How ‘identity’ trumps public safety in Canadian criminal sentencing

Violent crime is up almost everywhere across Canada, and is now 30 per cent higher than it was just 10 years ago. This is in addition to staggering rises in several categories of property crime, with Canada now officially ranking as one of the world’s worst countries for auto theft.

A big part of the problem is a justice system that is wholly unable to keep chronic offenders off the streets for more than a few months at a time. Just this month, the group International Downtown Association Canada said that Canadian small businesses are under siege by “repeat offenders.” They join mayors, premiers and any number of police forces who have similarly said that the singular driver of crime across the country is criminals being freed to commit more crimes.

Below is a gallery of examples from just the last few weeks of what this looks like in practice. Four offenders who faced judgement for severe and even deadly crimes, all of whom were handed light sentences with the reasoning that it wasn’t really their fault.

No jail time for fatally stabbing a random senior, judge cites Indigenous identity

On the afternoon of Dec.15, 2020, 27-year-old Anthony Woods left his room at Vancouver’s The Biltmore, a 95-room low-barrier homeless shelter. He was drunk and on drugs, and began screaming and pounding doors as he made his way to the elevator.

This apparently upset a 72-year-old man in the elevator named Alex Gortmaker, who confronted Woods. Woods reacted by producing a knife, stabbing Gortmaker in the chest, and then pushing him out of the elevator to bleed to death on the floor.

As this goes to press less than four years later, Woods is already out of prison; he was given a conditional sentence earlier this month. All told, the crime will have netted him just eight months in jail given than he’s been on bail through most of the interim.  

Murder in Canada all comes with a mandatory prison sentence; 10 years for second-degree, 25 years for first-degree. But this crime wasn’t categorized as a murder, it was manslaughter.

And in handing out one of the lightest possible sentences for manslaughter, Provincial Court Judge R.P. Harris cites everything from Woods’ ADHD to his unstable childhood to his intoxication at the time to his Indigenous background to the history of the Edmonton Indian Residential School, that some of his family members attended.

It’s a federal requirement for sentencing judges to consider these things, particularly when the offender is Indigenous. As a result, most of the sentencing decision is a detailed biography of Woods’ life and family history. “Mr. Woods recalls playing with cousins, picking berries and learning how to cut and jar fish,” reads one section about how his summers were spent as a child.

The decision does contain a victim impact statement from the family of the man Woods killed, but it takes up just 200 words out of a decision running to 8,500 words. Gortmaker’s niece is given a couple paragraphs to say that “she is haunted with nightmares; that going outside fills her with anxiety” and “that her foundation of trust and empathy has been lost.”

Repeat offender given lighter sentence after criminality blamed on Arab background

Saeed Abbas’s entire adult life has been a string of crimes, brief prison sentences and parole violations. In a criminal record spanning 25 years, the 44-year-old has racked up 25 convictions (ranging from arson to car theft), and 22 breaches of parole.

He was in a Kelowna court this month facing charges related to his most recent crime spree: Five months of break-ins, fraud offences and car thefts. The crimes cited included at least five break-ins, four stolen cars, and several spending sprees with stolen wallets. When police caught him in the midst of breaking into a Mercedes Benz dealership, he had a loaded, illegal gun on him.

For all this, the Crown is recommending a maximum sentence of two years – well short of the more than 10 years that this kind of crime spree could technically yield.

The news website Castanet covered the sentencing hearing, and found that everyone in the room – from the judge to the Crown to the defense — agreed on the fact that the crimes aren’t entirely Abbas’s fault because he’s he has an Arab background and has Muslim parents.

A pre-sentence report said Abbas had been driven to criminality by racism and poverty, and also noted his various mental health and addiction problems.

“The Crown certainly takes no issue with the fact that Mr. Abbas’s personal experiences as a Muslim Canadian would have undoubtedly played a role in him coming before the court today,” said the prosecutor.

Five years for killing a man at a homeless shelter because offender is mentally ill

The central crime in this case is remarkably similar to the Anthony Woods case described above: A minor confrontation at a homeless shelter that escalates to murder.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 3, 2022 at Edmonton’s Herb Jamieson Shelter, resident Thomas Gignac stumbled on his way back from the bathroom. This woke up fellow resident Stanley Jago, who brutally attacked Gignac until he suffered a fatal seizure.

In sharp contrast to Woods — who did express remorse for stabbing Alex Gortmaker — Jago’s trial featured the accused throwing punches at sheriffs, threatening members of the court and claiming he didn’t do it. Jago was also on probation at the time he killed Gignac, having been convicted for indecent exposure.

In late August, Jago was sentenced to five years in prison. When accounting for his pre-trial custody, this means he’ll be out within a year.

The sentencing decision doesn’t delve too much into Jago’s background, in part because he isn’t Indigenous and thus isn’t subject to Gladue principles requiring sentencing judges to consider his personal circumstances.

Jago is of Haitian descent and was raised by a wealthy adoptive family in B.C. A sentencing judge didn’t once mention race in the decision, but the document makes clear that Jago is getting a lighter sentence because his severe mental health problems reduce his “moral blameworthiness” for the crime.

“When mental illness contributes to the commission of an offence, general deterrence will be a less important consideration because a mentally ill offender is not a suitable exemplar to dissuade other members of the public from similar conduct,” reads the decision, written by Court of King’s Bench Justice Anna Loparco.

The decision is open about the fact that although Jago has expressed an “intention to change,” once he’s free it’s unlikely he will be able to keep up with treatments to keep his mental illness in check. “I am uncertain of his prospects to follow through once released, even with a probation order,” it reads.

Nevertheless, while manslaughter can result in a life sentence, five years was deemed “fit and proper” in Jago’s case. “Understanding the root cause of his criminality, and finding ways to address it, is in my view, the key to the long-term protection of society,” wrote the judge.

“Traumatic” childhood helps yield just three years for a fatal random attack

The random killing of former CBC producer Michael Finlay was one of the most high-profile examples in a string of deadly stranger attacks that made headlines through the winter of 2022/2023. Finlay, a 73-year-old cancer survivor, was walking along Toronto’s Danforth Avenue in January 2023 when – without provocation – he was violently pushed to the ground.

Finlay broke ribs, suffered a punctured lung, and was plunged into a series of cascading medical problems that killed him shortly after.

As with all the other killings on this list, the charge was manslaughter. And last month, the serial offender convicted of Finlay’s death was given a sentence of just three years. With time served, he’ll be out by the fall of 2025.

At the time he shoved Finlay, Robert Cropearedwolf, 43, had a string of criminal convictions dating back to 1995 – and occurring everywhere from Alberta to Ontario to at least five U.S. states. This included at least five convictions for violent crime, including domestic assault.

Cropearedwolf is Indigenous, so his sentencing had to consider his personal and family history; a pre-sentence report said his forced removal from a mother with substance abuse problems was an example of the Sixties Scoop.

One of Finlay’s friends, Lesley Krueger, would challenge the notion of Cropearedwolf’s traumatic background as having driven his criminality. In a victim impact statement she said, “There are large numbers of Aboriginal people, Black people and people of all sorts of backgrounds who have had very dreadful times and most of them don’t hurt people.” (National Post, October 19, 2024)