Extradition from Canada to the USA: Why Meng's Chances of a Favourable Canadian Verdict Are Slim

Extradition by the numbers

This Extradition Fact Sheet from a Government of Canada website provides statistics on Canada-to-the-USA extradition cases over a ten year period from 2008 to 2018.  As you can see, once a  case is before a Canadian judge (as Meng's is now) only 8 times (total number of discharges/refusals in 10 years) of 798 US extradition requests has the court ruled in favour of the individual resisting extradition--roughly 1% of the time.

Fiscal YearTable note *	Total number of requests	Arrests	ATP’s Issued	Order of Committals	Total number of discharges/ refusals	Withdrawals	Total number of people surrendered
2008-2009	97	84	67	40	0	1	61
2009-2010	118	65	63	30	1	3	49
2010-2011	132	71	58	16	1	6	61
2011-2012	117	93	72	31	0	2	81
2012-2013	101	95	66	34	3	6	65
2013-2014	53	49	43	34	1	7	58
2014-2015	47	53	38	29	1	5	52
2015-2016	44	34	30	29	0	2	41
2016-2017	40	35	32	21	1	6	49
2017-2018	49	47	38	23	0	2	35
TOTAL	798	626	507	287	8	40	552

 A CBC News report on the "High Rate of Canadian Extraditions" described the need for reform.  As Robert Currie, a professor of law at Dalhousie University, described the Canadian system, "Once you are sought for extradition, your goose is pretty much cooked."

Best chance of avoiding extradition before Minister issues Authority to Proceed

In the same table above, when we compare the "number of requests" to "ATPs issued" (Authority to Proceed), we discover that in 65% of cases an Authority to Proceed was granted.  In other words for a person facing extradition, the best chance of avoiding extradition (35%) comes before an ATP has been issued.  Unfortunately for Meng, On March 1, 2019, the Department of Justice issued a press release announcing:

Today, Department of Justice Canada officials issued an Authority to Proceed, formally commencing an extradition process in the case of Ms. Meng Wanzhou. 

The decision follows a thorough and diligent review of the evidence in this case. The Department is satisfied that the requirements set out by the Extradition Act for the issuance of an Authority to Proceed have been met and there is sufficient evidence to be put before an extradition judge for decision.

 

Who issues Authority to Proceed?  Justice Canada officials or the Minister?

While this press release makes anonymous "Department of Justice Canada officials" responsible for the issue of an Authority to Proceed, elsewhere the Ministry website seems clear that "The Minister of Justice must determine whether to authorize the commencement of extradition proceedings in the Canadian courts by issuing an 'Authority to Proceed'."  In other words, from December 1, 2018 to March 1, 2019, the Minister of Justice, in consultation with the International Assistance Group of the Canadian Department of Justice, had the option not to issue an "Authority to Proceed" and release Meng from house arrest.

Who issues provisional arrest warrant?  A judge or the Minister?

On December 12, 2018, Jody Wilson-Raybould issued a statement saying:  “As the Minister of Justice, I take my extradition responsibilities and obligations very seriously." In that statement Wilson-Raybould claims:

Ms. Meng was arrested pursuant to a provisional arrest warrant issued by a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia a procedure which is contemplated in both the Extradition Act and the Treaty on Extradition between Canada and the United States in circumstances where urgency has been established. The decision to seek a provisional arrest warrant from the court is made by Department of Justice officials without any political interference or direction.

However, what the Extradition Act says is:

The Minister may, after receiving a request by an extradition partner for the provisional arrest of a person, authorize the Attorney General to apply for a provisional arrest warrant 

And consequently:

A judge may, on ex parte application of the Attorney General, issue a warrant for the provisional arrest of a person

How could Wilson-Raybould claim that "a provisional arrest warrant was issued by a judge" in accordance with the Extradition Act, when the Act specifies that she as Minister of Justice was responsible for issue of the warrant?  As explained on the Public Prosecution Service of Canada website:

Extradition treaties do not themselves create an obligation or a power to arrest in Canada. They merely define the basis on which provisional arrest may be requested. The judicial power to order provisional arrest arises under section 13 of the Extradition Act, once the Minister of Justice approves the request for provisional arrest (section 12).

How could Wilson-Raybould claim that the decision was made "without political interference or direction" when the Act and the Public Prosecution Service confirm that "the Minister of Justice approves the request"?

In Canada EXTRADITION IS POLITICAL

I must admit I have started yelling that in Canada EXTRADITION IS POLITICAL.  (By the way, kudos to David Akin for sharing my rebuttal to his ANALYSIS on his Twitter feed.  What better way to contradict my claim that journalists were censuring the discussion than to forward a link to my post.  As of today, I can report that the post has been viewed 71 times.)

I have gone looking for an answer to the question:  When the Extradition Act says "the Minister" does the text really mean anonymous "Officials of the Department of Justice"?  I have not found an answer that I can quote here, other than the glossary of definitions at the beginning of the Act which states: "Minister means the Minister of Justice."  What I have found are repeated confirmations that in Canada extradition is political.

Justice Minister David Lametti has already confirmed, in an interview with the Star that

foreign affairs will be a factor if and when it comes time for him to make what he acknowledges is a political decision whether to extradite Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to the United States over China’s furious objections.

David Akin also confirms that

[ . . .] there will be an opportunity for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, through his justice minister, David Lametti, to intervene and, if they so choose, to block the extradition.But that opportunity comes much, much later, at the very end of the extradition proceeding.

 

The Shift from "it's not political" to "it's not political yet"

 The argument has shifted from "it's not political" to "it's not political yet." The problems with the new argument are numerous.  In the first place, someone should tell Minister of External Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, so she can stifle her strident claims that “When it comes to Ms Meng there has been no political interference ... and that is the right way for extradition requests to proceed.”

The second problem with the "let's do nothing now" approach, is that the extradition hearings in BC Supreme Court are not scheduled to start until January 2020.  The case will go on for at least two years, Canadians will languish in a Chinese prison, Canadian businesses and trade will suffer, and Canadian trade and relations with China may never fully recover.  As I commented at the beginning of the year: "if the naivety and Dudly-Do-Rightism of Canadian leadership allow the extradition hearings and detainment of Meng to continue for years, then the corporate objective of slowing down the competition will have been achieved--and the Government of Canada will have colluded in that corrupt undertaking."

The third problem with "let's wait" is that there is no legal, moral or practical reason to wait.  The Extradition Act states: "The Minister may at any time withdraw the authority to proceed and, if the Minister does so, the court shall discharge the person and set aside any order made respecting their judicial interim release or detention."  "At any time" includes right now.  If the Minister considers "all the relevant circumstances," as indicated in the law, the grounds for withdrawing the Authority to Proceed are numerous:  the original warrant is suspect, the request political, contrary to the Canadian Bill of Rights regarding nationality and ethnicity, no individual has been convicted of a crime in the USA for the behaviour of which Meng is accused (business in Iran), such behaviour is definitely not a crime in Canada, and, for obvious, practical reasons she will never be imprisoned in the USA as required by the Act and the Treaty on Extradition Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America.

The fourth problem with the passive, "wait and see," "let the judge decide" attitudes of our political leadership is they grossly overestimate the power of judges in extradition cases.  As the Supreme Court of Canada Judgement outlines in McVey versus the USA, "the role of the extradition judge is limited but important:  he or she must determine whether a prima facie case exists that the conduct of the fugitive constitutes an 'extradition crime' according to Canadian law."  In this "Judgement," the Justices make the point 15 separate times that the extradition judge has "limited" functions and "modest" powers.

The solution is political, but Canadian politicians play Pontius Pilat

The point here is that unlike the Minister of Justice who is tasked with considering "all the circumstances," the extradition judge is only tasked with considering whether or not what Meng has done looks, at first glance, like bank fraud--the extraditable offense of which she is accused.  However, the Supreme Court Justices have indicated that the extradition judge cannot investigate or consider American law.  Can she,  for example, consider the fact that no individual has ever been convicted of a crime in the USA for transgressing the Iran sanctions?  It appears not.  This responsibility falls to the Minister of Justice.  The historical statistics indicate that Meng has a 99% chance of being extradited.  This is so because of the limitations of an extradition hearing and limited powers of an extradition judge, and the reluctance of the Minister of Justice to act at the end of extradition hearings.

Supreme Court of Canada confirms Minister, not a judge, has the power 

The Supreme Court Justices make the point repeatedly that the extradition judge's powers are limited, but the Minister of Justice's powers are broad:

When a request is made, the political authorities in the requested state will examine the material to see that the request complies with these terms and conditions.  The treaties also make provision for the requesting state to supply certain material whereby the requested state can determine the validity of the request and its compliance with the terms and conditions of the treaty (see Art. 9 of the treaty here (Can. T.S. 1976 No. 3)), and it is reasonable that these are the materials to be looked at in determining the issue.  In essence, the treaty obligations are of a political character to be dealt with in the absence of statute by the political authorities.

          [ . . . .]

Nowhere is the duty to consider the foreign law assigned to the extradition judge.  This, as I mentioned, is a task for the political authorities at common law, now assigned by statute to the Minister of Justice.

          [ . . . .]

In Canada, the procedure, we saw, is more fluid, the case frequently coming before the extradition judge before the formal requisition has been made.  But the substance is the same; the Minister of Justice may at any time refuse to surrender and discharge the fugitive (s. 22 of the Act).

           [ . . . .]

the Extradition Act, which we saw only requires that there be prima facie evidence of an act that constitutes a crime listed in the treaty according to the law of Canada.  In fact, the Act does not deal with proof of foreign law at all.  That, as I said, is a matter for the executive.  (The executive, in Canada, means political representatives of the Queen, in particular the Prime Minister. See https://www.lawnow.org/democratic-governance-the-constitution-and-canadas-branches-of-government/).

           [ . . . .]

[ . . .] what is really important is that a person should not be surrendered to another country for conduct that is not considered a serious crime in the requested country.  

Canada and Canadians are facing a serious situation which requires political action.  We have to stop letting our politicians off the hook with delaying, "it's not political" arguments and require them to perform the duties for which they were elected.

Canadian Politicians Were Caught Like Deer in the Headlights, but Why Are Canadian Journalists Censuring any Discussion of the Merits of Meng's Case?

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."                                                                                 

                                                     Noam Chomsky         

HSBC, "the victim," doesn't want to prosecute

After the G20 summit, President Trump let it be known that he is backtracking on the Huawei ban. Bloomberg and the Financial Times are reporting that HSBC is telling Beijing "It Is Not to Blame for Huawei CFO Arrest."  Where does that leave us?  Let's see:  HSBC is, according to the Grand Jury indictment, supposed to be the victim of Meng Wanzhou's alleged bank fraud.  The only evidence against Meng, according to the indictment, is a meeting she had with an HSBC executive and an accompanying Power Point presentation.  If the "plaintiff" and the "victim" are backing away from the case, the original warrant suspect and the evidence thin to non-existent, what's left?

It's all about Richard Donoghue, a CA Tech employee

Why is Canada still holding Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei CFO, under arrest? Why is Canada accepting that Canadians are being held in a Chinese prison or facing execution?  Why is Canada accepting the blockade of Canadian shipments of canola, pork and beef?  Why is Canada accepting this extreme deterioration of our trade and relations with China?  The answer is:  "Richard Donoghue asked us to." Yes, Canada and Canadians are facing these dire consequences because Richard Donoghue, Chief Litigator for CA Technologies (a Huawei competitor, now owned by Broadcom) who became a US Attorney in 2018, is the individual who requested Meng's arrest and is requesting her extradition.

Do Canadian journalists do any research?

"Richard Donoghue": what a dumb answer, except that it's true.  Despite the apparent conflict of interest, Canada and Canadians are facing these consequences because Richard Donoghue asked us to. I understand that our Canadian politicians panicked when faced with the request to arrest Meng and were paralyzed with fear and indecision.   "Deer in the headlights" is a very apt analogy.  Later they would have to come up with justifications for their paralysis and spread the nonsense claims that extradition is a "judicial, non-political" affair and we are "following the rule of law"--claims that are easily refuted by simply having a look at the relevant 14 pages of the  Canadian Extradition Act (pages 11 to 15 and 40 to 48).  Bizarrely, politicians of every political stripe lined up behind them without a single example of anyone looking at the details of the case or the law.  However, what continues to baffle and confound me is the refusal of Canadian journalists to allow any serious discussion of the case, in particular, the merits of Meng's defence.

Is the Meng arrest justified according to Canadian law?

Last week I watched a "rebroadcast" on CBC News of Natasha Fatah hosting a panel of three commentators to discuss Canada-China relations.  "How is it possible," I asked myself, "for four journalists to discuss current Canada-China relations, and never get around to the facts (let alone the legality) of our arresting and holding Meng Wanzhou?"

David Akin of Global News seemed to offer some hope of an open discussion with his "ANALYSIS: Trudeau cannot just order Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou to go free — or can he?"   Those three words-- "or can he?"-- are the nearest I have seen to any Canadian journalist opening up discussion of the grounds for Meng's release.  However the "analysis" turns out to be the usual diatribe designed to close down any rational dialogue.  Although Akin begins by noting that former Prime Minister Jean Chretien has joined John McCallum in discussing the possibility of releasing Meng Wanzhou, he then quotes University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran that “I think it’s shocking. [ . . . .] I think that’s absolutely inappropriate. If they want to make those comments, run for office again.”

Who in Canada is allowed to question Meng's arrest?

Take note of the Catch 22.  We have been told that elected officials and their appointees are not allowed to comment (on the grounds that "politicians" and their appointees cannot comment on "judicial" affairs).  Now we are being told that you have to be elected to comment.  Once you have eliminated both the elected and the un-elected, who's left?  We have to wonder, who is this Amir Attaran, who would have us believe that no-one is allowed to discuss the arrest or release of Meng Wanzhou?  According to his Wikipedia page, Amir Attaran has had a very distinguished legal career. He is an American-born Iranian who specializes in medical and environment cases.  Why is a medical/environment lawyer being asked to comment on an extradition case?

We get an answer to this question by reading to the bottom of Attaran's Wikipedia page, where we discover: "In 2013, Attaran accused Peter MacKay of falsely alleging that Justin Trudeau committed a crime by smoking marijuana."  And, when Attaran launch a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against the Canadian Research Chair program  "The government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sided with Attaran [ . . .].

Finally the questions is asked:  and the answer is . . . 

Akin asks the rhetorical question "Why suffer all that pain? Why not just send Meng back to China?" Then answers:  "But we cannot. At least, not right now. Because in Canada, like most western democracies and not — this cannot be stressed enough — like China, politicians cannot simply phone up a judge and order that an accused person be set free."  The folksy tone makes this claim sound like an obvious truth, but it is an absolute falsehood.  This is what the Extradition Act actually says:

Withdrawal of the authority to proceed 

 (3) The Minister may at any time withdraw the authority to proceed and, if the Minister does so, the court shall discharge the person and set aside any order made respecting their judicial interim release or detention.

According to Canadian law, extradition is a political decision

"The Minister" in this case is Minister of Justice.  So yes, a politician, according to the law, can put an end to these proceedings and have Meng released "at any time."

Akin claims that

Meng’s case is right now: before Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes of the British Columbia Supreme Court. 

If Holmes does eventually rule that Canada should honour the extradition request by the United States — which has charged Meng with fraud in association with alleged violations of Huawei on American sanctions on trading with Iran — and surrender her to American authorities, there will be an opportunity for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, through his justice minister, David Lametti, to intervene and, if they so choose, to block the extradition.

There is some truth in this claim, but it seems to deliberately get the chronology of events and responsibilities upside down. The Extradition Act specifies that

The Minister may, after receiving a request by an extradition partner for the provisional arrest of a person, authorize the Attorney General to apply for a provisional arrest warrant, if the Minister is satisfied that  

(a) the offence in respect of which the provisional arrest is requested is punishable in accordance with paragraph 3(1)(a); [i.e., that the crime is punishable by two years of imprisonment] 

and (b) the extradition partner will make a request for the extradition of the person.

As the Justice Committee hearings on SNC-Lavalin revealed, we have an odd situation in Canada in which the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General are the same person.  The Lavalin scandal was about the fact that the government was putting pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould in her role as Attorney General.  Minister of Justice is a political office, distinct from the Attorney General.

Consider how this single paragraph of the law contradicts so much of what we have been told about the Meng case.  First, extraditions are clearly and explicitly political decisions in Canada.  Second, the Minister of Justice is the first to receive a request for extradition (and it is "a request"; so much for "we had no choice").  Third, the Minister of Justice authorizes the arrest, not a judge.  Fourth, once the Minister of Justice has given the authorization, the Attorney General can instruct a provincial judge (in this case ACJ Heather Holmes) to issue the arrest warrant.  What Akin's claim gets right is that the Minister of Justice can intervene "at any time," including after ACJ Holmes has made her decision.

 How can any Canadian claim we are "following the law"?

The law is explicit:

Powers of the Minister

Assurances et conditions 

(3) The Minister may seek any assurances that the Minister considers appropriate from the extradition partner, or may subject the surrender to any conditions that the Minister considers appropriate,

Not only does the law make it plain that the Minister of Justice (a politician) is responsible for the extradition, it lays out the specific circumstances in which a request for extradition is to be refused:

Reasons for Refusal

order not to be made 

 44 (1) The Minister shall refuse to make a surrender order if the Minister is satisfied that 

(a) the surrender would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances; or

(b) the request for extradition is made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, language, colour, political opinion, sex, sexual orientation, age, mental or physical disability or status or that the person’s position may be prejudiced for any of those reasons.

When order not to be made  

 46 (1) The Minister shall refuse to make a surrender order if the Minister is satisfied that  

[ . . . .]

(c) the conduct in respect of which extradition is sought is a political offence or an offence of a political character

And finally:

48 (1) If the Minister decides not to make a surrender order, the Minister shall order the discharge of the person.

Ignoring the law, then bragging about our "unwavering insistence of the rule of law"

Without a single citation from the law or even mention of the Canadian Extradition Act, Akin concludes:

Canada is a nation of laws with a fully independent judiciary to interpret and enforce those laws. Full stop. 

And the nations of the world — Chretien and McCallum, notwithstanding — can take inspiration and comfort from Canada’s unwavering insistence on the rule of law.

Petrodollar Warfare: Understanding the US Obsession with Iran

First invasion of Iraq 1991

When the USA was planning its first invasion of Iraq, a young Kuwaiti nurse testified before Congress  describing Iraqi soldiers pulling infants out of their incubators and tossing them on the floor.  The "nurse" turned out to be a princess of the Kuwaiti royal family, and her testimony pure fiction. However, her story created the needed public support for the invasion.

Second invasion of Iraq 2003

As the USA was preparing its second invasion of Iraq, Colin Powell was tasked with presenting "irrefutable" evidence that Saddam Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction.  Powell's presentation together with the totally fatuous belief, held by some Americans, that Hussein was responsible for 9/11 were sufficient to once again garner support for a war against Iraq.  As is well known at this point, the proclaimed purpose of the war was baseless--no WMDs or facilities were found.

USA preparing for war in Iran

As the USA once again prepares to go to war in the Middle East, this time against Iran, perhaps it's time to ask why.  What is the "real" reason the USA is about to invade Iran?  The answer is for the same reason the USA invaded Iraq:  petrodollars.  There are hundreds of sites on the internet which will give you a more detailed, sophisticated description and expert explanation of petrodollars than I will give you here.  As usual, I am shocked by my own ignorance.  However . . .

Petrodollars are basically another name for American dollars, but to understand the significance of this simple fact we need a primer on how money works.  Imagine you are looking at a house and the price is one million USD.  We always think in terms of what the house or the product or the service is worth in terms of money, but we rarely ask "What is $1,000,000 worth?"

Prior to the 1970s it was easy to say what one American dollar was worth, because the USA promised to maintain a stockpile of gold and every American dollar was backed up by that gold.  However in the early 70s the USA was no longer able to maintain a sufficient amount of gold to back up the amount of money they were spending on the Vietnam War.  Richard Nixon announced that the US dollar was no longer on the gold standard.

How the "gold standard" became the "petrodollar"

Keep in mind that money, the US dollar, for example, is physically just paper or pixels--pretty worthless.   The challenge for the USA was:  How do you make your money worth something when you don't have the gold or resources or anything else to back up the trillions and trillions of dollars you want to create and spend?   The answer is that the USA made a deal with the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia--the largest oil producing country in the world.  "We will buy your oil and provide you with military protection against any and all your enemies.  In return, you agree to only sell your oil for American dollars."  Eventually, all the OPEC countries signed on to the same deal.  Over time, virtually all oil transactions world-wide would come to be conducted using American dollars.

Why is an American dollar worth something even in China or Japan or Sweden or Australia?  Because you are going to need American dollars if you want to buy oil, and every industrialized country in the world needs oil (so far).  Oil remains the most valuable resource on the planet. From an American perspective this means you can print paper money and produce pixel dollars, endlessly running up deficits and debts, but you don't have to worry about your money losing its value because virtually every country in the world has a vested interest in maintaining the value of the US dollar because they have some and they need them to buy oil.

As William Clark puts it in Petrodollar Warfare, "No longer backed by gold, the dollar became backed by black gold."  The irony is, of course, that the American dollar isn't backed by American oil; it's backed by oil from other countries.  What happens if some countries and some oil producers decide that they want to start buying and selling oil in a currency other than American dollars?

Military defense of oil, the USD and the petrodollar seems inevitable

The USA is the largest debtor nation in the world.  The USA spends more on its defense and runs larger deficits than any other country in the world.  The economy of the USA (including the strength of its military) depends on oil, the US dollar, and the connection between these two.  If you are still wondering why the USA invaded Iraq in 2003, as Williams points out: "On September 24, 2000, Saddam Hussein emerged from a meeting of his government and proclaimed that Iraq would soon transition its oil export transactions to the euro currency."

Iran has also announced its intention to sell oil for Euros and other currencies--as has Venezuela.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWtIu7mbnbM&feature=youtu.be

Is Education the Answer to Economic Inequality? Not in the USA.

Education can't solve economic inequality

When my guru forwarded Nick Hanauer's article in The Atlantic, "Better Schools Won't Fix America," I devoured it enthusiastically.  Hanauer, a wealthy American philanthropist, with considerable credentials as a patron of education in the USA, was disavowing the dogma that education can erase the income gap--a dogma he calls "educationalism."  Hanauer's criticism of his  cohorts in the 1% is scalding.  "Educationalism," Hanauer writes, "appeals to the wealthy and powerful because it tells us what we want to hear: that we can help restore shared prosperity without sharing our wealth or power."

Global education versus American education

The article does not devalue education, but debunks a generalized notion that education alone can solve economic inequality.  His argument, in a nutshell, is that "great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around."  However, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which is arguably the Bible for crusaders against income inequality,  Thomas Piketty, argues that "the poor catch up with the rich to the extent that they achieve the same level of technological know-how, skill and education, [ . . .]."

The world's poor and the American lower middle class

How can we rectify this shared preoccupation with wealth inequality leading to such different conclusions?  The simple answer is that Hanauer is talking about the USA  (once known as the land of opportunity) and Piketty's perspective is global.  As Steve Pinker observes, in Enlightenment Now, "the world's poor have gotten richer in part at the expense of the American lower middle class."

"The American lower middle class" (whom Pinker identifies as the Trump constituency) were exactly the people who were ill prepared to take advantage of globalization.  In contrast, highly educated individuals from emerging economies, whose expertise, skills and products easily crossed national boundaries or flourished in cyberspace, enriched not only themselves but their home countries as well.

Education and the classroom

The American vision of education (which tends to be shared by most Canadians) is that it begins and ends in the classroom.  The classroom, if you stop and think about it, is a very poor learning environment.  A lot has to happen outside the classroom if the education which is initiated there is going take hold and have any effect.

Money isn't usually the purpose of an education

Economic advantage is rarely the unique objective of education, but most people, quite rightly, expect  economic stability, if not affluence, to be a beneficial side effect of an education.  That expectation is frequently disappointed.  The problem is that cost effectiveness and capital gains (in every sense of these terms) have come to dominate the thinking of both educational institutions and some individual educators.  When everyone is asking "What's in it for me?" the average student is left out in the cold.

The simple solution

Hanuaer's got it right that putting more wealth into the hands of Americans in the bottom half of the socio-economic ladder is the obvious, Occam's-razor solution to wealth inequality.  He's also right that education in the USA would improve if more American families were empowered with the affluence, influence and the confidence to make themselves part of the educational process, rather than turning over the young of America to schools and universities in the vain hope that education will just happen, and the future will, magically, be richer and brighter than the past.

On Reading "The National Inquiry Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls"

The National Inquiry Report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual people

Reactions to Reclaiming Power and Place, the title of the National Inquiry Report, have ranged from angry sarcasm to pious platitudes.  I thought there would be lots of room in the middle ground for a reasoned, dispassionate if sympathetic reading.  I had heard numerous declarations that all Canadians should read and educate themselves from this report.  I, therefore, gave myself the task of reading the 1200-page report, the 300-page Quebec supplement, and the 50-page executive summary.





When I was done, my immediate reaction tended toward angry sarcasm.  I had to remind myself of the experience of working on a large research project (though nothing in the order of magnitude of the National Inquiry) where the end result was a hodgepodge which failed to satisfy anyone's vision of what the project was meant to accomplish.

How are the victims served by this report?

It is a bit of a fib (an "exaggeration" if you will) to say I "read" the entire report.  I looked at every page until I understood its general content, stopping to read further when an entry struck me as directly relevant to the fates of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.  With the exception of the testimony of grieving relatives, I was in awe of how infrequently I could see a direct connection between the content of the report and what happened to victimized Indigenous women.  The burning question for me was "How does this report benefit the cohort of Indigenous women who have been and will be victimized?"

Who will read this report?

Despite Prime Minister Trudeau's claim that "this report will not sit on a shelf, gathering dust," my impression was that the report was designed to be ignored.*  Who, other than someone like me (a retired nerd with a PhD who blogs as a hobby), is ever going to read this 1550-page report. On page 199 of Volume 1b, the inquiry calls "on all Canadians to:  [ . . . ] Develop knowledge and read the Final Report."  How seriously can we take the "call to justice" to "read the Final Report" when that "call" appears after we have read 920 pages of the Report we are being called to read?

The purpose of the National Inquiry?

The only part of the Report which attempts to provide comprehensive data on what happened to the victimized women and how the criminal justice system dealt with their cases is Annex 1 of Volume 1b, the "Forensic Document Review Project," which runs from pages 233 to 276--that is, the last 43 pages of the 1550-page report.  In this section of the Report we learn:

Over the course of its review, the FDRP identified the following significant issues: 

1. There is no reliable estimate of the numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA persons in Canada.
2. The two Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) reports dated 2014 and 2015 on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls identify narrow and incomplete causes of homicides of Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
3. The often-cited statistic that Indigenous men are responsible for 70% of murders of Indigenous women and girls is not factually based.
4. Virtually no information was found with respect to either the numbers or causes of missing and murdered Métis and Inuit women and girls and Indigenous 2SLGBTQQIA persons. 

Unfortunately, for me and, I suspect, for most Canadians, the reason for the Inquiry's existence was to find answers to these issues, and obviously these questions remain unanswered.  Instead of a dedicated pursuit of answers to these questions, the Inquiry concluded:

The truths shared in these National Inquiry hearings tell the story – or, more accurately, thousands of stories – of acts of genocide against First Nations, Inuit and Métis women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.

"Cultural genocide" versus genocide

I think it is reasonable to ask how the inquiry can claim, on one hand, that there is little to no accurate, factual information about what happened to these women and, on the other hand, to conclude that these women were victims of "acts of genocide"?  The obvious answer is that the genocide conclusion has little or nothing to do with the findings of the Inquiry but was simply a foregone conclusion based on the already known 150-year history of the relationship between the government of Canada and its Indigenous peoples.

The 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee concluded that

For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Indigenous policy were to eliminate Indigenous governments; ignore Indigenous rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Indigenous peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”

Doubtlessly, the National Inquiry was compelled to move beyond this "cultural genocide" accusation in order to avoid the criticism of its harshest critics that its work would be redundant.  There had already been some 40 reports on Canada's Indigenous peoples and certainly the Harper Conservative government had argued that a 41st report would not reach any significantly new conclusions.

Additionally, "cultural genocide" has been debated in and ultimately not recognized by the United Nations. The Inquiry's Chief Commissioner, Marion Buller confirmed, in an interview on Power and Politics, that the claim of genocide was a strategy to compel various levels of government to take emergency measures and supply funding for the Inquiry's recommended projects. So far, the Inquiry's 231 recommendations, most of which require additional government funding, together with the accusation of a Canadian genocide against Indigenous women, seem most likely to engender a populist backlash against government support of First Nations rather than effective leverage.  The sympathy of the Canadian population for missing and murdered Indigenous women has, arguably,  been squandered.

Enfranchisement and assimilation deemed genocide

In his monograph, Indigenous Nationals, Canadian Citizens, Thomas Courchene describes "competing models in play in terms of approaching the relationship of Indigenous peoples to the Canadian state."  According to Courchene, "The first of these models is [. . .]  'enfranchisement,' namely converting Indians to regular Canadians, [ . . .] . At the other end of the spectrum is [. . .] an Indigenous-to-Crown relationship that can be characterized as 'institutionalized parallelism,' e.g., separate parliaments and Indigenous delivery of provincial-type services. Neither of these is acceptable; the first because it is now constitutionally impossible, and the second because, among other reasons, it would be prohibitively expensive."

Seemingly the National Inquiry has decided to label the first model as "genocide" and advocate for the second: greater independence and autonomy for First Nations, together with additional government funding and accommodation from non-native Canadians. The Inquiry's extensive recommendations seem, at first glance, highly impractical--certainly there is no discussion of potential costs.  More striking for me, is that the Report offers little evidence or even theoretical argument that the expenditures they are recommending would specifically and effectively redress the victimization of Indigenous women and girls.

Assumptions of cause and effect

The underlying assumption of Reclaiming Power and Place is that if the problems of poverty, education, health care, culture and identity within native communities, and the lack of understanding of police, health-care providers, social workers and institutions outside native communities were corrected, the fates of the Indigenous victims could have been and can be avoided.  These counterfactual claims may, in fact, be valid, but one would hope that the commissioners would offer something more than an underlying, unquestioned general assumption.  Personally, I remain unconvinced that "culture and identity" (pages 327 to 338 of Vol. 1a)  or the promotion of Indigenous arts and crafts (pages 53 to 74 of Vol. 1b) will address the problems of young women who have been sexually abused and murdered both inside and out of their Indigenous communities.  I remain deeply skeptical that the return of "lost traditions" is a solution for young Indigenous women facing alienation, anomie and abuse in their home communities. (See Be Yourself!  Is This Really Good Advice?)

Gynocentrism:  Pros and cons

I understand the commissioners' perspective that global, large-scale solutions are necessary even though the Inquiry's purpose was understood to be (at least in the popular imagination) the very precise and concrete question of what happened to more than a thousand (if not thousands of) missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.  However, rather than a global approach, the commissioners very deliberately opted for a gynocentric focus, making the inquiry dominantly about women's pursuit of answers to problems being encountered by women, and solutions, including governance, to be found in the empowerment of women.  This approach seems laudatory, except that an obvious source, if not the source, of the problems being faced by Indigenous women is Indigenous men.

Although the Inquiry dismissed the claim "that Indigenous men are responsible for 70% of murders of Indigenous women and girls" as "not factually based," the Report offered no contradictory evidence.  In Annex 1 of Reclaiming Power and Place it is noted that in 100% of the 26 solved homicides of  Indigenous women from 2013-14 "the offender was known to the victim."

The Inquiry's response is:

In our view, the RCMP’s reliance on such a small number of cases creates an unreliable basis upon which to focus policy. A focus on spousal violence, on the basis of flawed statistics, has resulted in an erroneously narrow focus on Indigenous men as the perpetrators of violence against Indigenous women and girls, and neglects other significant patterns in relation to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.

However, the Inquiry has also adopted a very narrow focus.  The Report only gives a little more than a single page to "some men, who are also former perpetrators, [who] came forward to share their story"  (Vol.1b page 37).  The Inquiry decried negative stereotypes of Indigenous peoples and, clearly, did not want the Report to provide fodder for those stereotypes.  However, truth and transparency cannot be achieved if there is an unwillingness to incisively investigate specific cases.  Much of the Report is about grieving and "healing," compassionate objectives we should all support but, at the same time, we have to acknowledge that the purpose of an inquiry is to inquire rather than console.  Numerous testimonies within the Report are impressionistic accounts of dealings with police and health services.  The failure of police to pursue missing-persons cases, the arresting or threatening of the victims in domestic-abuse complaints, the kidnapping and rape of Indigenous women by police officers are all cases which should be thoroughly and objectively investigated and exposed.  The failure of hospitals to provide death certificates to the families of victims is an egregious failure and should be investigated and reported upon in detail.  However, in these instances, the Inquiry apparently took as its role the support and consoling of the victims and their families, rather than the investigation of the details of each case.  The Inquiry rightly criticized the negative stereotyping of Indigenous peoples but, at the same time, has promulgated negative stereotypes of every police office, teacher, health-care worker,  and social worker who has ever dealt with Indigenous individuals--not to mention branding every Canadian family that has fostered or adopted an Indigenous child as perpetrators of genocide.

Theories of causality

Criminology provides numerous theories and empirical data linking crime, poverty and race.  The Inquiry seems to have taken the general tenor of these theories of causation as a priori fact without much review of the available literature and without specifying a particular theory they were adhering to.  Obviously, there could be no empirical study of causes, if the Inquiry had decided at the outset not to investigate Indigenous perpetrators and, by extension, not to investigate perpetrators period.  It is worth noting that the Inquiry's theory of causation is unique.  Genocide is criminal but, beyond that, it is the underlying theory and conclusion of the Inquiry that genocide caused the crimes without being the crime.  In other words, the Report does not provide a single example of the murderer of an Indigenous woman being motivated by genocide but, nonetheless, concludes that the murders were precipitated by genocide.

Untold stories

Is it heartlessness, a total lack of compassion, to be critical of a Report which was such an outpouring of tragedy and emotion?  I return to my overarching question:  "Will this Report benefit young Indigenous women?"  It is disheartening to read in the Statistics Canada  Report on Homicide that in 2017, when the National Inquiry was at the peak of its activities,  38 Aboriginal women were victims of homicide, an increase of 32% compared to 2016. In 2017, 118 Indigenous males were victims of homicide.  According to the Statistics Canada Report,  18% of Indigenous homicides were considered to be gang related.  Indigenous women were 6 times more likely to be the victims of homicide than non-indigenous women, and Indigenous persons were 12 times more likely to be the accused in a homicide investigation than non-indigenous persons.  In terms of missing-persons reports, according to Statistics Canada, "[t]he proportion of victims reported as being missing prior to the incident being identified as a homicide was similar whether the victim was Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal (9% and 7%, respectively)."  The National Inquiry's concern for the fragility and healing of witnesses, together with the narrow focus and self-fulfilling prophesy of genocide, left many potential avenues of investigation and consideration untouched.

Alternative solutions

Claims of Indigenous perpetrators and criminality in Indigenous communities in no way contradict the indictments of the National Inquiry Report that we must all stand behind and support Indigenous persons and communities as they deal with cycles of violence and incomprehension.   Unfortunately, claims of a Canadian genocide put the question of perpetrators, intentions and motives foremost in Canadian minds. The challenge, which has been recognized since the 1970s  (as opposed to assimilation as the only option in 19th-century thinking), is how to offer Indigenous communities and individuals both independence and support at the same time.  A first step, as Courchene suggests in Indigenous Nationals, Canadian Citizens, is to recognize how the Canadian state systematically undermines the economic development of Indigenous communities.  As Courchene points out, "Canadians tend to lay the blame for the dire straits of most of the reserves at the feet of the Indians"; however, as a matter of "federal policy," Indigenous people do not have property rights over the reservation land where they live.  Consequently, "banks are most reticent in providing loans for capital investment or for mortgages because the Indian Act legally restricts banks from seizing and selling the asset in the event of default."  The possibilities of economic development without venture capital are negligible to nil; hence the endless cycle of government subsidies which always fall short of ending poverty.  Courchene comments:

It is incomprehensible that Canada and Canadians have allowed this federal instrument of mass impoverishment to reign so long over the hundreds of Canada’s First Nations reserves.  (Italics in the original)

Recognizing that smaller reserves have neither the population nor the resources to be financially viable, Courchene proposes a Commonwealth of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, modeled on the existing "Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nation [ . . .] the representative body of the seventy-four First Nations in Saskatchewan."   An Indigenous commonwealth could be provincial or inter-provincial or, ideally, pan-Canadian, and it would give united Indigenous peoples the possibility of economic development.  If poverty and discrimination and lack of independence are the underlying causes of criminality and the deaths of Indigenous women and girls, then here is a large-scale, revolutionary approach worth considering.

Footnote

*Courchene's comment, in Indigenous Nationals, Canadian Citizens, on the 1991-1996 Royal Commission of Aboriginal Peoples paralleled my thoughts on no-one reading Reclaiming Power and Place:

Entitled People to People, Nation to Nation, RCAP consisted of five volumes, 440 recommendations (over a thousand if one includes sub-recommendations), 80,000 pages of hearings and 250 commissioned research papers.  Intriguingly, because it was so encyclopedic, not only did it defy summarizing, but it also ensured that no core message could emerge.

Consequently, the prevailing view was that the Chrétien government "more or less ignored the RCAP."

Courchene, Thomas J.. Indigenous Nationals, Canadian Citizens (Queen's Policy Studies Series) (p. 6-7). MQUP. Kindle Edition.