence and false assertions motivated by adversarial deceit. Any refracted decison, inconsistent with the facts or reality, erodes trust and needs to be investigated. Could it be any clearer, this becomes the rule of persons and not the rule of law or justice?

“Honesty” is a word that, when thrown at the judical world, unhelpfully describes both a baseline and a vaguer horizon, a legal minimum and an ethical norm.

Under McLachlin’s watch, the CJC’s culture and governance practices became so weak they led to integrity failures, rendering it uniquely incapable of handling complaints, finding the truth and providing a respected judiciary. The 2008, GLOBAL INTEGRITY report gave Canada’s judicary a 30% mark, noting the lack of accountability and weak enforcement record.

McLachlin did nothing to improve on these perceptions. It seems our judges want all the trappings of high office, but could do with less of the pesky scrutiny associated with that responsibility.

Her advocacy for a “collegial” culture meant dissent wasn’t welcome. Good news was shouted from the rooftops; difficult news was swept under the proverbial carptet.

More@: https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/case-studies/beverley-mcLachlin.html

All examples below should not be treated as isolated cases, but as evidence of serious cultural, systemic and entrenched mindsets that can only be fixed by upright judges and responsible parliamentarians acting to restore our faith in the system. Otherwise it will become like the American system, Trump credibly treats with utter contempt and gets away with. If our institutions are sound and respected, democracy is on firmer ground.

All citizens need to question whether our elected representatives are meeting their responsibilities in regulating Judges or whether the gulf between the professions of various legal measures and their actual efficacy widens. John Keane coined the term monitory democracy for instruments of public monitoring and scrutinising of government power. Participatory democracy demands more than just fronting up to elections - we all need to ensure our representatives are true to their calling and represent public interests.

Most politicians, including parliaments, have rarely exercised their disciplinary responsibilities in setting and enforcing baseline threshold standards for Judges. A recent MOU indicates just how much power a rampant court system wields over a cravenly compliant Parliament. Our only hope is for enough cross party politicians to be willing to act for the good of the country. Our faineant representatives need to be prodded into their fiduciary duties.

Judges who make audacious claims of unentitled prerogatives in evidentiary management, displaying epistemic stubbornness, immeasurably damage the entire court system’s reputation, allowing people like Trump to credibly slag a degraded system. All we want from judges is the capacity and competence to discrimmnate between tendentious claims and hard evidence, and of course to distinguish between right and wrong. Toxic courts fail to protect vulnerable victims because they don’t care who gets hurt. Don’t expect rogue judges to change their mindsets unless they are forced to.

Every new administration of the Justice System failure, reinforces our belief that citizens are the victims of an establishment mega-conspiracy. Cynical and weary voters have become so used to the system’s outrageous behaviour that it has lost its capacity to shock. It has become the new normal. Some judges have so stretched the boundaries of what counts, as impermissible judicial decision making, that they barely exist anymore.

Legal authorities tend to mishandle inquiries with a lack of will by senior judges to tackle systemic issues of mismanaging evidence. Instead they focus on inconsequential personal matters - Justice Frank Newbould, Justice Lori Douglass, or Justice Graeme Mitchell. Real reputational damage occurs when judges flagrantly mismanage evidence and distort reality.

Naming errant judges, who frequently baselessly rule with significant factual inaccuracies, indicating a lack of judicial objectivity, and, shaming inactive politicians, is essential to a healthy democracy. When judges consciously manipulate evidence, their decisions become more a product of their imagination, than an accurate reflection of reality - elementary, dear Watson.

The highest aspiration of the law should be to maintain a just and harmonious society by only accepting evidence that can be proved and restoring truth telling in our courts. Any lawyer or judge who asserts, without sound evidence, should suffer some consequences. Judges too, like all professions, need strictures, for deterrence: penalties reflecting the seriousness of unreasoned and unfounded determinations, in order to restore public respect, confidence, and above all trust.

If Justice were clearly present, we would not need extra money for law enforcement. Injustice is always more expensive than justice. Imprisonment rates often rise despite a significant fall in crime, suggesting the criminal justice system is not providing value for money.

Tacitus warned: “When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.”

The whole basis of the Canadian Justice system appears to be centred around the idea that judges are too precious to be held accountable for unfounded decision making.

Is it just me? Leadership seems to be dumbing down in all areas. There seems to be a very muted response from the legal industry, the Canadian public, and our elected representatives to epic Judicial malpractice, which should stoke widespread outrage. There appears no accountability in judicial wrong doing - reaching determinations totally divorced from reality.

The struggle to restore basic decency in politics is still mostly a rearguard action. (Tom Nichols - The Atlantic)

The problem facing the Justice system is a clear one: they simply can’t see what the problem is - loss of community respect for all judges. The system appears a combination of deliberate deficiencies, disastrous to the governance of Canada. Some institutions manage to become their own worst enemy.

Nobody could credibly accuse Manitoba’s dystopian Justice System of anything remotely resembling competent administration. It appears omnishambolic. The putrid stench of corruption emanating from its rotting orchards infects the entire administration of justice, including police and prison guards.

The problem is the burden of needless trauma people endure due to toxic cultures when institutions become captured by self-serving cabals. Some Courts cause unnecessary suffering to destitute people. As Hammurabi demonstrated, the law should protect the weak from the powerful.

Many international monitoring bodies recommend stronger regulatory enforcement. NZ is one of a few governments committed to “regulatory responsibility” which goes beyond parliamentary laws to include all forms of regulation at all levels of government. Its bill requires regulation to actually adhere to principles and processes. When the Supreme Court displays non-compliance, Parliament needs to step up and enforce its own statutes. It doesn’t need further legislature; merely the will to enforce established norms and statutes.

This should not be controversial. The danger lies in oversimplifying complex issues and incompletely understanding the web of causes. Solutions involve listening to the community and reputable and responsible office holders, followed by resolute action by our elected representatives.

History makes all too clear how profound the costs to our society, governments caving in, by subordinating their obligations, via political expedience, to corrupt self-serving institutions.

Our elected representatives are letting their electors down by inertial indolence or lack of will in not addressing the root causes of social unrest.

Letters, emails, requests for meetings, all are ignored or palmed off by staffers who see their role as gatekeepers, rather than facilitators of democratic debate.

The province I grew up in appears to have lost its bearings. If the legal system is to deserve any ongoing credibility, as a core element of our community, it is time to make a genuine effort to recognise and repair its past wrongs to all citizens.

It’s tawdry theatre, and you might vaguely blame “the system”, but the corporatized system is comprised of too many individuals who are aberrantly immune to shame.

With the collapse of authority caused by a combination of government ministers, without a will to power, and Parliament, without exercising its power, the courts have filled the vacuum as the only coherent force in Canada – and they flex their power, without legitimate authority.

In Canada, Parliament appears to have ceded its law making power to the Judiciary, enjoying what the Roman historian Tacitus called “pretences of freedom”.

“It was a tainted, meanly obsequious age. The greatest figures had to protect their positions by subserviency; and, in addition to them, all ex-consuls, most ex-praetors, even many junior senators competed with each other’s offensively sycophantic proposals.

Canada is disturbingly tolerant of breaches of judicial standards. There seems to be a passive acceptance that if the judiciary want certain powers they should have them.

Christie Blatchford recommended that politicians overcome their obsequious deference to the Supreme Court.

I present credible, and highly unusual, sustained criticism of court judgments over the past thirty years suggesting structural, state sanctioned violence and systemic racism.

Have Canadians become inured to lack of government responsibility? Do we expect so little of our politicians that when they fail to listen or respond, we simply offer up a collective shrug?

The blithe recitative of cant and platitudes of politicians, tends to revive one’s respect for Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” argument.

Even liberal politicians no longer appear to share the progressive idea of a universalist ethic.

What happened to socially responsible government?

It is time for all politicians at all levels to take bold decisive action – they are the only ones with both the mandate and responsibility to fix and maintain our democracy.

Passing new redundant legislation, with duplicated regulatory bodies, reaching Memorandums of Understanding, is just cynical, ineffective, gesture politics at its most lowest - woefully inadequate.

The MOU, between the Minister of Justice and the courts, appears a complete capitulation of power to the courts, abdicating any real oversight by Parliament. The MOU could be one of the most humiliating examples of the meek acceptance of judicial supremacy over our elected representatives.

When elected or appointed into a position of community trust - you remain responsible to maintain that trust. All parliamentarians need to find their spine.

Yet the bulk of institutional energy is being directed towards preserving the system as it exists. Perhaps the degraded system is not worth preserving.

The latest “World Report” from Human Rights Watch, notes:

that crises do not come from nowhere. They are cultivated by governments that do not uphold their obligations to their people.

The January 2023 Transparency International Report indicates a further steep decline in Canada’s rating.

This posting, a work in progress, assumes the reported facts in Canada’s media are accurate – although the government has never confirmed or denied this. There is nothing original, - all derivative. If you find any errors of fact or perception, please inform the site: nebo-lit@usa.net

It is an archival chronicle, begun in 2021, a collation of personal observations and media reports on developing situations in Canada by an expat who grew up in Manitoba and migrated to Australia fifty years ago at the age of thirty. It records the pain of seeing the idealised stature of my homeland increasingly on a steep decline. It may appear alarmist, but to me it is rooted in the emerging reality of a fragile democracy in free fall.

Critics tell me it is too long. Not my fault, - when I started, it was just a few pages, however each week a new legal travesty of justice attracts my attention - let me count the ways. It is likely merely the tip of an iceberg exposing a history of professional negligence.

This posting is a tale of two crises, a crisis of legitimation of many absurd decisions by Manitoba’s courts and Mafia-like actions of the police, appearing utterly confusing and senseless. The legal world seems unaccountable; another instance of the tail wagging the dog.

The most disturbing affront to democracy is that many obtuse judicial decisions fail to meet required normal legal standards of honest marshalling and genuine assessment of evidence, becoming seriously out of step with legitimate community expectations, established jurisprudent norms, or their own official pronouncements. Judges need to practice their craft at higher standards.

We are expected to grow accustomed to a kind of shrugging acceptance of the status quo from spineless elected representatives who feel unthreatened by do-nothing politics.

The entire legal system seems to have lost its grip on reality.

The Borowitz Report may just have been reporting from Manitoba:

Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant courts which are threatening their own credibility, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of Judges who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving litigants at a loss as to how to argue.

“These judges appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defences that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive.”

With apologies to the Borowitz Report.

The second most concerning phenomenon is a continued unbridled Gestapo-like Police Force where self-serving cabalistic cultures triumph over public welfare tactics. Winnipeg’s police force has been beset by a string of damaging scandals that have shaken public trust in the service to its core.

Intrepid, fearless and courageous media personalities report on these without apparent results.

A number of investigative journalists are engaged in exposing dubious court cases, posting fearless articles revealing the egregious audacity of officials causing lethal distress - the CBC’s, Kristin Annable and Sarah Petz:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/rcmp-security-videos-thompson-1.6824825

How can our elected representatives stand idly by?

Kristin Annable: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/halcrow-aquital-dumont-chief-1.6720662

Sarah Petz: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-police-taser-death-iiu-report-1.5789604

If we condone and sanction this kind of brutish behavior from any authorities, our civil society becomes diminished.

John Carpay saga #

This appears just the most recent of a litany of incomprehensible spellbinding scandals besetting Manitoba’s legal world. Attacking lawyers has become the new norm in Manitoba’s Judicial system to protect prickly precious Judges.

There are varied attacks on democracy and just as we thought the decline has bottomed, the Winnipeg Legal industry, including the Manitoba Law Society, managed to go subterranean. It seems the most recent portrait of Manitoba’s justice system seeping into the absurd and plentiful plains of unreality.

Just in case we had any doubts regarding their lack of competence, the Winnipeg Police, issuing a warrant for the arrest of John Carpay, should dispel all. While Carpay advocates for some misguided cases, to charge him with obstructing Justice, takes language warfare to new depths.

It’s not immediately clear how his so-called crimes relate to Justice.

We obviously enjoy competing concepts of Justice.

Esteemed by some philosophers as the highest virtue, the delivery of justice demands and rivets attention. And the opposite is true as well: the perceived miscarriage of justice commands attention, sparking outrage and condemnation, resulting in reputational damage to the entire system of justice.

Like all matters legal, complexity takes over. There are no simple answers. No one comes out looking good. However, to accuse Carpay of:

“breach of integrity, undermining public respect for the administration of justice and failing to treat court with candour, fairness, courtesy and respect,”

appears another case of the pot calling the kettle black, plus it is a brazen examble of pure projection.

You would assume maintaining the integrity and respect for the administration of justice, surely, is the responsibility of Manitoba’s officials, especially The Manitoba Law Society, judges and all members of the legislatures at provincial and federal levels. Any and all reputational damage is entirely self-inflicted.

Any failure of official action, invites vigilante Justice. John Carpay clumsily attempted to investigate Manitoba government officials found violating their own rules, partying on rooftops, ignoring rules about face masks and social distancing, and jetting off to exotic holiday locations to countries without Covid restrictions.

(I am acutely aware, gathering evidence is anathema to Manitoba’s Justice system. It’s just not how things are done anymore.)

However, any trial before the Manitoba Justice system, would attract perceptions of conflicts of interest.

Police, who failed us, by not investigating, consider this an attempted intimidation of Chief Justice Joyal. How a covert tailing could intimidate anyone is also beyond the reach of my imagination.

Talk about shooting oneself in the foot. Do police have any sense of irony? It takes a lot of effort to get so many things so wrong.

Contrast that with similar concerns in London, where, despite official denials, a police investigation found Boris Johnson’s government guilty of Partygate. That didn’t appear to intimidate Boris.

In Manitoba, the police turn a blind eye, arrest the investigator, then piously parade their independence. No evidence of a collusive alignment of government, courts and police in a collective protection racket?

In a later update, Carpay and the other Alberta lawyer, Randal Jay Cameron, have been fined $5000 and barred from practising in Manitoba by the MLS. Now all we have to do is build a wall around Manitoba to keep trouble makers out, and get Mexico to pay for it. Easy peasy!

How any outsider can breach the integrity and undermine public respect for the administration of justice is beyond my limited capacity of logic. That surely is the remit of all public officials in Manitoba, and they appear to have done a good job of trashing their own credibility, reputation and public trust.

Any media support used to stigmatise lawyers, activists… hell, let’s call them what they are, troublemakers – means anyone with any authority doesn’t have to front up and accept responsibility. It’s all part of the constant process of delegitimising dissent.

Deflecting the blame is stock tactics revealing deep seated xenophobic paranoia. Why are litigants increasingly relying on out of province legal assistance like Wally Oppal? Why was the Peter Nygard case initiated by an American court and his trial held in Ontario?

As in the Ian Histed case, the cringe-worthy Manitoba Law Society prefers an obsequious deferential standard, rather than a robust upright system dispensing actual justice. True leadership is about earning respect; not wielding authority.

The entire legal profession needs to see its role as central to upholding individuals and communities respect for their profession. If the MLS took more heed of insisting on basic judicial and legal standards, rather than shooting the messengers, Manitoba’s image might begin to show some improvement.

In a more recent case, Troy Harwood-Jones was jailed by King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne on Feb. 29, 2024 after Harwood-Jones was cross-examining Dr. Nadin Gilroy, former medical director of the clinic’s abortion program. Troy Harwood Jones was taken into custody after a heated exchange with a judge in an “extremely rare” case of contempt of court.

In Australia, such action by a judge resulted in him being fined $50,000. Judge Salvatore Vasta was denied judicial immunity when a federal court found in favour of a man, falsely imprisoned by Vasta for contempt of court.

Jailing lawyers for representing their clients sends a chilling message to all lawyers. Where is the Manitoba Law Society upholding their rights? If the Manitoba Law Society had any positive contributions to improve the status of the justice system, they would investigate and defend cases where judges use intimidation by citing lawyers for contempt of court attempting legitimate representation of their clients interests.

This has an inhibiting affect on all conscientious, upright lawyers. In Australia such bullying can be met with substantial fines against the judge. In Canada, Judges are beyond accountability.

John Carpay celebrates a decision by Manitoba Crown Prosecutors, who on October 27, 2023, stayed the criminal charges they had brought against him for intimidation (Criminal Code section 423) and obstructing justice (Criminal Code section 139). Now the whole case can comfortably be dismissed as nonsense, as it appears the entire Manitoba Justice System is embedded in a collusive culture reminiscent of medieval privilege.

How about ample compensation for false arrest and the needless suffering of a humiliating imprisonment during the holiday sesson? How about some accountability for deliberately dumb decision making? Official folly is still folly even though perpetrated by pompous office holders.

Carpay has little to apologise for. What law did he break?

We can still wait for a full investigation of the main concern of authorities flouting their own rules - just don’t hold your breath - all you’d likely get is a lot of whitewash. The only vain hope is for federal intervention. - a full Royal Commssion into the entire Justice, legal and policing system of Manitoba.

The Police #

Linda Greenhouse NYRB, claims Cops aren’t held to account due to decades of Court decisions that have converted qualified immunity from a commonsense rule into a powerful doctrine that deprives people injured by police misconduct of recourse.

In March 2024, Kate Kehler, member of the Police Accountability Coalition, raises the issues of frequent deaths caused simply by calling the police for assistance.

The most outrageous examples below illustrate the growing number of brutal, savage and violent attacks by Winnipeg Police on hapless citizens, (one a 12 year old boy) condoned by Manitoba’s court system.

According to a federal prosecutor,

“The justice system is the means by which the upper class pays the middle class (the Police) a good living wage to keep the lower classes in check”.

The litany of incompetent policing begins with Peter Nygard attacking vulnerable young women for decades from the late sixties. How many hapless victims suffered needlessly due to derilection of duty? Winnipeg Police and the courts had many credible cases, but chose to do nothing, until shamed by the American Court System - what does that say? Has anyone been held accountable for this national and international disgrace?

Could someone please explain to me why Nygard’s court case is being conducted in Toronto? Could it be another indication of the lack of confidence in Manitoba’s administration of Justice?

Chris Kitching reports on Nov. 14, 2023 that KC Allan and Serena Hickes, two women who accused Peter Nygard of rape, are renewing calls for a public inquiry into how Manitoba Justice and Winnipeg police handled past complaints of sex crimes against him and why charges were not laid in almost all cases reported in Manitoba and whether any systemic changes are necessary.

The entire Manitoba Justice system requires root and branch reform through openess, transparency and accountability. The problem is that the Court of Queen/King’s Bench is under the oversight of the Federal government, who appear utterly negligent.

In an August 2023, Winnipeg Free Press investigation into judicial oversight of fatal shootings by police, Marsha McLeod talks to Vivian Caron about an inquiry into the shooting of her son, Evan Beardy Caron five times. Other victims McLeod mentions include, 23-year-old Adrian Lacquette, fatally shot by two Winnipeg police officers a week and a half before Evan and Craig McDougall, a 26-year-old man from Wasagamack First Nation who’d been shot by a Winnipeg police officer in 2008.

The wait for answers has stretched for six years.

Marsha McLeod claims:

under Canadian law, officers must believe their own life, or that of another, is fundamentally at risk — or at risk of “grievous bodily harm” — to use lethal force.

That scenario has played out 29 times in Manitoba since 2003, with Winnipeg Police Service responsible for 21 deaths, RCMP for seven and the Manitoba First Nations Police Service for one. The number of fatal shootings involving law enforcement, both in Manitoba and across Canada, has increased in recent years.

Police, instead of looking close and hard at systemic failures, tend to look away for simple solutions. The Harvey Pollock scandalous case (below) of 1991 indicates a stark contrast of responsible government then - and now.

Then the police were held to account by the courts and the government; today police appear protected by the courts and rewarded by the government for violent policing.

“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail”. Catch-22, Captain Korn on granting Yossarian a medal.

Other glaringly obvious areas of concern are judicial defiance of accepted norms and the close alignment of Manitoba’s courts turning a blind eye to a seemingly corrupt police force with blasé governments woodenly and complicitly rewarding poor performance in the police force with extra money.

Manitoba already has a large number of police per capita and increasing it into a corrupted culture will not improve conditions.

As Einstein put it:

You cannot expect to solve a problem with the same mindset that created the problem.

Next, we will be led to believe in the simple fix of militarising the police with weapons of crowd control - armoured vehicles, tear gas, water cannons and other weapons of mass destruction. If it works in America, Belarus, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Iran…, why wouldn’t it work in Winnipeg?

On August 8, 2023 the WFP’s Eric Pendera reports that the city has asked the Court of King’s Bench to toss a lawsuit filed by a retired officer who alleges the Winnipeg Police Service has a toxic workplace. PKF Lawyers of Winnipeg filed the suit on June 28 on behalf of former police constable Belinda Duncan, who took early retirement in April 2022

Is Manitoba heading for an incipient, incestuous, and insidious Police State? Careful of the thin edge of the wedge.

We hope our politicians aspire to become statesmen, not pedlars of political panaceas.

Politicians igniting a crime panic is hardly a new ploy. It’s a tired stunt of playing The Ride of the Valkyries, reaching for the lowest common denominator playbook that has been used for yonks in all parts of the world, appealing to protecting white privileged majorities against unprivileged minorities.

On April 21, 1965: The Winnipeg Free Press reported a visiting official from the U.S. NAACP said Canadians who refused to see the plight of Indigenous and Métis people as related to racial discrimination were suffering from myopia. Did we learn nothing?

Indigenous discrimination and marginalization, leads to self-harm. The litany of shame started with British arrogance against Louis Riel, and continues today with cases like J.J. Harper, shot by the police, Tina Fontaine, Brian Halcrow and many others.

Or the CJC investigating Justice Graeme Mitchell, for visiting a Metis protester, Tristan Durocher, in his tepee, on Saskatchewan’s legislature grounds, drawing attention to the high rate of suicide among Indigenous people?

There’s a heavy price you pay for structural, institutional racist injustice.

Until we reckon with our cumulative moral debts, white societies will never be whole or safe.

Recently Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese observed that:

we have lived through a silence, a long tide of denial gnawing away at our spirit.

“We have to come to grips with the past because a country that does not acknowledge the full truth of its history is burdened by its unspoken weight,”

History demonstrates that if Manitoban politicians exercised better oversight over the courts and police, insisting on systematic adherence to their statutes, providing more equal and just judgments for all; crime would dissipate.

The Winnipeg Free Press’s recent report by Carol Sanders of a news conference with Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen with former Winnipeg Police Service chief Devon Clunis, promising standardized training for all police in Manitoba to make everyone safer, appears a half measure at best.

What is required is an out of province Royal Commissioner, with full subpoena powers, running an open inquiry into the past forty years of the entire Justice system.

Presently, we appear to have a ménage à trois, between the courts, police and government, aligned against the public good.

Most of the court decisions are appropriately cringe-worthy indications of a system long tainted by controversy and corruption.

Findings, so opposite to what really happened, indicates casuistry is alive and well, but damaging to both the courts and its victims.

When you know the truth and you’ve travelled that road and the courts pulls things out of thin air by not taking in everything that has gone on – it’s just trampling on victims’ feelings and reality. Limiting evidence is a euphemism for excluding conclusive evidence - proof.

In Feb, 2023, WFP’s Dean Pritchard reported: a Winnipeg police officer who was driving 50 kilometres an hour over the speed limit without just cause when he was involved in a two-vehicle collision that sent a city woman to hospital in critical condition has been fined $780.

We wonder why all officials have lost the respect of the people.

Police, originally instituted to protect citizens, now appear to be perpetrators, protecting themselves and their governors from the citizens. As a force, the police were established as servants of the public; not protectors of oppressive governments.

Even Hammurabi already understood the concept of a shepherd protecting the vulnerable.

Orwell warned us about the Jackboot mentality – creating fear and then providing paternalistic security:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human- face forever”.

Governments are loath to tackle police corruption because they need the police to protect them from the people.

Australian friends visiting Canada used to comment on the invisibility of police. This is no longer the case. Recent visits indicate increased police presence with sirens disturbing the peace. Some have suggested a similarity to the Keystone Kops. Institutional corruption leads to mediocrity.

Just like Waco demonstrated the American state as a violent enemy of the people. the weaponization our justice system, indicates good governance is failing, due to trust erosion.

Recent firsthand accounts, compiled by WFP’s Maggie Macintosh, of student intimidation and humiliation at the hands of police attending inner-city schools in Winnipeg, are deeply disturbing, confirming all other indicators of a long standing corrupt Justice system trickling down the ranks.

As a teacher, in the early seventies, in what was then called the St. Boniface School Division, police were not allowed on the premises to interrogate students due to the potential damage done to their reputations.

Schools should be a safe haven for children to experience a supportive childhood.

Police attending schools was designed to foster mutual respect. It appears Orwellian in becoming the antithesis of its founding purpose. Police and teachers do need to be better trained. Does a first world country like Canada suffer a third world country’s Justice System?

There can be no clearer revelations of a society’s soul, than the way it treats its children.

We need to resist simple populist solutions to complex problems of youth crime. From the sixties through to the nineties, enlightened leaders recognised that children are our most precious natural and national resource and need to be protected from brutalising experiences. To become integrated into adult society they require self-affirming environments.

Simply maintaining order as the baseline response to social unrest does not help us meet the underlying causes.

Simply put, maintaining order does not address the difficult transition from troubled youth to responsible adulthood. Social and community-oriented approaches are required to address systemic racism and transform deep-seated settler colonial institutions and values.

Lawyers insist Canada is not yet a police state, however, I maintain the Winnipeg Police Service’s Chief Danny Smyth threatened response to Fadi Ennab’s report prompting Louis Riel School Division’s trustees to axe the police-in-schools program in 2021, creates a good impression of the police running the state. Chief Smyth believes the best defence is offence. In attempting to shoot the messenger, he merely sabotages the entire service’s credibility.

Perhaps it is time for a reinvestment in justice.

Loss of public confidence in police forces is a serious sign of institutional rot spreading, indicating that the administration of justice in Manitoba is broken. The prevailing perception is one of the entire Justice system’s bubble culture, aligned to deny Justice.

American public confidence in the police is 30%; Canadian’s public confidence is 35%.

Canada is not an innocent country; our short history is shadowed into the present day, by the fate of its native peoples, by forms of unyielding prejudice, by a strain of derision of ordinary people, unexamined police violence and a persistent culture of passive deference to authority.

For the Emergency Powers Act (as the JCCF describes it), to tacitly condone a tactical, military operation with hundreds of armed officers violently attacking peaceful protestors, is un-Canadian. Surely we are better than that.

It remains the public’s fault if government ministers fail to hold officials to acceptable standards. It is our sovereign duty to hold all politicians to account.

All officials rely on the police to defend them from aggrieved citizens. Governments rely on the police remaining loyal, so the court system is prepared to tolerate excessive force to maintain the status quo. The consequence is further immiserations leading to a treadmill of social unrest due to diminished accountability.

On March 30, 1972: The Winnipeg Free Press reported a city police detective was dismissed after the police commission accepted a complaint of extortion against the detective; the dismissal would be appealed.

What would happen today?

The contrasting perception of a cosy relation is reinforced by this January 2023 report:

A now-former Winnipeg police officer who was charged with fraud over $5,000 after receiving long-term disability payments while running a private business was granted an absolute discharge Monday.

Is the Justice system so insouciant they don’t realise the pain and trauma their negligence causes real people? Do judges lack the emotional intelligence to cater for the public good? Are our representives so complacent, they are unaware of the damage their dereliction of duty causes?

The message suggests they don’t like, or care about the poor, and they don’t much like, or care about you or me. In modern political parlance: we’re all in this together. There but for fortune, go you or I.

Justice System #

Innocence Canada claims up to one hundred cases of wrong convictions. How many are consciously deliberate? The law’s purpose is to provide for a civil society, fostering mutual respect, catering for the most vulnerable. Manitoba’s courts appear to do just the opposite; protecting the privileged, causing as much damage to broken victims as any unaccountable cartel can.

Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW Sydney, insists that Australians expect judges to make decisions impartially: that is, free from a range of improper and unacceptable political, financial and personal influences. Not only must they make decisions impartially, they must be seen to make their decisions impartially.

In my opinion, all judges found deliberately and brazingly flouting that principle must face consequences. They are not above accountability.

Entrenched systemic failures within the administration of justice to conduct due diligence in holding officials to acceptable standards of jurisprudence cause preventable reputational damgae. It is what a judge does on the bench is more important than what they do in their private lives.

Here is another stunning case, of the court’s sloppiness in establishing the facts, causing extreme psychological distress and trauma due to unjust neglect:

The Jason Hyra case comprises all the usual suspects, especially Justice Shawn Greenberg, Chief Justice Richard Chartier and the Executive Secretary of the CJC, Norman Sabourin, plus a few more alleged culprits in the Justice department who denied Jason Justice due to substandard procedures. His claims sound eerily familiar.

In 2004, Jason in confidential interview, in good faith, provided damning evidence regarding an application by a former girl friend, Lana Eisbrenner, applying to become a Winnipeg Police Officer including her involvement with the ZigZags, her steroid drug use, her buying-selling and using of drugs, her affair with married WPS Officer John McKay, her black mailing of her former boss, and their short relationship.

The Gang Unit was sent out to investigate confirming his statements. Despite being promised protection by the WPS, John McKay, a police officer and Lana began intimidating, harassing, and threatening Jason Hyra when she was fired from the WPS.

Jason claims that, in March 2008 he was wrongfully arrested and in 2016, wrongfully convicted of a crime of (criminal harassment s.264). He was convicted in order to be silenced.

Jason further claims Federal Court Justice Shawn Greenberg in April 2014 dismissed all of the evidence showing his innocence, ignored the rule of law, took her cues from the Crown, and tried to cover up the Crown Misconduct of Bruce Sychuk; prosecutor Rob Gosman (friend of David Rampersad); current Assistant Deputy Minister of Justice Michael Mahon; the MBCA and Chief Justice Richard Chartier, who in January 2016 ensured I would never receive a fair trial by allowing Justice Greenberg to remain the trial Judge. It certainly gives a good impression of official collusive complicity. Chartier stated that if I didn’t like the trial ruling I could appeal it later - he would, wouldn’t he.

It appears Justice Greenberg is incapable of discriminating between real evidence and bogus assertions. She fails the most basic and elementary tests of unaligned adjudication. It’s not that she has double standards; it is that she displays no standards. Any fair- minded observer would be appalled by her lack of honesty.

Use the right side bar menu to read Jason’s account in his own words.

As the writer, I am not in a position to judge all the facts, but it does ring true to me as it follows similar patterns in Justice Greenberg’s other misjudged cases. Greenberg knows just what she chooses to know and appears to have difficulty in understanding the distinction between truth and fabrication. Justice Greenberg appears adept at creating unrealistic frameworks to form her views. When a judge’s findings are totally and utterly inconsistent with available evidence and the facts, we know something is amiss. Judges, who cling to convictions in the face of all contrary credible evidence, think like, flat earthers, birthers, climate change denialists…..

I don’t know all the perverted cases Justice Greenberg has botched, but Jason’s observations bear glaring similarities to what our family experienced in the 2012 challenge of a clearly mentally incapacitated aunt’s Will, where the less than honourable Justice managed to vaporise all solid evidence in favour or airy assertions by scammers. Her premises rested on stereotypical reasoning, deliberate mis readings of oral and material evidence. Her determinations were myopic, historically illiterate, and contrary to anything resembling reality. With better investigative skills and a more curious approach, and a commitment to probity, she might be capable of getting closer to the truth. The family found both courts fell ‘profoundly short’ of minimum standards expected of reputable jurisprudence.

Miraculously, through spin, she reconciled the life - long acrimony of twins, fabricated a few facts, alienated their siblings and cured a severely schizophrenic aunt with her magic gavel. Not bad for six days efforts! Both Greenberg and the Appeals court appeared happy to warp reality to fit whatever determinations they had in mind. Their findings have no basis of reality. All four judges proved skilful in systematically contradicting the factual bases for decision making; crafting a version of reality that suited their purposes. This illustrates just how blind both court’ ‘judgment were.

Never let the truth get in the way of a desired verdict, eh? When falsehoods prevail, truth comes limping after.

If Judges cannot determine the facts in accordance with the evidence, then the hope invested in the entire system is misplaced. The insidious logic of arbitrary decision making has seeped deep into a failing Canadian judiciary’s mindsets.

When a judge actively ignores all sound primary evidence, prefers lies over irrefutable evidence; it clearly demonstrates a blatant disregard for reflecting grounded reality.

While her inability to engage in the simple basics of evidentiary management is worrying, it is the catastrophic failure of an appeals system, sticking to a flawed script, making zero sense, that is damaging to the entire justice system. Judges who accept a litany of lies, are booked on a flight from reality. Her pattern of deliberate, contrived, morally reprehensible, fraudulent rulings should exclude her from being a member of this profession. Judges are supposed to be trusted to the ends of the earth. Who can trust Justice Shawn Greenberg?

Allowing for the all the evidence, we should question whether it was open to a reasonable decision-maker, Manitoba’s Court of Appeal, to be satisfied with the unvalidated determinations made by Justice Greenberg. The lack of verification means both verdits are worthless. For evidence to be forceful, it needs to be tested and substantiated.

In what land of accountability and trust is it right to knowingly allow judges who flout the law avoid censure?

This is gaming the system. Protecting institutions at the expense of society.

Here is Blackadder’s take on judges:

“Is he qualified as a judge?"

“He is a violent bigoted mindless old fool sir”

“Sounds a bit over qualified.”

It’s about unchecked power running rampant, and the fight for a fairer world! It’s about the right to be proud of one’s documented narrative. Our court system appears not fit for purpose any more. It appears time for some exemplary deterrant consequences for judicial malpractice.

Peter Nygard operated with impunity from the late nineteen sixties. David Milgaard, Jason Hyra, Harvey Pollock, Frank Ostrowski, Chris Procaylo Jamie Cote and now John Carpay are just some of the collateral damage caused by a corrupt, wild west, legal system, while apparent offending police officers Sean Cassidy, Christian Paul Guyot were treated kindly by some friendly judges.

Conscientious lawyers like Ian Histed, Ted Crane and others have had their careers trashed for speaking up. Ian Histed questioned procedures of the administration of justice and was charged with uncivil or professional misconduct for lack of deference, resulting in a six-month suspension and costs of $34,000.

The self sabotaging Manitoba Law Society prefers “a deferential standard,” rather than demanding legal authorities be reasonably steeped in the orderly tenets of judicial standards of correctness and be held to account.

The French Revolution introduced the enduring concepts of equality and fraternity rather than the British elitist demand for fawning, hierarchical, paternalism.

And we wonder why lawyers have high rates of depression and suicide.

The former Australian High Court justice Michael Kirby broached the great unmentionable of judicial bullying, when he recommended that protocols be developed to deal with judges who bully counsel.

‘‘In serious and repeated cases, bullying by judicial officers should be recognised as an abuse of public office warranting commencement of proceedings for the removal of the offender from judicial office,’’ he said.

In August 2023 Justice Michael Wigney showed us that some courts can correct the system.

Australian Judge Salvatore Vasta is a thug and bully who runs his court rooms in line with the Spanish Inquisition, or if you want to be kinder, like the Star Chamber. He brooks no challenges to his absolute authority in his chambers.

What is amazing, because it happens so rarely, is that the Australian system of justice, on its own, has pulled Vasta into line.

The full bench of the federal court described the inferior court judge’s actions as a:

“gross and obvious irregularity of procedure”, with “serious and fundamental errors”, exceeded his jurisdiction, and was not entitled to the protection of judicial immunity.

Vasta has form, jailing anyone for contempt of court, merely for questioning his authority.

In ruling that Judge Vasta derserved no immunity, so was personally liable to pay $50,000 in damages to his victim, Justice Michael Wigney of the Federal Court has assured his entry into the Australian Hall of Fame for all Judges worthy of the honour.

Canadian Judges could learn from such a bold, resolute and forceful action in upholding legitimate standards.

In Canada, all symptons clearly indicate a breakdown of social order due to professional indemnity. Root and branch reform of Canada’s entire justice system is now more urgent than ever.

These cases scream out for an open inquiry by responsible authorities, - if there any left.

Kristin Annable, CBC News, reported on November 3rd , 2022 that Chris Procaylo, a photographer for the Winnipeg Sun newspaper, filed a complaint with Manitoba’s Law Enforcement Review Agency, or LERA, in 2017, alleging the officer unlawfully seized his camera, intimidated him and swore at him while he was working at a crime scene on Main Street in Winnipeg. Five years later, we are awaiting the court’s verdict.

It is extraordinary that Chris Procaylo, lodging a LERA complaint, had to pay for his own lawyer. From 1879, governments appointed a public prosecutor, which means victims no longer had to pursue their perpetrators.

Other questions remain. Why is the name of the police officer withheld? Where was Chris’s employer? Where is Canada’s Press Council? What kind of protection do media have in Manitoba to do their jobs?

The WFP archives record that on Nov. 23, 1967: The Winnipeg Free Press reported the Winnipeg police commission exonerated two detectives alleged to have beaten a Free Press reporter.

Attacking the media is symptomatic of desperate tyrannical systems.

What should alarm all of us is the increasingly brutal and thuggish violence of the police. This sounds more like Belarus, Russia or China.

Manitoba’s Justice System appears retreating to distant primitivism or at least medievalism in concept and practice - its citizens increasingly suffering an oppressive police state.

Manitoba’s justice minister decried the violent response to RCMP officers who broke up an out-of-control house party in East St. Paul, citing it as an example of increasing attacks on, and loss of respect for, law enforcement.

Perhaps it’s just another symptom; not a cause.

For Manitoba’s Justice minister to blame partygoers’ aggression toward Mounties as an example of increasing attacks on, and loss of respect for, law enforcement, shows just how out of touch all governments are. The Korean tragedy shows what happens when politicians and bureaucrats, of all major parties, fail so radically at the basic provision of public safety?

Blaming the messenger only works for so long.

Premier Heather Stefanson announced Thursday, Nov. 3rd, 2022, the creation of joint Winnipeg Police Service/RCMP integrated violent offender apprehension unit, with $3.2 million in provincial funding. The announcement followed those of other measures this week totalling $20 million towards measures aimed at tackling crime. By March 2023, this had amped to $ 50 Million. Incompetence pays.

According to Probe Research principal Mary Agnes Welch, a new poll shows a 79 per cent of Winnipeggers feel less safe in the city, compared to three years ago. “This year, it’s absolutely exploded to the top of people’s minds”. 07/10/22.

Other sources indicate a low public perception of Police. Paradoxically the more police per capita, or more imposed law and oppressive authoritarian order, does not solve the problem. Real power and authority relies on public confidence, respect, and trust, in a fair, equitable, socially protective, system.

For evidence, just look south of the border.

As always politicians look to winning elections on perceptions of law’n order rather than real, just solutions. Manitoba’s Tory government is banking on boosting police ranks and propping up health care with private providers to sway voters ahead of next year’s election.

The November throne speech left no doubt that a new “tough on crime” agenda could rescue the party from the depths of political despair in another assault on democracy. Weak politicians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to do some good.

State sanctioned violence against the young is always counter-productive; perpetuating further harm to both police images and risking irreparable damage to youth.

Youth support services with better trained teachers, youth workers and police can save countless futures. Doubling down on simple solutions is shallow thinking, morally bankrupt, counter-productive and political cowardice.

Am I right to conclude that serious corruption is fixed by rewarding perpetrators with more money?

Perhaps a Royal Commision into the entire justice system would be more cost effective.

Other historical plaintives below indicating a symbiotic relationship between the court and police system are:

Harvey Pollock #

Sept. 19, 1991: The Winnipeg Free Press reported that the long-awaited Ted Hughes report on the investigation into the Winnipeg Police Service’s handling of the arrest of lawyer Harvey Pollock was released.

Mary Agnes Welsh reported that after Pollock represented the family of J.J. Harper, an aboriginal man the police shot, whose death led to the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry and years of acrimony and tension between police and First Nations, he faced reprisals.

Shortly after the inquiry, police arrested Pollock for sexual assault, charges so specious Manitoba’s justice minister called in Ted Hughes to launch an inquiry.

Justice Ted Hughes found the Pollock investigation was “unseemly” and “misguided” and the officers in charge of it irrational and emotional. He called the criminal charges “payback” for Pollock’s role in the J.J. Harper affair.

Any action? Perhaps as Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, the police “have forgotten nothing, and have learned nothing.” Have we learned nothing in the last thirty years?

How could things have deteriorated since that scandalous low point?

In the last twenty years, inactive politicians have become infected by the worst kind of political illness. They have become a personification of distrust in the system resulting in apathy. Their failure to address problems so nakedly embodies all that is wrong with contemporary politics.

Complaints are met with a notable lack of urgency by state officials, who are trying out more ‘hopeful’ messaging, ensuring their “images” are not damaged.

What we’re not seeing, in all areas of government, is bold leadership. Instead, the political class keeps coming up with new ways to avoid real action and betray the public interest.

All we expect from our politicians are intelligent responses to obvious systemic flaws, rectifying them with resolute, enforcing actions.

Is that asking too much? Perhaps so, because they are merely focussed on how to win the next election.

Pandering to the lowest common denominator can be utterly detrimental to society.

Where are the yester year politicians of courage to initiate an inquiry or upright judges holding police to their oaths of office? Was the Honourable Ted Hughes Canada’s last truly honourable judge?

I wish I were in a position to judge.

No, there are many others, including Justice Paul Rouleau, whose level-headed report on the Emergencies Act becomes an enlightened model for other judges committed to Justice.

Christian Paul Guyot,

Katie May reported on the 09/27/2018 that lack of evidence brought to court against a Winnipeg police officer, who has been acquitted of assaulting a 12-year-old boy, is raising questions about the legal worth of a cellphone video that purported to capture the assault.

Christian Paul Guyot, 44, a 17-year member of the Winnipeg Police Service, was cleared Wednesday, when provincial court Judge Ryan Rolston decided he couldn’t be sure Guyot was the same male, uniformed officer seen in the minute-long video allegedly striking a boy.

How did George Floyd’s murderer get charged?

Another case compounds the issue, confirming all our suspicions. According to Chris Kitching of the Winnipeg Free Press, 02/06/22.

Karl Gowenlock, lawyer for Jamie Cote, who accused police officer Sean Cassidy of assault, at the Manitoba Law Courts, said the Crown’s case risks undermining public trust in prosecutions of police officers. Cote told court an officer forced him to the ground on his stomach and another male, alleged to be Cassidy — who wasn’t in uniform, and was not carrying handcuffs or a firearm — punched and kneed him in the face.

Gowenlock also took issue with the Crown calling the other officers as witnesses for its own case.

“The evidence of the other police present at the arrest was presented as reliable even though it contradicted the evidence of Mr. Cote and, in my opinion, is not consistent with the surrounding circumstances and common sense,” he wrote. “They have a very strong personal stake in providing a version of events where nothing untoward happened at the roadside arrest, because anything else would mean they had some level of culpability, as we allege in Mr. Cote’s civil suit.”

Provincial court Judge Sidney Lerner found Cassidy not guilty of assault causing bodily harm. He said the Crown’s decisions gave him reasonable doubt as to the officer’s guilt.

Another example of systematised cruelty.

The situation is ongoing: Erik Pindera, of the WFP on Mar. 19, 2024, reported that Lawyer Martin Pollock filed a lawsuit against patrol sergeant Jeffrey Norman on behalf of East St. Paul contractor Leo Marcel Lafreniere. The suit also names officer Jason Chymyshyn and the City of Winnipeg. It is at least the 10th time Norman has been named in a lawsuit while working as a city police officer — and it’s the second time Chymyshyn has been sued.

Why can’t the entire Justice system function to its public purpose? Why are our Chief Judges, senior officers and parliamentarians so ineffective?

Judges are last profession to have next to no accountability. All institutions need serious adult supervision. Complaints to the CJC remain securely hidden behind a veil of impenetrable secrecy.

Where Parliament has fallen down, is in not using the mechanisms to maintain normal Judicial standards. The primary role of all parliamentarians is to keep all public officials under control through effective regulatory frameworks.

The resulting failure has been a major barrier in overseeing Judicial complaints to sustain public respect. This has caused significant reputational harm domestically and internationally.

It also has serious consequences for good lawyers up against an arbitrary system where evidence is discounted. Repeated studies indicate a high level of depression and suicide in Canada’s legal industry.

Citizens are not credited with the intelligence and respect they deserve. Promises are made and never delivered. Complaints are treated like an annoyance. Basic standards of accountability are pushed aside.

Citizenship conveys rights, but their price is allegiance to the body that guarantees those rights. In the modern world of the nation-state, we assume that means our country as an entity in itself – to Canada and the welfare of its peoples. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is proclaimed boastfully, but appears disavowed by the courts.

Citizens had a moral duty to stand up for one another when the state fails to guarantee their rights. We need to support each other’s agency.

Another recent case:

27/01/23 Crown stays sex assault charges in first of three trials for Ste. Anne doctor.

A woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by her doctor more than a decade ago says she has lost faith in the justice system after charges involving six other alleged victims were stayed in court.

These cumulated cases are “system failures”. It’s just like an airplane crash. It’s just not one thing. It’s a system failure.

Systemic poorly conducted cases cause people, their families and the public, considerable stress, anguish and even trauma.

Cumulative skewed cases continue to cause irreparable reputational harm to our faith, respect and trust in the Judiciary.

On 10/08/23, th e WFP reports, a Judge stays charges in sex assault against teen girl, blames Crown Prosecution ‘dragged it’s feet’ in setting trial date, accused man’s charter rights breached. What about the victim’s rights?

The adversarial system is long past its use by date.

An issue of the WFP alerts us to The Onion’s filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States, including passages of exaggeration for the sake up humour (claiming it had a readership of 4.3 trillion) and calling the federal judiciary “total Latin dorks,” - its defence of Anthony Novak’s freedom of speech was serious.

Open ridicule of justice officials leads to disrespect for all authority. Central to good judgment is :

Salis populi est suprema lex - the welfare of the people is the supreme law.

Parliament has the responsiblity to oversee judicial administration - its failure to intervene in Manitoba, is a blight on responsible democracy. Passing new legislation is perception politics at its lowest. The existing Judge’s Laws simply need to be enforced.

A justice system that refuses to hold prison officers, police or rogue judges to account, cannot avoid self-inflicted loss of public respect.

The WFP’s Erik Pindera reported (14/02/2023):

William Walter Ahmo was alone in a common area in the Headingley jail when correctional officers pepper sprayed him before a team in riot gear “swarmed and pinned him,” beating the man with batons until he was unconscious, a lawsuit alleges.

Ahmo, 45, and a member of Sagkeeng First Nation, was airlifted Feb. 7, 2021, to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. He never regained consciousness and died a week later.

The lawsuit alleges the provincial government and Headingley Correctional Centre guards were negligent and breached their duty of care for the inmate, among other claims of mistreatment and racism.

There is mounting, cumulative, and compelling evidence, through various scandalous decisions by Manitoba Courts, that the Canadian Judcial Council has failed Canadian citizens,. How can such low standards be justified? Judges prize their independence, yet seem to act in a block, protecting the errant ones.

Undeniably, Judges have a difficult role to play, but protecting openly frolicking ones, makes good Judges work even harder; diminishing our respect for the entire institution. Like any well maintained garden, weeds need to be eradicated. One year of seeding, means seven years of weeding.

Since the CJC abnegates its duty to:

“promote accountability; to improve quality of judicial service in the superior courts of Canada and respond to all complainants,”

Parliamentarians need to take control of an antiquated, outdated, ineffective regulatory system, demonstrably failing the people of Canada. It is past time for cross party action to rein in and fetter judicial malpractice. The cases above and below highlight issues with self-regulation in the Justice System regarding what constitutes misconduct. Conscious mismanagement of evidence in court, is much more serious that what they do in their private lives.

The main sticking point is who has the final say under the Westminster System. Is this another case of the tail wagging the dog?

Since the court case Bernard v. Canada (Attorney General), 2021 FC #1487, condons judges’ failure to deal properly with evidence, Parliament, our elected representatives - not the government, needs to give Judges this message:

you are a Judge commissioned by the Canadian people - to serve the people of Canada, subject to parliament, according to limited prerogatives. If you deliberately twist and distort, intentionaly misconstrue or purposely manipulate evidence, or wilfully abuse discretionary privilege, you will be charged with abuse of process and investigated for impeachment.

(In my wildest dreams)

Democracy depends on our representatives actively upholding their laws by enforcement. Non-observance of stipulated guidelines and unchecked abuse leads to loss of respect for all institutions. Even Judges must comply with reasonable laws.

Hammurabi, Hesiod and Solon all understood that blood vengeance, with its curse of constant feuds among the clans, can only be avoided by responsible and fair minded rule of law.

It remains my considered contention that in most democracies, an incipient coup has evolved where the judiciary are claiming unearned privileged exceptionalism, impunity and supremacy.

Corruption leads to apathy, low morale, mediocrity and declining competency. Increasing social fragmentation is the direct result of citizens losing faith, confidence, respect, and trust in all authority figures and institutions.

Judges are the last bastion of absolute unaccountable medieval power. Tyrants, Kings, Queens, Priests, Doctors, and Teachers have all lost their unquestionable authority.

Denis Diderot’s wish may have almost come true:

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”.

Who will strangle the last neo-medieval, imperious judge?

Court cases should not be a debating contest based on rhetorical theatre; the most convincing lies to win at all costs, rather a forum for resolving disputes in reasoned dialogue to the benefit of all.

Prima Facie, a British National Theatre production, is just one of many social justice films to question the relevance, and fit for purpose, of our outmoded adversarial justice system. It should be axiomatic that radical reform to a more inclusive and cooperative approach is long past due.

The fact that Trump conceded that his legal troubles have helped him politically, indicates the disrepute and lack of respect the American Justice System enjoys.

Democracy is not a spectator sport; we all have to engage, you have to participate to make it work the way it is supposed to.

When the legitimacy of, and confidence in, the legal system is caught up with a crisis of public trust in all professionals, institutions and systems; public confidence can no longer be taken for granted. For those who administer courts and those who serve on them, the task of building and maintaining that trust is now more critical than ever.

It may be too late to warn Canadians of judicial overreach leading to a judicial coup de’ tats. American brazenness and ruthlessness pay off. The American Supreme Court’s flexing its muscle may yet backfire as the Kansas rejection of Republican efforts to ban abortions and the failure of a Red Wave shows.

Canadian Judges too, seem not to be serving the people and appear beyond the command of the Canadian Parliament. In the end, it is only people power, that should prevail.

Canada has a plethora of self funded institutes advocating for justice, combatting an excess of official hubris, resisting judicial oversight, arresting the restoring of public trust.

Indicators of a dysfunctional legal system in Canada: #

The chronology of events demonstrating the slide to debased administration of justice is worth spelling out:

• the scandalous inaction of Manitoba’s legal fraternity in the Peter Nygard case over forty years is the strongest indictment . An American court initiated proceedings.

• The 2008, GLOBAL INTEGRITY report gave Canada’s judicary a 30% mark, noting that:

“there is no accountability at all on the part of any judges in Canada because of a complaints’ process in which judges judge other judges. The Government accountability watchdog agencies have a weak enforcement record”.

Canada’s parliamentary system lacks the built-in checks-and-balances approach to proper governing.

The essence of the rule of law, is limitation of the discretion of officials, and providing a process by which errors or abuse of discretion can be corrected.

In 15 years, nothing has changed.

• Innocence Canada claims of 100 cases of wrongful convictions, Delays in rectifying injustice.

• the delays in processing wrongful conviction decisions.

• Macdonald-Laurier Institute reports citing Manitoba as the worst performing justice system.

• Macleans citing Manitoba as the most racist province.

• Back to back annual Transparency International’s reports indicating declining regulatory oversight. The January 2023 Transparency International Report indicates a further steep decline.

• Cross Canadian protests, targeting politicians and the Supreme Court. Increased verbal abuse of officious officialdom indicating creeping authoritarian indifference. Mutual respect is a two-way street. The highest quality of leadership is humility and action.

• The Ethical Principles for Judges Report, blaming the public for not appreciating judges.

• The Federal Court decision in Bernard v. Canada, abdicating the CJC’s responsibility for censuring errant judgments.

• various cases illustrating a collusive culture within Manitoba’s legal system regarding the Winnipeg Police and the courts. Jamie Cote’s merely the most recent. How can we avoid a comparison to the Keystone Kops?

• A trilogy of cases adjudicated by Justice Shawn Greenberg needing urgent investigation.

These cumulative cases should eliminate all doubt that Manitoba’s Administration of Justice is utterly dysfunctional.

Judicial deviance may have become so routine that to them it’s no big deal. If the courts want our respect and trust, they need to establish some acceptable baselines of credibility.

Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner expressed concerns about our susceptibility to:

“lies and conspiracies spreading like wildfire on social media. As we have seen around the world, disinformation poses a real threat to democratic institutions. The demonstrations that took place in Ottawa this winter stemmed in part from this disinformation.

Wagner encouraged people to “inform, instruct and educate” their fellow citizens.”

Absolutely true indeed, however the same imperative applies to all courts and surely his primary role is to “inform, instruct and educate” all Judges to ensure they demonstrate the capacity to distinquish between false claims and real evidence. Court rooms are inundated with false claims and there’s a qualitative effect when it willingly spreads misinformation that’s bubbled up from chancers, or validated through de-contextualised perspectives and laundered into reliable evidence.

The greater their credulity, the greater the loss of the entire legal fraternity’s credibility. The greatest threat to the courts’ reputation is its own gullibility to disinformation.

Why don’t we simply go back to the tried and true formula of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

Gaining any advantage by deception in court should always be a crime. Rome began its decline when lying became an art form. To the unscrupulous go the spoils.

Official lies are far more prevalent and just as dangerous as those propagated by social media.

On Apr. 28, 2022, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti and Chief Justice of Canada and CJC Chairperson Richard Wagner signed two memoranda of understanding on judicial governance and judicial education. Both MOUs came into effect on the same day.

You could assume an MOU written by the Legal world for the Legal world. On judicial governance, both parties recognize that the principle of judicial independence includes the independence of the CJC in fulfilling its mandate to serve the public. Its logic reads like a licence for something close to absolute judicial impunity.

What no independent oversight? Astounding!

Our federal oversight of judges suffers fundamental flaws. This problem will continue to exist until governments are prepared to recalibrate the relationship between institutional self-interest and the public interest.

Our elected representatives appear to have vacated the field and abrogated their responsibility faster than the West fleeing Afghanistan.

Esteemed Judges combine the precision of science, the scrupulosity of medicine, and the solemnity of funerals in their diagnoses and determinations. For them, there was no such thing as unexplained symptoms or unknowable problems—no blind guesses, just interesting cases—and it is only a matter of curious full discovery before all mysteries of a case could be understood in terms of evidentiary enquiry.

Today, this kind of “holistic jurisprudence” is on the brink of extinction as a slavish adherence to protocols and legalisms—plus a worship of privilege- runs the risk of destroying the key foundational clinical skills of listening, observation, and fair, balanced imagination that have been at the heart of the discipline for more than 100 years.

Both Solomon and Lucius Cassius demonstrated that discerning motive is the most reliable and trustworthy determinant in assessing witness testimony in order to establish the truth.

We need a renewal of Sherlock Holmes skills of forensics — the deep analytical tools that the best Judges rely on to diagnose situations, rather than towering systemic ignorance, supported by high handed, privileged arrogance.

Much of respecting judicial independence and separation of powers Much of judicial independence and separation of powers, and an inexplicable defensive fear of outside influence or interference.

The MOU could be one of the most humiliating examples of the meek acceptance of judicial supremacy over our elected representatives.

In Canada, adversaries appear to openly deceive the courts. They don’t even have to use “Jedi mind tricks” to get the courts to accept their fanciful assertions, as long as evidence suits the legal world’s desired determinations. As power and arrogance take over, judges lose the capacity to test evidence against a more generally accepted reality.

Judges, who treat evidence and the public with reckless, undisquised and unrestrained contempt, need to be reined in with real consequences of loss of position and entitlements. American pundits have been calling for impeachment trials for judges for years. It seems high time for tangible action in Canada too.

THE COURT OF APPEAL OF MANITOBA #

The Bernard vs Canada case regarding allegations of judges’ failure to deal properly with evidence, determined that “recourse is available only before the courts”.

That sounds like a cartel to me. It goes against more than a hundred years of accepted legal norms. However it unwarily acknowledges the need for public confidence in the justice system realizing how harm to those involved, undermines the community’s faith in the system.

In the Heinrichs/Hoffman case, the respondents told obvious, contradictory, risible” lies, and were unable to keep their stories straight.

The majority of the family was aggrieved by the apprehended partisanship displayed by the courts who demonstrated a lack of proper appreciation of their professional obligations as adjudicators; being easy prey for false narratives over hard material evidence.

Credulous judges were held captive by the benefitting parties’ deliberate lies on several accounts, accepting responses they perceived to be in their forensic interests, despite concrete evidence to the contrary.

Both courts enjoyed splendid isolation from the facts or realities available to them in documented primary source evidence. Exhibit one, was totally ignored. A taped interview was of no interest to the blind justices. Conflicting evidence was simply arbitrarily validated.

Any conscious attempt, by the judiciary, to falsify reality should be seen for what it is - a fraudulent, impeachable and indictable perversion of justice.

It is just another trigger warning regarding how far institutions will go to protect their power and privilege.

We assumed the Appeals courts would detect and correct bad decision making, however as the evidence points to Appeal Courts as a mere echo chambers or rubber stamps, then we are chasing our tails.

Justice Shawn Greenberg’s callow, stereotypical, simplistic, and superficial, analysis, given a reflexive, rather blustery endorsement of an Appeals court, throwing its weight hither and yon in a bluffing performance, failing to touch the heart or compel the mind of anyone remotely connected to the family. Justice Greenberg invented stories about our family with no regard for believability, yet the Appeals Court blithely accepted untested and unsupportable determinations.

The bombastic approach of Coram: Alan D. Maclnnes’, by voicing his own insecurity with blustering confidence, through domineering self-justifications, strained arguments, and unsupported assertions, suggests he is instinctively aware of taking up untenable positions, he can hardly be proud of. There were no credible, equitable or just, grounds for these decisions. Maclnnes displays a towering, contumelious disregard toward an audience of family members, intimately knowledgeable with the actual facts.

The determinations say more about the courts’ airy projections than anything real. Most are based on complete falsehoods, lazy assumptions, wooden misunderstandings and deliberate misconceptualizations of the facts. This deliberate distortion constitutes an intentional perversion of justice that remains indefensible and should be investigated for removal from office with punitive and deterring measures of monetary penalties. In my opinion, all four judges have forfeited their right to impunity. The cumulative effect of these monumental and catastrophic failures recklessly undermined the credibility and respect for the entire Manitoba Justice System, eroding public confidence and social harmony.

Are Greenberg and the adipose Appeals Court Judges conscious frauds, or merely fools? We can give them the benefit of the doubt, just. But being venal fools does not excuse them from a failure of due process in searching for the truth by discovering the facts and testing conflicting assertions. All four judge completely departed Earth’s orbit, plunging headlong into the self - destructive black hole of arbitrary decision making.

Any conscious attempt to falsify reality should be seen for what it is - a fraudulent, indictable sham requiring responsible investigation and deterring consequences.

Exposing official malfeasance and judicial corruption should not be a crime, especially when the real culprits exposed get off scott-free.

When the court system becomes a victim of mockery, it loses credibility in the eyes of our most respected citizens, then we’re in trouble.

When nothing substantiates determinations, and easily available evidence shows that they are actually false, yet Appeal Judges – often educated, smart, and powerful people – continue to believe them.

Bogus Wills are generally quite easy to spot, yet this one went deliberately through to the keeper.

Bad thinking is a kind of stubbornness, and when Judges refuse to tailor their beliefs to the evidence, it’s “epistemic stubbornness” (that is, relating to the validity of knowledge) – for example, claiming a close bond, denying schizophrenia, determining testamentory capacity or any other self-serving assertions.

This sort of bad thinking is different to stupidity or ignorance, but is instead a sort of rampant confirmation bias, where countervailing evidence is ignored or simply disbelieved, and any information or assertions that help their case is elliptically, bombastically propounded.

Manitoba’s entire Justice System appears to disgrace itself at every turn.

The sheer scale of the case’s wrongs defies the medium of language.

I have trouble believing that Parliamentarians have the public interest in mind when they turn blind eyes to such obvious judicial impieties.

What happens when legal fictions underly most of both court’s elliptical findings? As a cartoonist quipped:

Donald Trump and his lawyer are appearing before a judge.

“Your Honor, in an effort to insure a fair trial, we move for a change of venue to the defendant’s (court’s) imagination.”

History is distorted, but it is, like Trump himself, history unfolding the second, third, and fourth time as farce, so that its primary tragedy is buried under layers of absurdity.

One would expect judges to pride themselves in rigorous fact checking, but again we are often grievously disappointed.

All four judges merely presume facts that they are meant to prove. They then defiantly distorted the evidence to what they wanted to find, with a number of ipsa dīxit assertions that lacked even a shred of evidence.

There can be no bench of Appeals judges proclaiming unthinkingly, unverified determinations, so smug, so incompetent, so resolutely incurious, and so self-satisfied, appointed to the seat of small time, temporal power.

It remains my considered opinion, the Appeals court were professionally negligent, in being wilfully blind to the facts of the case.

Both courts appeared overzealously and subjectively supportive of the respondents. All judges exhibited partisan bias and preferential treatment. They randomly assigned ulterior motivations to the party advocating equitable distribution of assets and attributed worthy motives to a single beneficiary who failed to demonstrate any valid evidence of desert.

Unfounded determinations were apparently made consciously, with reckless disregard for the truth, breaching the family’s covenant of trust in judicial fairness, giving rise to claims of intentional and negligent judicial misrepresentation.

Most determinations are based on stereotypical bias analyses, which I believe indicate unsophisticated corruption, in a blatant attempt to distort material evidence before the court.

A medical report appears deliberately misconstrued. Conflicted evidence was never tested, merely elliptically propounded.

But in today’s evidence free thinking, this is all we are expected to expect.

There appears a kind of contempt in Coram: Alan D. Maclnnes’, serial untruths: pompous posturing, after all, implies disdain for its audience.

Behind the bravado of the Appeals Court judges, we sense the brunt of pure unbridled entitlement, and behind it an unspoken but immovable credo: we will judge as we wish on the evidence. We make no concessions, let alone apologies, to you or anyone else.

This professional condescension of negligence had a profound negative impact on a large family’s confidence and trust in Manitoba’s court system. Further it erodes public confidence in our Justice System. Yet all culprits have total immunity for gross judicial incompetence.

When and how did evidence simply become immaterial and negated? Why do unfounded judgments based on a fallacies, built on obvious lies, get through an appeals process?

Don’t blame Trump; he had many predecessors.

When two courts become each other’s sole other: they affirm, feed back and amplify their own self-justifying version of events; the private worldview, passed back and forth, becomes all-encompassing. Eventually, they lose the capacity to test it against a more general reality.

When courts fail to test or validate conflicting assertions, a long-accepted test to confirm evidence is being “tinkered with” in favour of judicial arbitrary privilege. That accepted test, involves demonstrating reality and having the community accept obvious reality.

Inexplicably failing to meet reality, by any reasonable measure, detracts from its authority and power.

There is a certain kind of ubiquity in Manitoba’s Judiciary. Instead of evidentiary consistency, just bluster and unyielding demands for acceptance of baseless judgements.

Considering her cases, it should be abundantly evident that Justice Shawn Greenberg needs to be investigated for possible impeachment.

More importantly the Appeals judges who sign off on dodgy judgements need to face deterrent consequences. This case is emblematic of so much injustice.

It’s nearly impossible to imagine this level of audacity.

Greenberg appears to act with malice, or with deliberate heightened disregard for the truth, ignoring the burden of proof in favor of whimsical, subjective inferential determinations. This results in real victims (Jason Hyra) of a dysfunctional justice system. Injustice is always more expensive than justice.

There but for fortune go you or I.

In our case, it remains my considered contention that Greenberg knowingly fabricated false evidence regarding our well documented family narratives, deliberately misconstrued material evidence before the court and recklessly disregarded information showing that the benefitting party’s highly questionable claims were simply not true. This could be considered egregious fraud. It remains my considered contention that this fraud perpetuated by the respondent’s with the complicity of the court is overwhelming.

These kinds of travesties of justice are typical when you expect judges, with little relevant skill, knowledge and expertise, to capably adjudicate on matters beyond their competence.

Like other rehearsed, risible lies peddled by the respondents, what’s striking, but not unique, about the obvious spurious claims is the court’s audacity; it’s lazy and intellectually unserious, easily disproved with a simple search of readily available material evidence freely available to the courts.

By any objective measure, the most serious professional dereliction of duty, is that conflicting evidence was not tested, instead arbitrarily adjudicated. If a doctor acted that cavalierly, they would lose their licence.

Judges enjoy the divine right of immunity.

Those genuinely concerned with the truth and addressing institutional integrity, are acutely aware of how vital evidentiary management is to public respect and trust, and to the reputation of the entire Judicial System.

Broken judicial systems result in the law of the jungle, also known as vigilantism.

Where judges fail to meet required standards, they need to be held accountable. It relies on the courts having a moral compass to spot charlatans. Manitoba courts appear to fail, fail, and fail, every test.

It takes a certain kind of cognitive dissonance to square Parliament’s lack of ambition in fulfilling its obligations to the Canadian people. They could be accused of displaying a cavalier attitude towards their ethical and legal obligations as a guardians of our legal system. This is most likely a breach of statute.

I have long advocated for a complete overhaul of the appeals process @: https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/Justice/law-reform.html

I would suggest Parliament start with investigating the apparent malpractice shown by Justice Shawn D. Greenberg, the three Court of Appeal Justices: Coram: Alan D. Maclnnes, Mr. Justice Marc M . Monnin and Mr. Justice William J. Burnett and then move on to the McLeod Estate v. Cole case below.

The lack of due diligence demonstrated by Norman Sabourin indicates as always, it is the officials at the top of the food chain who are the most culpable for tolerating incipient corruption in their ranks.

In my view, much of the forensic evidence before the Greenberg court was purposely misconceived, based on a deliberately flawed understanding of documented family dynamics. Ultimately, and simply, there is no forensic support for five of the contentions the Appeals Court elliptically proclaims.

My main allegation levelled at Justice Greenberg, and at the fact befuddled Appeal Court judges who reviewed the sham six day case, is that they doctored the facts, having no curiosity in wanting to understand complexity of the family dynamics involved or reflect reality. Their formulated findings and dodgy determinations have little credibility with those familiar with reality.

“We’ve made up our minds, don’t confound us with the facts.”

Both courts enjoyed splendid isolation from the facts or realities available to them in documented primary source evidence. Exhibit one, was totally ignored. A taped interview was of no interest to blind justices. Conflicting evidence was simply arbitrarily determined.

Both courts were out of their “intellectual depth” - utterly unhinged.

Despite evidence to the contrary, determinedly ignorant appeal judges, merely doubled down, blusteringly declaiming five unfounded determinations. Both courts final determinations were rife with false, reckless, and untested assertions.

There is no judicial merit in the Appeals Court’s asserting certainty, against all evidence to the contrary, to an audience fully aware of the facts. It fails to convince. Justice was neither served nor seen to be served.

Thrice armed is someone who knows what a humbug is. ( T. S. Eliot )

Sabotaging your own credibility places the whole Appeals system into disrepute.

Jason Tan of Canadian Lawyer exposed a similar case IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF MANITOBA – delivered 20/09/22 Coram: Mr. Justice Christopher J. Mainella, Madam Justice Jennifer A. Pfuetzner, Madam Justice Lori T. Spivak, managed to find enough rationalizations to support their colleagues, despite acknowledging errors were made.

As the Appeal court loftily explains,

the trial judge was entitled to prefer the evidence of the witnesses that he did and he made no palpable and overriding errors of fact. While he misapplied the doctrine of suspicious circumstances, this legal error had no effect on the outcome. As a result, I would dismiss the appeal.

So judges have carte blanche in believing whoever has the more persuasive narrative; deftly evading establishing the facts - issues of selling below market value or determining cognitive capacity to agree to the bargain.

When a court doesn’t entirely do justice to its powerful source material, you know medieval privilege is alive and kicking in Manitoba’s antiquated legal industry. Missing is any sense of accuracy, justice or fair play.

I contend both courts were wilfully myopic as to the truth or falsity of their premises. Judges need to establish all the facts before adequately determining verdicts. I do not believe this was the case in both Appeals.

The lines between reality and fantasy, in both court cases are perilously thin.

In both cases, the Appeal judges cling to judges’ perogatives to prefer oral evidence of one side over the other, regardless of hard reality.

Do Judge demonstrate any in-depth knowledge of testamentary capacity? Are Manitoba’s judges seriously qualified to determine testamentary capacity (sui juris)?

Slow clap for the Canadian justice system for yet another demonstration of how wildly incapable it is of dealing rationally and equitably with mentality capacity.

Manitoba’s Mental Health Act needs rigorous enforcement.

If Judges value their independence so much, how can you justify an Appeals Court aligning itself so uncritically with unfounded court case findings?

The Appeals Court’s unfounded proclamaitons are indefensible and “Alice in Wonderland nonsense”.

The kind of court cases that take your expectations, your views of reality; upends them, and then mutilates them so completely, you can’t help but be awed by how perceptions can manipulated so easily.

The kind of cases that make you crave authenticity, integrity, honour.

Greenberg managed to trash so many judiciary expectations that it’s a shock to discover there’s a legal norm she actually thinks worth protecting. The subsequent degradation of any inclination to serve the public, indicates a judge so used to untrammelled power, so immune to common decency, so forgetful of probity, so imbued with a sense of gross entitlement, that cries out for robust parliamentary intervention.

The question is why? What drives such motives? What makes judges bend, twist, distort, manipulate and rig judgements? For some few, it is merely because they can. It gives them a fleeting power surge, but ultimately fatal to their respect in society.

The Justice Shawn Greenberg scandal is just another example of the fundamental tension within government about whether judges can be trusted to oversee each other. Ultimately it remains the responsibility of our representatives. Despite appeals and many complaints lodged, no legitimate, meaningful action was taken to curb her excesses.

Considering the above three cases, it should be abundantly evident that Justice Shawn Greenberg needs to be investigated for possible impeachment. More importantly the Appeals judges too, who sign off on dodgy judgements need to face deterrent consequences - repaying remunerations on all dud unsubstantial approvals.

Greenberg appears to act with malice, and with deliberate heightened disregard for the truth, ignoring the burden of proof in favor of subjective inferential determinations.

In our case, it remains my considered contention that Greenberg knowingly fabricated false evidence regarding our well documented family narratives, deliberately misconstrued material evidence before the court and recklessly disregarded information showing that the benefitting party’s claims were not true.

The most serious offence is that conflicting evidence was not tested, instead arbitrarily adjudicated.

Those genuinely concerned with the truth and addressing institutional integrity, are acutely aware of how vital evidentiary management is to trust, and to the reputation of the entire Judicial System. When the court’s interpretations fail to realistically reflect the material evidence, we know justice is not being served, eroding public confidence.

Honesty is a word that, when thrown at judges, unhelpfully describes both a baseline and a vaguer horizon, a legal minimum and an ethical summum. The courts need to reflect on whether they are even attempting to honour the community they are meant to be serving.

Broken judicial systems result in the law of the jungle or vigilantism.

All professions learn to protect their fellow members as Erik Pindera of the WFP reports:

A Winnipeg doctor has alleged he was fired by the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority after he reported another doctor’s misdiagnosis he claims led to a patient’s death.

Doc Daneeka of Catch-22 claims:

“All they ever told me was to uphold the ethics of my profession and never give testimony against another physician”.

And we naively trust judges to oversee each other.

The Westminster system, on which Canada’s democracy is based, is premised on transparency, accountability and adherence to conventions. Those conventions are enforced by their usage and eroded by their disregard. This means they cannot simply be set aside without serious and detrimental effects on the way we are governed.

Do we instead need independent non-legal experts to ensure the public interest is observed?

The basic imperatives of due process are the full discovery of facts, verification of assertions by rigorous testing, the honest appraisal of founded evidence and determinations reflecting actual reality.

Since public confidence in judges depends upon acceptance of their impartiality as the arbiters of disputes, Justice Greenberg appears to have placed Manitoba’s entire self-sustaining judiciary into disrepute.

Gerard Brennan, former chief Justice of Australia is clear on this matter.

Misconduct in mishandling evidence materially undermines public respect, impairing the institutional integrity of the relevant court.

Axiomatically, the legitimacy of the exercise of judicial power depends on its officers being above criticism… The power and the prerogative of a court to perform this function rest upon the respect accorded to its judgments. The citizen’s respect for judgments depends in turn upon the issuing court’s absolute probity. Judicial integrity is a state interest of the highest order.

Appearance, no less than the reality, of independence is essential. The judiciary, … has public confidence as its necessary but sufficient power base. It has not got, nor does it need, the power of the purse or the power of the sword to make the rule of law effective, provided the people whom we serve have confidence in the exercise of the power of judgment. Sir Gerard Brennan, ‘Judicial Independence’ (Speech, Australian Judicial Conference, 2 November 1996)

Greenberg, with the ignominious distinction of manipulating evidence to obstruct justice, could easily be charged with allegedly deliberately forming misleading views, ignoring concrete facts, asserting baseless determinations, contrary to obvious establishable facts that sided with the applicants. The courts didn’t want facts and truth; they just wanted to have their biases confirmed. This suggests a problematic proximity between the courts and the respondents. The lack of veracious, truthful, accurate, or honest assessments is glaringly demonstrable. As Nietzsche observed, interpretation is more often the exercise of power over reality.

As the settlement with Fox News was made public, Dominion claimed vindication of its reputation, declaring that “truth matters,” and that “for our democracy to endure another 250 years … we must share a commitment to facts.”

Since public confidence in judges depends upon acceptance of their impartiality as the arbiters of disputes, Justice Greenberg appears to have placed Manitoba’s entire judiciary into disrepute.

I base my assessments on various cases involving Justice Greenberg scoring an evidentiary manipulation trifecta by:

1. Utterly, intentionally misconstruing most of the evidence the Hoffman/Heinrichs challenge of a will in 2012.

2. In the Jason Hyra cases of 2008 and 2016, Justice Greenberg found more ways to abase herself and degrade Manitoba’s Justice system. Jason’s claims share an eerie similarity to the former one. A judge should seek to advance the public interest when taking decisions in an official capacity. Her conclusions don’t seem consistent with a disinterested trier of facts. Similarly patterned manipulated evidence tend to validate each other’s claims.

The case suggests a symbiotic relationship between Manitoba Court of King’s Bench and a less than competent Winnipeg Police Force.

It again simply beggars all belief that the same judge tries both Hyra cases.

3. Denying Frank Ostrowski filing a lawsuit seeking $16 million in damages and a declaration that a miscarriage of justice occurred after two important pieces of evidence were not disclosed at his 1987 trial.

The wrongful conviction suit named several lawyers involved in Ostrowski’s original conviction, including the senior federal Crown attorney at time, several members of the Winnipeg Police Service and the attorney general of Canada as defendants. Ostrowski now sues lawyers after alleged compensation bungle. What chance in an entrenched cabalistic bubble?

This is not even a sophisticated scam relying on the techniques of circus magicians and swindlers. Reputable judges are capable of using a genuine process to discern real evidence from the fake. Her tactics simply don’t bear scrutiny.

It is one thing to abuse the “perks of the job”. It is another thing to be avowedly corrupt.

Broadly defined, corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for any ulterior reason.

Clearly, we have a herd mentality culture in Manitoba’s legal cartel that over time has become, in many instances, entrenched, self-serving and working against the common good.

Lawyers are too afraid to speak up against normalised bad behaviour, because they, like Ian Histed, could be targeted for covert sanctions.

Journalists articulate the concerns of many about how and why such a departure from the norms of Westminster parliamentary government occurred, but we the people must protest inaction.

But despite the murky water, our Justice system is at times mired in, it should bring us comfort that in Canada we can have these sorts of transparent discussions at all. One only needs to turn to America to witness the grim alternative.

The irony is that while the judiciary play their bizarre legal games, the people of Manitoba suffer declining trust. Lacking any accountability, nothing warped, seems absurd anymore in this strange, distorted, self-serving legal world of logic-chopped arguments.

Does Canada run a third world country’s Justice System?

In a world rife with misinformation and disinformation, we rely on our court system to be capable of honestly differentiating between reality and self – serving falsehoods. Failing to spot fake wills, appears to display naivety. Any deviation raises reasonable apprehension of bias resulting in a miscarriage of justice.

It is essential that the legal system takes a considered approach and places more reliance on documentary evidence, the claims of senior members of the family, and the expertise of psychiatrists.

In something of a credibility stretch, the Manitoba’s system appears to excel in audaciously flouting all expectations of fair and honest arbitration. Has it become modus operandis for the whole Justice system?

How did they qualify to become final determiners of conflict?

We know where this ends up by simply looking to America. Guns don’t kill people; disillusioned citizens, with unresolved grievances, turning to vigilante justice do. Recent violence directed at American Judges, including Judge Brett Kavanagh, are further symptoms of a degraded Justice System, no longer respected.

In Canada, public abuse of officials and politicians is also on the rise.

All professions harbor individuals of varying degrees of incompetence for different reasons. It is in the long term interest of all professions to weed out their worst offenders. Posturing Judges are a danger – cause injury, not only to the public, but by undermining the faith, confidence and authority of the entire institution. The protection of a few erring Judges is not more important than maintaining the public confidence of the entire institution.

Just a few rogue Judges give the rest a bad name.

British and American Judges too appear to be staging judicial coup de’ tats.

To see how Australian Judges are treated see:

https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/Justice/australian-judges.html

Another late entry: The Council of Canadians, has been working for decades for indigenous rights and claims to have 150,000 donating members.

Why does Canada, a first world country, need to rely on self funding organisations to advocate for Justice? It appears our taxes are funding a dysfunctional system.

I thought Justice was the responsibility of government. Maybe I am a bit naive. The Westminster system of government promises accountability through transparent processes. This is quite extraordinary.

Defence lawyers’ remit is to make sure their clients get a fair trial - not to get the guilty off. Each miscarriage of Justice further blights the entire system. Bloated overfed lawyers represent a parasitic system merely interested in furthering unscrupulous careers.

It remains a national disgrace for a self funded organisation, Innocence Canada, to have up to one hundred miscarriages of Justice on its books. It further remains an indictment of the Canadian Judicial Council’s failure of duty. Why is the CJC still being funded? That money would be better spent on an organisation with the will and competence to work toward Justice.

If the judiciary wants to have a meaningful positive impact on the lives of Canadians, it needs to abandon its peremptory assumptions, its arbitrary procedures, its summary conclusions and claims of bulwark, invincible, infallible power and insist Judges deal with facts that reflect reality and conscientiously committed to that hoary trope: Justice not only being done, but seen to be done.

Judges need to discharge their duty to the community by fair and honourable means.

Power constructs hijack how we perceive reality by creating official or master narratives to manipulate and oppress the masses. The role of citizens is to penetrate the established version of events and tell unpalatable truths that expose establishment propaganda, or ‘official drivel’. (The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism

Transparency International has again used this year’s global index to highlight the need for countries to improve checks and balances through strong integrity institutions and to uphold people’s rights to hold those in power to account.  It claims Australia , Canada and the United States have significantly declined standards due a casualty of complacency. Corruption enables human rights abuses, setting off a vicious cycle. As these rights and freedoms erode and democracy declines, authoritarianism takes its place, contributing to even higher levels of corruption. January 2022 Report

The January 2023 Report indicates a further steep decline in Canada’s ratings.

Improvements in Canada’s standings can only come from responsible Canadian citizens, vexed by the spectacle of our freedoms under threat. We need to repudiatie our politicians’ abnegation of their responsibility to oversee the judiciary properly. To demand judicial restraint and accountability is not disrespectful; merely fulfilling our sovereign duties as citizens.

The recent cataclysmical protests in Ottawa, and across Canada could be just another indicator of people losing faith, confidence and trust in the social legitimacy and trust of public institutions — including courts, fuelled by a culture of impunity and unaccountability due to self-regulation. Overseas viewers were treated to an image of a huge Rig towering over Canada’s Supreme Court; both require restraining.

For the prosecution to charge Dana-Lee Melfi, popularly known as “Peace Man” of the Ottawa freedom convoy with “obstructing Justice”, also beggars all belief. Have our authorities no sense of irony?

Faith in the political process to deliver to the will of the people sits at a level roughly commensurate with our trust in churches. And not without reason. These powerful medieval institutions have given us no reason to believe that they are acting in anything but self or mutual interest, and it is no wonder at all that many believe that social media’s foremost conspiracy idiots are more reliable than our politicians or judges, who ignore the needs of voters.

Trudeau promises to hold Institutions of Government to account, however his actions are directed at the symptoms rather than the root causes of the demonstrations. Rather than targetting the Big Rigs, he singles out the many ordinary citizens who contribute hard earned dollars to legitimate protests. 60% of the money came from ordinary Canadians.

Most successful protests are unlawful; but that doesn’t mean they are not legitimate. The mass Chicago protests in 1968 were refused permits, so unlawful, but were eventually successful. Most Black Lives Matter protests fail to be granted permits, yet proceed to raise our awareness of this gross injustice.

For More: https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/case-studies/protesting.html

Judges need to take their power and responsibility seriously following clear guidelines of what is appropriate and inappropriate in the evaluation of evidence. Good judges’ reputations are tarnished by tolerating wayward ones.

Brazenness and ruthlessness pay off, or, as Leon Trotsky put it, “There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.”

Judges in high positions of power display a wanton disregard for established rules and norms that the old Bolshevik would have admired.

Judicial reform will only occur with a concerted effort from many quarters and it is essential that those in the know with the ability to articulate the key issues expose the hidden facts.

Despite attending the Summit for Democracy, politicians and officials don’t seem to answer to us, the citizens; often failing to implement basic measures to enforce their own laws, thus demonstrating their contempt for us and the law. Negligent networks of inaction simply rely on disenfranchised populations to normalise the fact that “nothing can be done”, so it’s back to business as usual.

Many years ago Thucydides warned democracy collapses into:

“a state of unprecedented lawlessness, when no fear of god or law of man has a restraining influence on authorities.”

Abraham Lincoln too feared:

“if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, by indifferent authorities, the alienation of their citizen’s affections from the Government is the natural consequence.”

To fortify against this, Lincoln proposed that “reverence” to the laws be taught in every classroom, preached in every church, proclaimed In every legislative hall.

The basic question in each Democracy concerns the question of who has the final say. Due to the ineptitude of Border guards, Australian Courts decided Djokovic could stay, the government, consulting polls, said no, and finally the Court had to agree. At least politicians have to be re-elected. What would have happened in Canada or America? Who has the supremacy?

All three tiers of government are there to serve the people of Canada and to protect us from the tyranny of the other. In order of power they initially were, legislature, executive and judicial. Has this become inverted? Can we make progress on a problem when so few seem to care?

Modern political parties, now hollowed out and with low membership numbers, have become host to small-time factional powerbrokers devoted to their own interests and not those of the electorate. And the main stream media appears complicit in this split between politics and democracy.

The Canadian Judicial Council #

The Canadian Judicial Council was founded by Pierre Trudeau in 1971, however it now claims the privilege to regulate itself beyond the reach of Parliament. It is charged by the Canadian people with the mandate to:

“promote efficiency, uniformity, and accountability, and to improve quality of judicial service in the superior courts of Canada”. The Council is also mandated to review “any complaint or allegation” against a superior court judge and respond to all complainants.”

Why doesn’t Parliament simply enforce this clear direction?

The non-profit Innocence Canada has 10 cases in front of federal officials awaiting decisions, and 90 more in the works, some of whom have been waiting for 15 years.

“That’s not justice; that’s just wrong. They’re being held hostage by the Canadian justice system,” said the late David Milgaard, the Winnipeg man who served 23 years in prison for a 1969 murder in Saskatoon he didn’t commit.

That should be enough evidence to indicate the CJC has been utterly ineffective in fulfilling its mandate to provide Justice due to its wanton disregard for the regulatory process. It represents a complete failure in regulatory governance of maintaining acceptable standards of quality judicial services. It has been captured and instead of a public guard dog, acts like a lap dog for judges.

To be fair, recent indications reveal a bit more moral rigour in discipinling wayward judges, but only focussing on their private lives, not their actual performance on the bench. This is totally untenable for any vibrant democracy.

Perhaps because the government appears to duplicate the process the CJC should be serving. The Independent Miscarriages of Justice Commission, promised by Justin Trudeau in 2019, is threatening specific action, but facing budgetary restraints.

According to Dylan Robertson, advocates have complained the process is taking too long, with dozens in prison who have seen no movement on their requests for a review since the Liberals made that promise.

The report calls for an agency that has teeth to sanction lawyers and others found to have been negligent in their duties resulting in someone being wrongfully sent to jail.

However, we are told the proposals are less feasible because they cost too much,”.

Ditching the proposals was dressed up as reinforcing judicial independence when the commission’s other recommendations – all rejected with indecent haste and apparently little thought by the federal government – effectively white anting them.

There are two simply solutions. Defund the CJC, and save a motza and fine any Judge and/or lawyer, the proportion of pay they wrongfully earned in perverting the course of Justice.

Budgetary problem solved!

The secondary benefit would be to focus Judge’s attention on real evidence acting as a specific deterrent to deliberate subjective and arbitrary decision making, leading to purposeful inferential error.

But surely, we can all agree that it is not up to the CJC to run protection for judges, or certain judges. Not while they are being funded by taxpayers. If the CJC prefers darkness over light, by ignoring complaints it doesn’t approve of, its credibility as a serious oversight body will suffer a well-deserved hit. Information is power; therefore the denial of information can be seen as an abuse of power.

The CJC should perform an important role, ergo it should hold Judges and courts to account. Alas, judges can be a precious prickly lot; protective of their liberal discretionary privilege. Bias, perceptions of bias, judges veering from orthodox legal method, judges making law – these are all matters of public importance. It’s not easy taking back power once ceded.

Beverley McLachlin was in charge of the CJC during this sorry time. Under the leadership of McLachlin, truth and justice became subsumed by self-regard. While she acknowledged the pain caused to people, by the legal industry, she failed to grasp the root cause - disengenuous Judges.

McLachlin recently spoke out against the Ottawa protesters in what used to be Canada’s most reputable broadsheet. The fact that she would write, and they would publish such a swashbuckling, partisan opinion piece, generally smearing all protestors, puts at risk any fair trial.

Is it true that Beverley McLachlin, is presently serving the CCP as a Court of Appeals judge in Hong Kong, tacitly legitimising Xi Jinping’s crushing of democracy?

More: https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/case-studies/beverley-mcLachlin.html

Canadian courts appear to run the country in key areas because they can. And parliaments are expected to dance to their tune. This is not how the founding principles of the CJC envisaged it. Neither does the Westminster System.

Justice and Democracy are co-dependent. Institutions commissioned by us, need to fulfil their primary function.

Bernard v. Canada #

The Federal Court decision in Bernard v. Canada (Attorney General), 2021 FC #1487, should send shivers up any self-respecting citizen’s spine when it asserts:

“Complaints which do not involve a judge’s misconduct do not warrant consideration by the CJC”, thus condoning judges’ failure to deal properly with evidence.

In plain simple language, a judge can make any unreasonable decision their whim or fancy takes them and their position is totally safe. Evidence is irrelevant.

The public interest is not served by the misuse of evidence. This is high nonsence. As shown above, Gerard Brennan, former chief Justice of Australia is clear on this matter. - How a court deals with evidence is the single most important factor in its credibility. We would not tolerate a doctor, scientist, or any other occupant of high office deal so cavalierly with evidence. Why Judges?

The tragedy of modern jurisdiction, once a pinnacle of exemplary morality, and implicit trust, is wantonly exposed in the pattern of Greenberg’s decision making. The high ideals professed by the judicial code of ethics are forfeit, ultimately due to the greatest corruptive force in our society: abused privileged prerogative power.

Further its states:

The Federal Court upheld the council’s decision, observing that it is consistent with prior jurisprudence involving allegations of judges’ failure to deal properly with evidence.

This appears an admission of guilt; senior judges appear to acknowledge the failure of the system and yet condone it.

Misconduct in mishandling evidence materially undermines public respect, impairing the institutional integrity of the relevant court.

Judicial integrity is, in consequence, a state interest of the highest order.

Failures to exercise a reasonable degree of care and diligence in discovering and evaluing evidence and in discretionary judgement (garbage in, garbage out), are no longer the responsibility of the body we commissioned to oversee Judges. So Judges can be profoundly wrong; demonstrate absolute contempt for due process, flawed in almost every possible way and the CJC bears no responsibility in maintaining Judicial standards?

There is just no excuse for that level of unchecked privilege.

When Aeschylus wrote the last play of his trilogy, The Oresteia, he posited the idea of reason replacing the blind Furies. Perhaps contemporary Judges prefer blindfolds while playing, pin the tail on a donkey

However, in courts where establishing the facts is no longer the accepted currency, it is futile to make logical arguments. Courts questioning fundamental tenets of due process and procedural fairness, or just ignoring reality, means we are living in a post-fact world, where might becomes right.

The court also emphasized that the CJC’s decision is owed deference because “the CJC has the expertise to distinguish between matters that constitute judicial decision-making, for which recourse is available only before the courts, and matters that threaten the integrity of the judiciary as a whole.”

Who decided this? Did the Federal Court exceed its authority? Isn’t this a matter for Parliament to decide? Isn’t this a betrayal of its founding principles?

This appears to demand an unreasonable, unearned degree of trust.

With all due respect and as much deference as I can muster, in a democracy, no one is “owed deference” - it has to be earned.

Like all institutions with built-in mechanisms of self-protection, the CJC’s top priority appears preserving it’s own image, not the well-being of the people who’ve been traumatised on their watch. Pursuit of the truth in the public eye is vital.

Since 2014, I have feared a judicial coup d’état. It appears to have arrived; not as noticeable as Myanmar’s military one, but perhaps more insidious. Who can rein in the untrammelled power of the judiciary?

So now it is not an indictable transgression for judges to deal improperly with evidence? Humpty Dumpty, capricious, arbitrary decision making is condoned?

Opinions now count as much as evidence. Material evidence competes with quasi narratives for acceptance, justified by post modern appeals to the refusal of authority. The courts no longer appear to understand false equivalences; giving equal time and weight to self serving fabrications and distortions. The distinction between fact and fiction – reality of experience – and the distinction between right and wrong, true and false, no longer exist? Evidence is irrelevant.

I think you will find the community has higher expectations.

Call it effrontery, audacity, brazen chutzpah – whatever - some people in high positions prize their soloistic privilege above all else, often abusing their limited power by flouting all conventions of getting to the truth.

What else are the courts for, if not to scientifically or forensically base decisions on all available verifiable evidence? Conflicting assertions also need to be tested.

This is elementary, dear Watson!

If the CJC abrogates its responsibility, why do we still fund them? The CJC has long since forfeited the benefit of the doubt. Agencies try to flaunt their impunity all the time, and their excuses are frequently flimsy.

All other professions from the late sixities have come to the realisation that respect has to be earned; it cannot be commanded. I have followed the CJC for most of its fifty years and would love to be shown some evidence of its “expertise”. Has a single Judge ever lost all their entitlements? No institution is perfect. Everyone needs oversight by independent outsiders. How can you defend the scandalous investigations of Justice Lori Douglass, Justice Graeme Mitchell, Justice Vic Toews and many others?

In Australia, errant Judges have frequently had to face Parliamentary Inquiries. Some have lost their positions and at least three ended up in the slammer.

Denial of human rights continues to happen in most democracies, including Canada’s. While we should respect our institutions, when they breach our trust by defying the Statutes of Parliament, obsequious deference is no longer an option.

Ethical Principles #

While the Ethical Principles for Judges, (2021) recognised evolving issues faced by Judges and made some significant laudatory reforms, it appears totally self-regulating. Where were the people’s representatives?

The most praise worthy, far reaching reform is in Case Management, where recognition is given to ancillary means of conflict resolution such as settlement conferences and judicial mediation. This is an encouraging radical shift, allowing outside professionals long overdue contributions - a promising initial breach of an adversarial prerogative mindset. The adversarial system is long past its use by date.

Societies with effective conflict resolution, sound decision making, and harmonious equitable economic redistribution develop better social conditions for all.

There are two disappointing themes, first Public engagement - Martel Popescul, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan:

“Judges are engaging with the wider public to inform, to educate the public about the role of the judiciary and maintaining the rule of law, If people are more informed, they can better understand the system and better appreciate the system within which we work.”

The same can be said about Judges, if they made themselves reliably informed, they wouldn’t make dud decisions. Too many rogue Judges also fail to maintain the rule of law.

Unfortunately the towering condescension undermines the salutary intent. It continues the centuries old infantilisation of the public. Since the 1890’s universal education equips many lay people with a greater appreciation of true judgment in all areas of life.

Honest Judges concede that they often get verdicts spectacularly wrong and are also prone to serious misjudgements. You can guess who pays for their folly.

Some Judges prize their privilege above all else, often abusing their limited power by flouting the law of the land. No, it’s never classy. Yes, it’s always an abuse of the power of office. And perpetrators wonder why we respect them less.

Self - serving Institutions established to safeguard the general welfare often give way to vested interests, committed to perpetuating rather than reforming existing failures of the system.

Once upon a time, some thirty years ago, when Canada was still a fully fledged democracy, under the Westminster System, the Honourable Brian Dickson saw it differently.

Compare the two sets of principles, the ones above and this one, articulated by the late Chief Justice, Brian Dickson:

“The Supreme Court is not a self-created body with original powers; it is not a benevolent autocrat with full powers to act as it should think fit; the court is an institution organized by the people through their representatives for the purpose of giving to those who apply to it their rights according to law, the law not being made by the Court but laid down for it by authority; the court has no right to give a decision in accord with its own views of equity and good conscience, as distinct from the rules laid down for it. The Court has no right to take power unto itself which is not conferred by the people.” Scott v. Scott-Ontario Court of Appeal 1DLR53, 64OLR422

Note the stark contrast in attitude reflected by the tone. Dickson’s appears a self assured sense of limitation, while the contemporary one reveals a threatened challenge to its authority. Where is the voice of the people? Have our parliamentarians abdicated their responsibilities?

The other area that needs a bit of stick is:

Professional development:

There is an increased awareness of the need for, and an ethical obligation on judges “to be trained and educated, and to ensure they’re educating themselves.”

What an understatement! That should be a given! Any Judge failing that test should immediately be suspended until they proved themselves capable, competent and qualified to hold such a privileged position of making final determinations. All Judges could do with a course of at least six months before sitting in judgment. Judges knowing something about the history and literature of Justice would be a good start. Is evidence irrelevant?

See More @: https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/Justice/justice-and-literature.html

https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/Justice/justice-and-history.html

There are many indicators of our declining democracy; abadoning the gold standard of the Westminster System, evident from the early 1990’s, is merely one. Responsible government appears to have vanished from view. Judges abusing their discretionary privileges is even more dangerous, including the CJC’s louche approach to Judicial oversight.

Our parliamentarians appear to have vacated the field faster than the Afghan Army fleeing the Taliban.

For some years the Canadian Judicial Council has hubristically breached a clear mandated direction to comply with a statutory requirement of its complaint’s process:

“The Executive Director must inform the complainant by letter when a matter is dismissed or concluded by the Chairperson, and indicate the basis on which it was dismissed or concluded”.

As Cass R. Sunstein argues, that when the language of statutes enacted by Congress is ambiguous, federal agencies are entitled to interpret it as they see fit, as long as their interpretations are not unreasonable.

What does it take for a judge to be conclusively repudiated by the CJC?

Self-awareness in short supply when Judges call for law and order while defying Parliament’s statutory mandates with utter audacity.

In the above case, the Canadian Parliament’s statute is clear, explicit and unequivocal.

Justice Shawn Greenberg: #

Despite providing the CJC detailed, definitive and damaging concerns regarding a perceived perversion of justice in contesting a Will, after some 7 years, the only acknowledgement I received was:

Private and Confidential correspondence addressed to the Judge concerned:

Thank-you very much for your letters concerning complaints made by Mr. Charles Klassen.

I enclose for your information a copy of the letter I have today sent to Mr. Klassen closing the Council’s file on this matter.

Signed

Yours sincerely, Norman Sabourin Executive Director and Senior General Council ……

That was it! There was no copy of the enclosed letter for me.

If it was “private and confidential”, to the judge, why on earth, was it sent to me?

Despite many appeals to all levels of authority for some more information - nothing! This persistent and long-standing failure to respond, aggravates me.

I do have every right to know how Justice Greenberg could possibly justify the unjustifiable reasons for her deliberately inaccurate representations and unfounded determinations. Justice Greenberg heard just what she wanted to hear and saw only what she wanted to see. Greenberg’s determinations were distinctly characterised by inferential subjectivity in direct contradiction to primary material evidence available to the court.

A certain indifference to truth have always been the hallmarks of fraudulent mountebanks.

Her determinations were wrong at their core, and the Appeals Court simply doubled down on the errors without due scrutiny.

The real culprits are the three Appeal Court Judges whose judicial swagger fails to match reality. Their short, flippant dalliance and serial incompetence with evidence has serious consequences in undermining public trust.

When three superior judges make pompous, but baselss determinations of something they know nothing about, to an audience intimately aware of the details, we have a crediblity problem. It smacks more of contumely than legitimate authority.

How did they defend the indefensible; failing to substanstiate any of their determinatins?

Getting five critical premises wrong, fails to impress anybody. All four judges were clearly on a bad trip of delusional disconnections from reality, through their range of non-justifications.

All Greenberg’s ambit claims need to be interrogated.

The failure of the Supreme Court to properly investigate and respond to the first filed complaint increased the risk of recidivism by Judge Greenberg.

In all three cases; Heinrichs v. Hoffman, Jason Hyra and Frank Ostrowski , Justice Greenberg appears to chronic arbitrary judgments. Her Judicial epistemic stubbornness, appears intentional, due to deliberately choosing to form unfounded views, or drawing adverse inferences, ignoring contrary evidence.

That gullible courts are prepared to be sucked in by fanciful assertions, packed to the brim with falsehoods and obvious lies, is a sad indictment on our legal system.

Fact verification procedures should immediately be undertaken to ensure accuracy.

A healthy democracy relies on Judges who can tell truth from lies, and know why it matters. That there is a marketplace for lies does not mean that the courts should value them.

There were truth-tellers throughout Roman history, but as the centuries wore on, the telling of official lies became a recognized art form.

In my opinion, the entire judgments are a contrived, calculated, co-ordinated con.

Via uncanny conjuring tricks both courts managed to subvert their own credibility.

Paying $60,000 for the Appeals Court’s vacuous proclamations was not the best investment the family ever made.

The CJC’s dubious decision, refusing to respond to my submission, necessarily raises a question as to whether other factors might have played a role in that decision. It also makes you wonder about those running the joint.

Given the CJC’s decision to hide my submission from public view, we are entitled to wonder whether the law oversight body has succumbed to a now familiar form of institutionalised capture and silencing. Do we need parliament to step in to enforce its mandated statutes on the publicly funded CJC?

Norman Sabourin’s failure to follow a simple directive, violates all Canadian’s sovereign right to lawfully entitled information. Lack of transparency poses a very real risk to public confidence in the administration of justice. Lack of robust judicial oversight, by governments, adds to the problem.

Judicial defiance does have a place in all societies. Resisting the pressure of mandatory sentencing or ill-considered legislation, violating citizen’s universal rights, is acceptable and just. Judges prerogatives do allow generous latitudes of discretionay privilege to ensure equality, liberty, or catering for mitigating circumstances.

However, in cases where Judicial defiance is only exercised to demonstrate unquestionable bulwark power, it needs to be condemned and censured by deterrent consequences. When winning is everything, the biggest losers are ordinary citizens. It may always have been thus; it doesn’t always have to be thus.

Evidential Management: #

The Federal Court decision in Bernard v. Canada case above is a clear abnegation of its founding purpose to:

“promote efficiency, uniformity, and accountability, and to improve quality of judicial service in the superior courts of Canada”.

Judges “Going rogue” means abandoning any attempt at fulfilling one of the Judiciary’s primary obligations to a democratic society — the provision of truthful, objective and balanced evidential management — and instead becoming a truth-distorting propagandist for one side.

Judges insisting on a “truth” demonstrably at odds with reality, damages the reputation of the whole legal system.

Lawyers, who become Judges, are trained in the arts of linguistic combat; persuasion – casuistry, sophistry and eristic logic, to win at all costs. Specious and spurious arguments trump truth and reality. Manipulation of evidence leads to perception management.

This colossal fiasco is just a natural consequence of decades of endemic failures in Manitoba’s incestuous and collusive Justice system. It too follows Jason Hyra’s case, in 2016, where he claims Justice Shawn Greenberg,, a serial offender, defied all substantive evidence in favour of obvious self-serving oral assertions.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) shamed the court system into using the logic of forensic analysis in forming their views.

Christie Blanchford noted that already back in 1978, Eugene Ewanchuck, of the Ontario Supreme Court pointed out that the Canadian Justice system was in a transition from an oral tradition to a modern one of trusting more probative or real evidence like - documents, expert witnesses, - DNA, cell phone records, surveillance video footage, social media…

Her over willingness to believe everything the respondents asserted, does imply partisanship, alignment known as bias.

Perhaps this is beyond Justice Shawn Greenberg’s comprehension, as she is stuck in the medieval mode of arbitrary decision making, by determinating her findings – against mountainous evidence to the contrary.

Both courts take all family members for fools, expecting us to believe their fanciful findings.

This disastrous viral scourge was predicted decades ago, due to Judicial impunity regarding evidentiary manipulation, resulting in a perceived lack of expertise.

To mix metaphors, blatant abuse of judicial discretion becomes a tumour of corruption that needs to be excised. It appears an affront to the rule of law, increasing public scepticism to the point of putting the entire Judiciary into disrepute.

It seems just another indication that Canada is following the worst features of America’s dysfunctional legal system. Only punitive and exemplary parliamentary intervention can reset and reenergise the system to basic core principles.

Sophistries, by Justice Shawn Greenberg, defying Manitoba’s Mental Health Act are not clever.

Executive Secretary Norman Sabourin, ignoring clear mandates of our Parliament, does not inspire confidence or trust in the CJC. Judges flicking the bird at legislators, may give them an ego boost, but is detrimental to a fair and just society.

Norman Sabourin’s claim to fame may be his alacrity at peremptorily closing files with an air of unearned authority that brooks no questioning.

While there might be a discretionary basis for refusing to consider malicious, scurrilous or vexatious submissions, my dispassionate, evidence-based submission simply does not fall into that category. It is a rational, reasoned and well-researched submission made in good faith.

But then I would say that; wouldn’t I?

You can judge for yourself on the side bar menu:

https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/case-studies/submission-to-cjc.html

Sabourin’s effusive thanks to Justice Greenwood’s letters justifying her lack of substantial judgments merely emboldened her to lower standards – within a year she became a serial offender by escalating her pattern of misconduct . Who knows how many other skeletons are hidden in her closet. We may never know how many grossly disproportionate number of complaints she has accrued over her career.

The Jason Hyra case, 2016, has eerie similarities to the Hoffman Heinrichs case of 2012, where hard evidence was sacrificed to ulterior agendas comprising most of the usual suspects, especially Justice Shawn Greenberg, Chief Justices Richard Chartier, & Glenn Joyal, the Executive Secretary of the CJC, Norman Sabourin, plus a few more culprits in the Justice department who appeared to deny Jason Justice.

The fictions spun by her and the Appeals Court were enertaining but totally unfounded.

Is it rather odd that in Canada, a naive belief persists that truth matters to the courts and justice will follow the truth? The deeper lesson regards the perils of deliberately interpreting evidence without bothering to gain a full appreciation of the context. The courts become a lie-laundering institution.

Jason claims Justice Greenberg ignored all of the actual facts, ignored the rule of law, and simply made up what ever she felt like saying because she could. She even gave me a stiffer sentence.

Sounds similar to her previous form - an affront to common sense. All Judges have to do is show that they acted reasonably and rationally, after having properly informed and instructed themselves, on the facts and the evidence. Shouldn’t be that difficult.

This shameful spectacle remains just one of the worst unrectified miscarriages of justice in Manitoba’s judicial system. Together with the Jason Hyra case, Justice Greenberg contemptuously fails to deal properly with evidence. It is emblematic of court cases where laws and legal procedures are manipulated to produce an unjust result. When judges openly flout legal proceeding, they too, need to suffer deterring, exemplary consequences.

The harm suffered by reason of Greenberg’s conduct is in the nature of both personal and public harm, namely that the rules for transparent and accountable judication appear not to have been properly adhered to.

I thought rigged cases only happened in Russia or China.

All cases judged by Justice Greenberg urgently need closer scrutiny to determine whether she has the competence or qualifications required of a Judge. Indeed, given the clarity of the evidence, she seems to see only what she wants to see, as some Justices often do.

I believe there is enough evidence to investigate for possible impeachment. But what would I know? I am a mere sovereign citizen. In a real democracy that should be the most exalted position.

Abject failures of the CJC #

Former Manitoba Justice Lori Douglass, was investigated to pander to the gutter press for a personal matter totally irrelevant to her work. She felt her questioning took an unjustified prurient interest in investigating details of an event beyond her control. She resigned, while real culprits get thanked for their feeble justifications of overlooking, manipulating, twisting and distorting available and irrefutable evidence, to get a desired result.

How can the CJC justify investigating Justice Graeme Mitchell, for visiting a Metis protester, Tristan Durocher, in his tepee, on Saskatchewan’s legislature grounds, drawing attention to the high rate of suicide among Indigenous people? Perhaps the Canadian Judicial Council prefers to perpetuate the oppressive frontier wars against Louis Riel’s descendants through outdated bigotry. Is this another example of latent systemic institutional racism?

While Justice Mitchell apologised, I feel the CJC should wear the shame of this outrageous self-serving determination.

As in America, the question remains, which institutions or entities are legitimate interpreters and enforcers of the law? The real risk is a public perception that judgements are just political acts. This stench, is a by-product of the unresolved ambivalence within government, about who has the responsibility and authority to make and enforce the law of the land.

The decline of truth in American democracy can feel irreversible, Michael Luo writes. But any hope of halting that decline must include a renewal of journalism’s (and politicians and citizens) commitment to its public responsibility.

Respect for legal institutions underpins the administration of justice and the Canadian people commissioned the Canadian Judicial Council to maintain that respect. It appears to have betrayed that trust.

If the CJC tolerates a self-interested system internally, it should not be surprised that self-interested Judges, end up behaving corruptly. We live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and corruption, commonplace.

It is long past time for seriously misjudged cases to be identified, exposed and dealt with censuriously to deter others. Judges are supremely important in this mix and we can ill-afford a claque of privileged, entitled but deluded appointees making discretionary and arbitrary decisions lacking Judicial merit. To avoid this, Canada legislated one of the best safeguards in the Western democracies - the CJC. The question remains, if it is not fit for its purpose, as an effective process for remedying complaints, why don’t we disband it and replace it with an external one one that has effective teeth?

Failure to answer complaints remains an absolute gross violation of our right to information. It is the failures of politicians to enforce compliance with their own laws, that destroys our faith, confidence and trust in both the Judicial and the political system. Societies founder when conflicting values become polarised and politicians and courts align themselves with the powerful over the general welfare.

When the law is an ass — it needs its arse kicked. (An Australian crudism)

What governments fail to realise – because they don’t bother to inform themselves – is that when something crazy, like defying Parliaments happens, the quality control of the Judiciary declines. It is Parliamnent’s responsibility to fix it. As Heller pointed out:

“mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.”

Dereliction of duty by our political leaders, to ensure the probity of our Justice System, undermines the safeguards of our democracy. Have Canadians become inured to lack of government responsibility? Do we expect so little of our politicians that when they fail to listen or respond, we simply offer up a collective shrug? How long did it take them to act on known issues within the Defence force? Take meaningful actions to provide justice to indigenous Canadians?

We do not need to follow America’s utter failures in providing clear clean justice resulting in the vigilantism of gun violence and a society tearing itself apart.

Improving governance, and restoring a little faith in our institutions, could be something for all politicians to be proud of.

Proud to be Canadian #

Sometimes I am inordinately proud to be a Canadian expat; like when I consider, how courageously Lester B Pearson stood up to the British and French imperialists during the Suez Canal in 1956, LBJ over the Vietnam War in 1965 or against De-Gaulle’s call of Viva Quebec Libre - sending him packing in 1967.

Also, Pierre Trudeau in 1971, reforming the Judges Act to try to make the Judicial complaints process more transparent and accountable. Also Brian Dickson , a fellow but earlier, graduate of the University of Manitoba, later Chief Justice, for his exemplary leadership qualities, the humility of his realistic recognition and acknowledgment of the limitations of Judicial power.

Canadian’s intrinsic resistance to the seductive ruses of Lynton Crosby, renowned in Australia, America and Britain as the “Goebbels” of modern democracies; credited with winning elections for extreme right wing governments, - Howard, Bush, Cameron, Abbott - but thoroughly ridiculed by the Canadian media and soundly rejected by the Canadian people. His brand of wedge politics might work in other countries, but failed in Canada.

Despite my deep concerns of declining standards, I remain a firm, loyal and nostalgic Manitoban. “You may take the boy out of a country, but you cannot take the country out of the boy”.

Back to back Grey Cup wins by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers also evoke pride, but fail to make up for the recurring failures of Manitoba’s Justice System.

Frequent trips to Manitoba allow me to enjoy the vast expanses, wide open straight highways with 360 degree views.

Inspite of the judiciary’s attempt to destroy our social fabric, Manitoban’s have prevailed. The Globe ranked 439 communities across the country, using categories such as transportation, housing, climate and amenities, and focusing on affordable housing, quality education and proximity to child care when ranking those best for raising kids. With its relative isolation, abundant amenities and possibilities for home ownership as well as a relaxed lifestyle focused on family time, Winnipeg came out on top as the most livable city in Canada for raising children.

Blair, Obama, Macron and Trudeau are adept at speech making, but delivering little for the people. They run with the hare and sup with the hounds.

In 2015, Justin Trudeau, promised reforms in Justice, elections, media. He even promised to listen – all to no avail. We are forced to place his reform credentials under closer scrutiny. Just because he touted liberal reforms - “that keep the word of promise to our ear/And break it to our hope”, we have become disillusioned because the use of progressive language does not always reflect the government’s actions. Leftists can display a remarkable naiveté about the very forces they need to harness. It is the failure of liberalism that disillusions citizens and fuels populist leaders like Trump.

It doesn’t matter who you vote for, a politician wins.

Manitoba’s situation #

Kelvin Goertzen, interim Premier of Manitoba, said there is one thing he has heard over and over again, was a desire by everyone to connect better with government,

“I don’t think we learned that lesson well enough in the past."

It’s in the Book of James, 1,19: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

To do a good job, leaders should focus less on speaking and do more listening, “That’s the best way forward.” I would add, then they need to act in the best interest of the common good.

Heather Stefanson, has been one of a few active Ministers of Justice to engage in meaningful dialogue with the Judiciary, striving to restore its reputation. Hope springs eternal; perhaps the Manitoba Government will now put pressure on the Federal Minister of Justice for CJC compliance with its statutory authority. It is a shame she has compromised her principles.

Manitoba, once renowned for good governance, now occupies a high order as the most racist province (MacLean’s), with increased bullying. Manitoba has the highest rate of incarceration among the provinces and is imprisoning Indigenous people in greater numbers while national incarceration rates are decreasing.

According to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Manitoba also has the worst-performing Justice System in Canada. Dan Lett and others at the Winnipeg Free Press have supplied extensive evidence of that. There is plenty of other substantial evidence that its Justice system is distrusted. Recent scandals like the John Carpay’s case, drug cartels claiming collegial conflicts and other frivilous lost causes desperate for a jack-pot win, suggest a random court system, not based on reason, but easily gamed. While just a few rogue Judges, give the rest a bad name, collusive cultures undermine credibility of the entire institution, thus eroding its legitimacy. Going to court is like playing the slot machines.

In a democracy, we are not free to ignore the truth. There appears a shoddy genre of justice running rife within some courts in Manitoba, - marshal a few witless witnesses, fall for a few fanciful claims, perform a few gravity defying leaps of logic, ignore any concrete evidence, plus your oath of office, - agree on a storyline that suits your personal agenda, (rather than a more factual, realistic and truthful narrative), then audaciously ram it home. All this, safe and secure in the knowledge that Manitoba’s Appeals court and the CJC have your back.

This unpredictability of Manitoba’s Queen’s Bench leads to many other wild ambit claims by chancers, clogging its calendars. Shelly Glover’s legal challenge seeking to declare the result of the Progressive Conservative leadership vote invalid, appears as batty as Trump’s attempts to determine his loss as “stolen”. Perhaps Courts should not interfere with squabbles in badminton clubs or political parties. But if the court’s reputation trades on lies, why not take a capricious fling and flutter, to play them for ill-gotten gain?

As a Sydney barrister cynically advised me,

“if it’s Justice you’re after, go to the casino; the odds are better and the payouts higher”.

The entire Glover case raises issues of conflict of interest and whether Manitoba’s judiciary is an appropriate, competent or independent forum for deciding such a case. The court could decide on the basis of which candidate posed the greater threat to its lack of accountabilty.

Perhaps another province’s Court System would be more detached and disinterested, or internal matters of political parties are not justiciable.

A clogged court means more money for the legal industry. Charles Dickens observed in 1852: “The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself." Judge Richard Posner agreed, “they secure a lustrous place in the financial and social-status sun, … intricately and ingeniously reticulated though imperfect cartel." Plato listed three classes of men; “lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain”. Geoffrey Robertson advises lawyers, if you just want to make money, go into real estate or the stock market. The law exists to make a better society.

Socrates suggested Justice implies superior character and intelligence. Injustice implies ignorance, stupidity and badness, It cannot be superior in character and intelligence. A just man is wiser because he acknowledges the principle of limit.

“What just is; is not always Justice”. Amanda Gorman

As an English History teacher our remit was to develop student’s “abilities to use historical and scientific knowledge, understanding, and critical inquiry skills to identify questions, acquire new knowledge, through close reading and draw evidence-based conclusions to help make responsible decisions and shape our interpretations of information”.

Critical analysis is a vital historical skill. It enables investigators to interrogate historical evidence, allowing us to ask: what is this source? Where did it come from? Is it reliable? What are its motives? Does it tell the whole story?

Judges, like reputable historians, should form their views from primary sources; rather than from what others have to say. To be deliberately deaf to credible sources, risks losing your own credibility.

All assertions and conclusions need to be validated to become substantiated.

T.S. Eliot insisted “All noble human endeavor should be in pursuit of true Judgment”.

You’d think Judges could be held to those simple guidelines.

Judges are not selected for their razor-sharp acuity, extra sensory perception or the enormous intelligence of their prose, rather their honest capacity for scrupulous investigative skills, relying on empirically discovering and marshalling relevant, consequential and verified facts, distiguishing between worthy evidence and self-serving claims to arrive at rational definitive final judgments, favouring a better, equitable society.

Consciously, deliberately, intentionally and purposefully skewing and distorting available evidence to reach a preferred conclusion is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of a judge’s oath of office I can imagine. It becomes an aberrant, unentitled judgment, undermining the entire judicial system’s credibility, authority and legitimacy. This leads to a collapse of the whole social purpose of a judicious court system.

Disclaimer: What follows is my impression of the decline in trust of Justice in Manitoba over the past forty years. It is a work in progress. If you find any error of fact or perception, please inform the website @ nebo-lit1@usa.net. Thank-you.

I believe there is a direct correlation between public confidence in the Justice System and the quality of life in any society. All other professions have learned to earn their trust. It high time for us to reject the fealty still demanded by an immune Judiciary. When people lose faith in their Justice System, the fabric of society begins to fray. There can be no trust without transparence and accountability.

We must guard against criticising decision-making simply because we don’t like the decision, and personal attacks on judges or commissioners are never appropriate.

Manitoba appears to have a tyranny of distinguished, smug, sneering Judges who deride popular concerns as ‘populism’, or mob rule, and whose self-image is fueled by an absorbing sense of absolute superiority. Apparently, they don’t need facts to establish their assumptions; like Boris Johnson, you merely declaim falsehoods with an air of pompous authority, covering up your ignorance and insecurities, with bluff, bluster, and bombast.

All they expect from us is abject deference to their infallible discretionary prerogatives.

What is concerning is the lack of interest poor judgments generated. They deserve far more attention than they’ve received to date.

The rectitude of taxpayer-funded independent institutions – especially those whose role is to scrutinise the operations of government – is fundamental to the maintenance of a liberal political culture in Canada. The CJC has shown contempt for accountability. It’s time more was done to safeguard uniform standards and protect the primacy of our democracy.

All power is defined by its limitations.

We should not risk our cherished norms, traditions and institutions, just so Canadian Judges can enjoy immunity.

Manitoba’s entire legal fraternity is responsible for upholding the perception of Justice so that our courts can continue to be respected. Lawyers, subjected to unfair Judicial processes, must have the courage to speak out.

By what mechanism do officials manage to keep the central message of its beliefs separate from its actions and desires? It is, as they say, a surpassing mystery, yet also sheer hypocrisy.

Jason Hyra in his words: #

FEDERAL JUSTICE AND CROWN CORRUPTION IN WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA (A TRUE STORY)

YOU WILL SAY THAT THIS CANNOT HAPPEN, THAT THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE, BUT LET ME ASSURE YOU IT IS ALL TRUE.

THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!!!!

In 2004, Jason in confidential interview, provided damning evidence regarding an application by a former girl friend, Lana Eisbrenner, applying to become a Winnipeg Police Officer, including her involvement with the ZigZags, her steroid drug use, her buying-selling and using of drugs, her affair with married WPS Officer John McKay, her black mailing of her former boss, and their short relationship.

The Gang Unit was sent out to investigate confirming his statements. Despite being promised protection by the WPS, John McKay, a police officer and Lana began intimidating, harassing, and threatening Jason Hyra when she was fired from the WPS.

Jason claims that, in March 2008 he was wrongfully arrested and in 2016, wrongfully convicted of a crime of (criminal harassment s.264). He was convicted in order to be silenced.

Jason further claims Federal Court Justice Shawn Greenberg in April 2014 dismissed all of the evidence showing his innocence, ignored the rule of law, took her cues from the Crown, and tried to cover up the Crown Misconduct of Bruce Sychuk; prosecutor Rob Gosman (friend of David Rampersad); current Assistant Deputy Minister of Justice Michael Mahon; the MBCA and Chief Justice Richard Chartier, who in January 2016 ensured I would never receive a fair trial by allowing Justice Greenberg to remain the trial Judge. Chartier stated that if I didn’t like the trial ruling I could appeal it later.

I am not in a position to judge all the facts, but it does ring true to me as it follows similar patterns in Justice Greenwood’s other misjudged cases.

It is mind boggling that he appears before the same judge in two distinct cases. Another symptom of corrupted administration of justice.

It simply beggars belief that a Chief Justice could adopt such a cavalier attitude to a Just process. No wonder people have lost faith, confidence and trust in the entire system.

To read Jason’s acount, See: https://www.facebook.com/CTVW5/posts/17-years-to-prove-my-wrongful-conviction-due-to-obstruction-and-cover-up-by-mani/10158534825333582/

A visit to Manitoba #

A 2015 visit to Manitoba included a visit to the Museum of Human Rights, followed by one to the Queen’s Bench Courts. The juxtaposition proved stark.

The former, with its towering majestic architectural sweep, reaching up to the lofty eyries of Justice, evoked transcendental possibilities. Advised by friendly guards to take the elevator up to its highest point, we like Dante, slowly descended via curved ramps of exhibits to earthly reality. This proved too much for one of our group, who couldn’t cope with the humbug of failing to reflect reality, leaving early to meet us later for coffee.

As the province that hosts an institution with a website proclaiming: “Welcome to the only museum entirely devoted to human rights for all,” has it had any impact? The expectations for Manitoba are high. Namely, do the lofty ideals translate into practice? Or does the legal system simply operate outside its pious posturing rhetoric?

Shrugging off allegations of human-rights violations occurring in Manitoba, makes this province a decidedly hypocritical home for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

Contrast this with a visit to Manitoba’s Queens Bench courts to obtain oral transcripts of a trial. The low squat monolithic fortress-like structure remains a brutalist homage to law and low state order, sanctioned by unfettered power. Confronted by nine burly security guards, ordered brusquely to a complete security check, I was finally allowed to enter its hallowed domain.

I always attempt to engage the austere security agents, with a cheery “good morning! how are you today?”, to ascertain whether they have managed to retain any part of their vestigial humanity. Few had.

Governments prefer to rely on state sanctioned fear and force combined with the de-personalisation of its citizens by the insolence of bureaurcrats. It doesn’t have to be that way. Under Obama, border guards were trained in civil and cordial manners, however under Trump they reverted to form. Australian public servants have finally been incentivised by KPI feedback to treat us with respect and preserve our dignity.

Civil servants should be trained to serve citizens civilly, or are they merely mindless minions?

All staff proved just as aloof and disengaging. Shuffled around to various departments, I finally talked to an officious civil servant and made a request for an oral transcript of a trial, only to be informed the government considered it their property, despite us paying $60,000 for the case.

Claiming that as a sovereign citizen, I was the government, confused her long enough to go and check with her superiors. Apparently, my status fails to meet those lofty requirements. Apparently only lawyers are allowed to apply for an oral transcript. Just another way to drum up business for your industry.

If the Museum of Human Rights represents the pinnacle of enlightenment and Justice, Manitoba’s Queens Bench seems to represent its antithesis; an abyss of leaden ignorance, protected by brute medieval power and arrogance. This proves unhealthy for both individuals, like David Milgaard, Jason Hyra, Frank Ostrowski, and a diminished society.

A return visit in 2022 indicated a vast improvement in the displays of the Museum and a much more civil reception at the Law Courts.

Manitoba’s Day of Reckoning #

The somewhat less than honourable Justice Shawn Greenberg’s Flying Circus saga is the political gift that keeps on giving. Shortly after the cunning stunts performed in the 2012, Heinrichs/Hoffman stand-off, she again strutted her acrobatic stuff on the high wire against an old adversary, Jason Hyra - round one in 2006, two in 2016, without relying on any safety harness whatsoever.

Before you get too doey eyed, Greenberg regularly scores a soft landing on the CJC’s security net.

“—You and I both do the same thing, he would chide me, “sleight of hand - making things appear to be what they’re not.” Alan M. Dershowitz, US defence lawyer, writing of his son, a professional magician, 1991.

Lawyers are trained in the arts of linguistic combat; persuasion – casuistry, sophistry and eristic logic, to win at all costs. Specious and spurious arguments trump truth and reality. Manipulation of evidence can lead to perception management; according to Wittgenstein, “bewitching our intelligence”.

When will It be high time for Manitoba’s Justice system’s day of reckoning?

Ian Scarf expressed it most acutely here:

“The public needs to know that when they go into a courtroom, the judge or the trier of fact … is going to be fair and not biased through any other mechanisms,”

Bradley Regehr told Canadian Lawyer.

“Judges are “supposed to make decisions based on the evidence that is put in front of them, and the law”…,

The rhetoric is spot on; where is the practice? All people associated with the law need to speak out against corrupted processes.

Apostasy is espousing high ideals, perverted by base actions.

We need rational decisions; not falsely rationalized ones.

Perhaps Manitoba’s Chief Justices, Appeals Chief Justice Richard Chartier and Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal could learn from Quebec’s Court of Appeal Justice Christine Baudouin, reprimanding, Quebec Justice Jean-Paul Braun.

“Judges have an expectation to fulfil their role with integrity and honour in their duty of discretion. Judges’ comments must not derogate from their ethical obligations and undermine public confidence in the judiciary and judicial institutions”. (adapted)

Why wasn’t that simple principle enforced in the Hoffman/Heinrichs case? Why does this not apply to Justice Shawn D. Greenberg, or the three Court of Appeal Justices: Coram: Alan D. Maclnnes, Mr. Justice Marc M . Monnin and Mr. Justice William J. Burnett? Abandoning all pretence of neutrality or balance, their unsubstantiated determinations left a lot to be desired. Where is the uniformity and consistency across Canada for equal and uniform standards?

I am at a loss to understand the towering contumely of Judge Alan D. MacInnes, who, with reckless abandon, felt he could distort and manipulate the details of our family narrative for an audience intimately familiar with the facts.

Dogmatic assertion is the tyrant’s “stock in trade”, attempting to confer the air of authority and bully us into grudging silence, compliance, and acceptance rather than inspiring confidence and belief in the judicial system. The towering bluster of the Appeals Court’s unfounded findings are steeped in unexplained determinations. Conflicted evidence must be tested, if you value the judiciary’s credibiltiy.

The community expects Appeals Judges to exhibit, and be seen to exhibit, the highest standards of integrity. Yet this Appeals Court’s determinations appear to have an ulteriour agenda, rather than reflect reality. To proclaim knowable falsehoods, as fact, to an audience of senior family members, is an indefensibly grievous insult. Obviously serious misjudgments have deleterious implications for the entire legal profession.

Jason Tan for Canadian Lawyer reports another case IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF MANITOBA – delivered 20/09/22 Coram: Mr. Justice Christopher J. Mainella, Madam Justice Jennifer A. Pfuetzner, Madam Justice Lori T. Spivak, managed to find enough rationalizations to support their colleagues, despite acknowledging errors were made.

Radical reform of the entire Judicial process including Appeals is available here:

https://nebo-lit.com/topic-areas/Justice/law-reform.html

Justice Shawn D Greenberg appears to be a serial offender as demonstrated by the Jason Hyra case, where she again showed her disdain for upright Judicial fairness, the facts and a deficiency in comprehending medical evidence. It is high time her qualifications and competence were investigated for possible impeachment. More on the Jason Hyra case below.

How many times have Chartier and Joyal been the subject of investigations by the CJC? The Appeals court appears to share an echo chamber with the Queen’s Bench, if the Hoffman/Heinrichs case is any guide.

It has been obvious for some time that Judicial unaccountability is the fault of craven enablers in all governments: the Ministers of Justice, the Prime Ministers’ Offices, but even more parliamentarian committees. None have demonstrated enough ticker, stomach or spine to insist on acceptable standards.

Journalism is optimized for the rapid run of short-run news cycles, not the long arc of a story like miscarriages of justice or the denial of human rights. But we should not expect journalists do all the heavy lifting. Any bad judgement must be protested by all concerned. Law and Bar Associations should be outraged. We, the people, should not accept patently absurd judgments.

Public Confidence Critical to Authority #

American Public confidence up to 1964 hit 77%. Following that, it plummeted, and since the Regan years has remained below 30%. Its entire Justice System, hanging on a dubious and fragile legitimacy, leading to vigilantism.

What is Manitoba’s? Only 35% of Canadians have confidence in the RCMP.

Many observers feel the greatest threat to American democracy is its conflicted Supreme court delivering political judgements, defying legislatures. Is this where Canada’s is heading?

The key to success in public confidence, is public participation. Government officials and regulatory agencies aren’t an effective check on malign institutions, because they are often in bed with the players they are supposed to regulate. There is no seat at the table for the citizen, or for the people obliged to live, with perverted decision making.

We need to question not only wayward Judges, but also the government agencies assigned to oversee them. We have a moral obligation and a civic duty to speak out against injustice. With so many failed states in the world, why are Canadians not more alarmed? Judicial take-overs are less noticeble than military coups, but just as dangerous.

What is the possibility of a wholesale performance review of the CJC by outside parties? Has the CJC, its policy objectives procedures and practices, been reviewed in 50 years? Is it true that less than 4% of complaints to the CJC are responded to?

Reviewing the job, the CJC has done — or failed to do — seems entirely appropriate from time to time. Who the government appoints to the Supreme Court, and why, could also do with a little scrutiny?

Reformers need to essentially accuse the CJC of corruption. It is not enough for ministers and other officials to offer mind-numbingly empty slogans and hollow, clichéd, pre-packaged platitudes. We ought to expose and condemn the compromises and excuses that all officials make for the legal industry.

Canada has the structures and laws to keep Judges in line, but do our politicians have the stomach to enforce them with appropriate oversight?

Scandalising the Court #

Quite apart from the CJC behaving like a gatekeeper concerning complaint submissions, judges have created a neat layer of protection for themselves, not available to any other institution. This niche little branch of contempt law is called “scandalising the court”. It’s been defined as, “any act done or writing published calculated to bring the court or a judge of the court into contempt or to lower their authority”.

In other words, if I write that a judge is biased, or there is a perception of bias, or has engaged in legal misadventure, then I can be summarily dealt with by the judge in question, and I can be found guilty of scandalising the court. Now, that makes for a useful protection racket.

My feeble efforts in that direction are nothing compared to the court’s own capacity for self-inflicted damage to its own reputation.

Scandalising the court is so vague, and carries such serious consequences including jail, that it gives rise to a deeply chilling effect on the legitimate discussion of courts and judges. And the courts used this charge to prosecute Stephen Williams, following the Bernardo – Homolka trial where, according to Christie Blanchard, he was purposely and relentlessly pursued by the state in an act of “administrative vengeance” for openly exposing the flaws in the legal system. In the end, Stephen said,

“It’s very possible the government didn’t care if they won or lost, because they knew that the process alone was going to ruin us financially and psychologically.

Or Canadian Journalist and champion of free speech Ezra Levant, dragged into the police station and interrogated for hours, by veteran detectives who specialise in terrorism. His “Crime”? launching a book, during the Canadian elections, critical of the government and Justin Trudeau.

Maybe charges of scandalising the court made sense a century ago, before judges had a union, and ready access to social media, and mainstream media, to defend themselves. Canadian Judges have both the Canadian Superior Courts Judges Association, and the CJC acting as their protection racket.

Britain abolished this special layer of protection. So should Canada, because the best way to maintain public confidence in the legal system is to make sure that judges are held to account by the people, and not just by a higher court.

Enforceable Rights #

Jonathan Kroft, challenging a Manitoba Appeals Court decision claims:

“The public right to learn about its justice system has long been recognized as a key element of the democratic system in Canada and a core element of freedom of expression, but unfortunately, ambiguities in our rules of procedure and appeal rights have made it difficult or cost-prohibitive for the public to actually enforce their rights.”

To show they’re serious about protecting people’s human rights, governments must ensure access to real complaint processes. Unenforceable rights lead to corruption. For people whose rights are violated, it’s critical that something is done about non- compliance to deter reoccurrences.

All attempts to have legal Associations in Manitoba support my cause have failed. All attempts to have lawyers in Manitoba to assist me in obtaining oral transcripts of the case have failed.

They all appear too craven to take on the towering legal moguls. One demanded a $17,000 upfront fee, just for a letter, as he was fearful of reprisals against his practice.

This raises the question whether Canadian taxpayers get their monies worth from their court system? We pay good money for Judges’ salaries and entitlements, but do we get a good bang for our buck? If you appeal a bad judgment, you have to pay extra. It’s still a toss-up whether or not you’ll get justice. There’s no money back guarantee when they simply close ranks.

Because of fear, people become afraid to speak out. Fear, of course, is the most important reason any official of an authoritarian or totalitarian society does not protest or resign, even when their institutions commits crimes, violates their official ideology, or forces people to do things that they know to be wrong. It happens slowly; incipiently, incestuously, insidiously.

In extreme dictatorships like Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, people fear for their lives. In softer dictatorships, like East Germany after 1950 and Putin’s Russia today, people fear losing their jobs or their apartments. Fear works as a motivation even when violence is a memory rather than a reality.

Many don’t seem to know that similar waves of fear have helped transform other democracies into dictatorships.

Through each violation of our Parliamentary laws, our civic peace gets absorbed, rationalized, accepted and ultimately debauched by people who once upon a time knew better. We should cherish the accumulated received wisdom of the ages.

The choice to become a dissident can easily be the result of a number of small decisions that you take - to object to flawed processes, resist bullies, refuse to accept corrupt conduct. And then, one day, you find yourself irrevocably on the other side. Often, this process involves role models. You see people whom you admire, and you want to be like them. It can even be “selfish.” “You want to do something for yourself, to respect yourself.”

Corrupt practices can be turned around, but it requires courage, and a true sense of justice by all to do so. We hope someone in Manitoba, or Canada, develops that courage. Ian Histed, appears to be that person. “The greater the truth, the greater the libel; the greater the libel, the greater the liability” (Lord Mansfield). We should all pitch in to support Histed.

………..

Questionable Judicial Cases in Manitoba: #

The Queen’s Bench seems to have little or no concern for the welfare of the wider community. It appears to be mainly interested in preserving its privileged position of unfettered power to make self-serving decisions for the legal industry and preserve its own bulwark unaccountable power.

There appears an endemic collusive cabalistic culture. Some of its outrageous abuse of discretionary privileges are unbefitting of their unentitled jurisprudence.

Greg Barns writes about Lindon McIntyre, the CBC TV Fifth Estate journalist, investigated the now repudiated Sting operations by exposing the appalling injustice meted out to Any Rose by Canadian police using the sting technique to obtain a confession. Rose was falsely accused by a former girlfriend, Madonna Kelly, of murdering two German tourists, in rural British Columbia in October 1983 when Rose and Kelly were working on a farm nearby the murder scene.

For six years investigators hunted for the killer, but get nowhere until 1989 when Kelly told a police informer that Rose killed the tourists. The police arranged for Kelly to ring Rose, who was now living in Manitoba, and they recorded the conversation. Rose denies to Kelly that he killed the tourists, but the police arrest him and he was convicted.

He won his appeal but was convicted again in 1994. Once again Rose wins an appeal and then the Canadian police, by now desperate, try the sting technique. Undercover police officers befriend Rose and promise to ‘help’ him win his forthcoming trial if he confesses to the murder to a Mr. Big.

Fortunately, the sting doesn’t work, because the courts decide in 2001 to stay, or adjourn permanently, the murder charge.

On Nov. 15, 1985: The Winnipeg Free Press reported that a Grunthal man whose car was damaged by a jealous husband would not receive compensation for the damage, despite the fact the accused pleaded guilty of wilful damage to the vehicle and a judge sentenced him to six months’ unsupervised probation. Restorative and compensatory justice could have been more satisfying for the victim and a more effective deterrent. But then what would I know - I’m a just an ordinary citizen.

Frank Ostrowski #

WFP’s Dan Lett reported on - 03/12/18.

Manitoba Court of Appeal quashed the 1987 first-degree murder conviction of drug dealer Frank Ostrowski after determining that his original trial represented a miscarriage of justice.

The Crown withheld the details of a secret deal with a star witness used to convict Ostrowski, along with notes from a police officer who spoke with that witness before the slaying, a conversation that cast further doubt on who was responsible for the execution-style killing of Robert Nieman.

This is not the first time Manitoba Justice has been caught cheating the system.

For those of you keeping score, this is the fourth case managed by former prosecutor George Dangerfield that was later determined to be a miscarriage of justice. Preceding Ostrowski were Thomas Sophonow, James Driskell and Kyle Unger. Dan Lett

We can now add Robert Sanderson to the list.

In January 2022, according to Sarah Petz of the CBC News, Justice Greenberg scored her trifecta by:

denying Frank Ostrowski filing a lawsuit seeking $16 million in damages and a declaration that a miscarriage of justice occurred after two important pieces of evidence were not disclosed at his 1987 trial. Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg’s Jan. 12, 2022, decision sided with them.

The police officers and Crown attorneys named in the suit argued that under law, Ostrowski had earlier opportunities to pursue legal action.

Ostrowski’s lawyers were not informed about the deal — nor was Lovelace.

The existence of that deal was one of the key issues that led to Ostrowski’s conviction being overturned. Ostrowski argued that Weinstein knew or ought to have known that this non-disclosure would have harmed Ostrowski and amounted to negligence.

Greenberg ruled that Weinstein did not owe him that disclosure, given that Ostrowski wasn’t Weinstein’s client.

Ostrowski and his lawyer, Harvey Strosberg, said they are planning to appeal Greenberg’s Jan. 12 decision and are still moving forward with other elements of Ostrowski’s lawsuit.

Evidence indicates Ostrowski was unaware of the outcome until it was too late to appeal.

Was this Justice Greenberg’s final surrender of judicial credibility?

Manitoba’s legal industry’s collusive culture circles the wagons again, stolidly protecting its own. If you protect those above you, surely, they in turn, are obligated to protect you from adverse investigations.

Who knows how many skeletons are hidden in Greenberg’s closets?

In siding with the defendants, Greenberg dismissed the claims against the Attorney General of Canada and the Crown attorneys named in the lawsuit, and also dismissed a conspiracy claim against the defendant police officers, police chiefs and the City of Winnipeg.

Negligence claims against lawyer dismissed

In an earlier decision in December 2021, Greenberg also dismissed Ostrowski’s claim that the defence lawyer for a man who testified against him owed him a duty of care.

Hymie Weinstein represented one of the Crown’s key witnesses, Matthew Lovelace, during Ostrowski’s 1987 trial. Unbeknownst to Lovelace, Weinstein had struck a deal with the Crown to drop trafficking charges against Lovelace in exchange for Lovelace’s evidence.

“We’re not dead in the water, right? I’m still going after these people for what they did to me,” Ostrowski said Tuesday.

None of the allegations in Ostrowski’s civil lawsuit have been proven in court.

Justice Shawn Greenberg appears to have taken out an insurance policy; by protecting those above her, they no doubt will protect her from malicious court cases.

The Hoffman/Heinrichs 2012, case could be a bellwether one; contesting a Schizophrenic Aunt’s Will, may not be Manitoba’s most perverse obstruction of Justice, only because it has a lot of competition. John Carpay, motivated by misguided zeal, highlighted the high level of mistrust in Manitoba’s system. The Ian Histed vs MLS appears to be symptomatic of a desperate frustration with the implacable and indomitable power structures of a prickly, precious Judicial cabal.

In the Hoffman/Heinrichs case, we had to put up with lies & fabricated stories, where the Judges, freed of any obligations to civility or truth, displayed more than a whiff of unreality; an utter lack of awareness of true relationships, simply guessed the facts or just whimsically made things up. The determinations were based on lies, and those who were lying, knew they were misleading the court. It was a fraud of massive proportions. And the judges should not have fallen for obvious falsehoods and we, the people, should not have to put up with substandard judgments. Damaging judgments need to be called out and denounced.

Courts are faced with an information glut — some of it true, some of it false, much of it profoundly contestable. It’s the job of judges to sort out what’s what and distinguish between reality and self-serving tosh. We should be wary of how the law can be gamified for political ends.

Both courts’ findings were inaccurate and obviously biased, along with lacking regard to the context of all issues.

The findings were not innocent mistakes, they were deliberate, purposeful, contrived, and calculated determinations, ignoring clear, contrary, concrete material evidence available to both courts.

I believe we can “adequately assert” claims that both courts acted with actual malice by proclaiming baseless determinations proffered by the respondents which they knew was false and that, even if the Appeals Court did not know the information was false, it had solid reason to doubt. It is all evident in its towering haughty bluff and blustering tone.

The entire judgment appears an absolute, disreputable, and purposeful sham, making a complete mockery of all official proclamations of balance, impartiality and fair play. The legal industry seems determined to deny Justice. And where was the Manitoba Law Society to ensure the court system was on the level? No family should have to watch their well documented narratives, their shared views of reality, debauched by the imposed narratives of self-serving court officials.

By normal judicial standards, the debased unfounded determinations that characterise such cases should be more than enough cause for investigation for possible impeachment. Managing to get five critical determinations demonstrably wrong, displayed — in the most generous possible interpretation — truly spectacular misjudgment. This was an assault on fact-based reality.

Errors were compounded by an ego driven Appeals Court decision to airily proclaim five unfounded determinations as sound in belligerant blustering tones. The Appeals Court simply failed to challenge the fantasia of the original case. Vanity of vanities.

The Appeals Court’s independence isn’t the only thing that begins to look shaky; so does the other pillar of its reputation, competence.

This kind of contempt shown by The Appeals Court’s serial untruths: celebrating their own egos, implying disdain for whoever the liar thinks can be misled. It is part of their strident superiority; a case study in contempt for an audience, fully aware of reality. “Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse.

We are not a theocracy or a monarchy that accepts the word of the leader, the priesthood or judge as law. We are a democracy that debates facts, seeks to understand situations, and then determines conclusions on reality, all in accordance with a set of rules called procedural fairness. This court’s findings are inconsistent with objective legal requirements.

Dan Lett: #

Dan has been a long serving, fearless reporter willing to lay bare some dodgy court decisions.

Timely, firm, forceful and resolute actions from our leaders could be effective.

Lett details four cases managed by former prosecutor George Dangerfield, later determined to be miscarriages of justice.

Lett also reported on one of the most outrageous perversions of Justice -tireless advocate: David Milgaard, who, in 1970, was erroneously imprisoned for 23 years for the murder of a Saskatoon nursing assistant. Milgaard died in 2022.

I got to know David in the late 1980s, long before he became arguably the country’s most famous victim of wrongful conviction. Back then, he was a quirky and earnest 30-something life prisoner with an fidgety disposition and an incredible story to tell.

I tried my best to tell that story but in the process, I was exposed to the raw reality of his life: the incredible mental and physical burden that comes with being a victim of a wrongful conviction.

*It wasn’t just that they took away his freedom. It wasn’t just the mental and physical torture that came with being in the prison system. It was being told he had done this horrible thing when he knew, deep in his heart, he had not.

As I thought back to those years, the memories came flooding back. My first meeting with David at Stony Mountain Institution. The phone calls, at all times of the day and night, when he would tell me to keep writing stories even though each new dispatch usually resulted in a beating from other inmates who came to despise his notoriety and his unwillingness to admit guilt.*

And then it hit me: this was not the first time I felt this ache.

The first time was April 16, 1992. Milgaard, wrongfully imprisoned for 23 years for the murder of a Saskatoon nursing assistant, had just strolled out of the front doors of the penitentiary north of Winnipeg to face an angry, slate-grey spring sky and a throng of journalists.

Just two days earlier, the Supreme Court quashed his 1970 conviction and ordered a new trial. With new evidence showing prosecutors and police had suppressed the existence of another suspect, Saskatchewan justice officials declined to prosecute a second time.

Michael McIntyre reported in December 2015, that Manitoba Chief Justice Glenn Joyal and his colleagues on the Court of Queen’s Bench were asked to step aside in a major drug case because of potential conflicts and perceptions of bias.

Wally Oppal, one of the country’s biggest legal names, has been recruited from British Columbia on behalf of 13 accused Winnipeg drug dealers to fight to have the Manitoba judges “disqualified and prohibited” from further involvement in the high-profile case due to collegial and subordinate relationships with potential affiants and witnesses.

In 2017, Dan Lett, posted that Democracy Watch filed a complaint against Vic Toews with the Canadian Judicial Council after his alleged conflict interest was raised. They expressed disappointment Thursday that the council found Toews did nothing that would call into question his integrity.

“I don’t know how they reached that finding when he was found guilty of violating a conflict of interest law,” co-founder Duff Conacher said. “To face no penalty at all, or sanction, is a questionable ruling.”.

Federal conflict of interest and ethics commissioner Mary Dawson found that Toews, a former Conservative cabinet minister, had violated the Conflict of Interest Act after leaving politics in 2013.

A spokesman, for the then, Justice Minister Heather Stefanson said the province will monitor the CJC’s investigation, “await the result and consider whether there is an effect on the administration of justice in Manitoba.”

From the bench to the hot seat, Toews can’t seem to fly straight.

Also in 2017, Mike McIntyre reported that the Canadian Judicial Council has spent the past several months investigating Manitoba’s top judges over their controversial proposal to speed up the justice system by eliminating preliminary hearings, the Free Press has learned.

“An anonymous complaint sent by a self-proclaimed “practicing lawyer” in late February accused Court of Appeal Chief Justice Richard Chartier, Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal and provincial court Chief Judge Margaret Wiebe of improper conduct by formulating a plan in conjunction with provincial Justice Minister Heather Stefanson, which seeks to improve efficiency in order to comply with tough new Supreme Court timelines that puts cases in peril if they take too long.”

The anonymous lawyer, who filed the complaint, also took issue with comments made by Joyal earlier this year, to the Globe and Mail newspaper, in which he stated defence lawyers weren’t consulted because “doing so would inevitably result in failure to achieve consensus.” In his complaint, the lawyer called Joyal’s comments “frankly rather disdainful” while also questioning the perception of impartiality they create.

Is it true that Joyal and Chartier simply swapped positions? If so, doesn’t that raise any concerns of an incestuous culture - a cabal? Does the Appeals Court function as an echo chamber?

It was reported that during her tenure as the Justice Minister, Wilson-Raybould wished to appoint Manitoba judge Glenn D. Joyal to the Supreme Court of Canada but the decision came into conflict with Justin Trudeau’s own preference.

Trudeau rejected Wilson-Raybould’s decision and sources allege that this is the point where their working relationship began to suffer.

Katie May reported in May 2018, that A Winnipeg mother who abducted her own children will spend more time behind bars after a provincial court judge decided that, although she was motivated by love for her kids, she still doesn’t understand the harm she caused. The mother pleaded guilty to the abduction in July 2017, admitting she took her kids during a long custody battle with their father, who was granted full custody.

Provincial court Judge Tracey Lord decided jail time was warranted, followed by three years of supervised probation. While she’s on probation, the woman won’t be allowed to have contact with her kids or her ex-husband.

"(Her) acts, despite being motivated by love, have destroyed her relationship with her children and deprived them of a bond that they deserve to have. She continues to blame others for the situation and lacks insight into her own responsibility for where she finds herself and the damage she has done”.

What life-long traumatic damage is inflicted on children when motherhood is criminalized? I thought we had repudiated stealing children from their parents decades ago.

Five years since finding: Cora Morgan, head of the First Nations Family Advocate Office, created after the death of Tina Fontaine, says “nothing has changed” since the teen’s body was found in the Red River five years ago. 16/08/19

Hopefully a test case of Histed v. Law Society of Manitoba, will allow the Supreme Court to sort out this mess.

To pretend that Judges can fairly adjudicate family disputes is to impose an infantile logic on complex tangles of conflict, primal emotions, and money. The least Judges can do is to ascertain and genuinely establish the facts of a case to gain a coherent understanding of complex family dynamics that reflect reality. Courts should not be so easily scammed by grifters looking for ill-gotten gain.

Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Take your pick: Manitoba’s Justice system is suffering an outbreak of gross incompetence or has simply lost the plot, parting ways with reality as most of us know it. Or both.

When Judges paint pictures everyone knows are fake, it is not the stuff of competent jurisprudence. It is an indication of arrogated impunity, undermining confidence in what should be our most revered institution.

Just the lack of transparency in how this game has come to light, does not build confidence in it.

The Hoffman/Heinrichs case requires that one be mindful of the difference between having a motive to fabricate versus the absence of a motive to fabricate, as a form of willful and culpable blindness. To get five basic premises wrong, against all available evidence, appears quite an outstanding achievement.

Canada’s oversight on Judges appears weak and inconsistent, allowing some Judges to become so superior, powerful and unchecked they have developed corporate cultures of total impunity. Which government agenciy has ever stooped so low to discourage scrutiny from its citizens. Parliament needs to oversee an effective process for remedying complaints.

Widespread media reports of lawyer’s job dissatisfaction and employees quitting for new jobs and firms, points to serious problems in the Legal industry. Did our lawyer’s leaving his indomitable law firm determine this case?

The courts might be well-intentioned, rational, and mistaken, but so much in our thinking can go wrong when ulterior agendas prevail.

What this seems to indicate is that the regulatory system for Judges is broken. Mechanisms that should ensure accountability and responsible decision making are slow and ineffective giving rise to loss of faith, causing serious harm in our community.

Trust and legitimacy are interconnected

Norman Sabourin, The Executive Secretary, of the CJC, truly owns this fiasco. It is surely evident to all, that his chronically poor judgment fell seriously short of what’s expected and his smug, lazy, irresponsible contumely renders him unfit for the job he holds. Failing to take action on my complaint regarding the inadequacies of Justice Shawn D. Greenberg, simply emboldened her and she appeared to go on greater, more blatant and brazen disregard for Justice in the Jason Hyra case followed by the Frank Ostrowski one.

Sabourin’s letter, briefly posted on the CJC site, to Ms Esther Mendelsohn, a JD Candidate Osgoode Hall Law School, warning her to fall into line, if she wished to join an exclusive club, revealed, through his paternal and patronizing tone, more than he perhaps intended. Pointing out that criticising a member of the legal coterie could adversely affect their earning capacity, demonstrates where his values lie - profit over principle.

Further its imperious attitude revealed by a distinctive dismissive, high-handed and superior tone, its total lack of professional detachment - verbal, psychological or emotional abuse –in a word - bullying. How dare she criticise a member of our club?

What is certain is that these cases represent a historic and devastating defeat for fair minded justice, for democracy, for moral decency and for universal human rights. Numerous questions about how and why this was allowed to happen require serious answers.

An audit of all complaints to the CJC, should be long, hard and uncompromising. If the CJC is incapable of properly overseeing Judges, it should be scrapped and the money used for a Commission with a majority of non-legal members given real teeth to ensure Judicial probity, competence and thus respect and authority.

Any errors of fact or perception are welcomed @: nebo-lit@usa.net