Who Is Worthy of Constitutional Protection? A Commentary on Ewert v Canada
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-21-2018
Keywords
Indigenous prisoners, corrections, Charter, Ewert v Canada, constitutional protection
Abstract
On June 13, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruled in Ewert v Canada [2018 SCC 30] that by assessing the risk level presented by Indigenous prisoners with tools verified only on non-Indigenous individuals, Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) failed to meet their statutory duty under s. 24 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA) to utilize only accurate information in their risk assessments. The Court stated that CSC has a duty to account for the systemic discrimination Indigenous people undergo in the criminal justice system, in general, and in prisons, in particular. However, the SCC found that, despite utilizing tools that may be discriminatory towards Indigenous individuals, there was no violation of Charter rights. This result perpetuates an ugly truth about Canada’s democracy: constitutional protection does not apply the same to everyone.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Adelina Iftene, “Who is worthy of constitutional protection? A Commentary on Ewert v Canada” (21 June 2018), online (blog): Robson Crim Legal Blog: Canada’s Criminal Law Blawg < https://www.robsoncrim.com/single-post/2018/06/21/Who-is-worthy-of-constitutional-protection-A-Commentary-on-Ewert-v-Canada > [perma.cc/ZK6B-CM9Q].
