I don't know how to turn that function off in mine. So we may get a little things every now and then. Everyone, we will give a couple of more minutes for people to join us in the room, but thank you all who've already come in. Let's see, we're at about 22 people who've joined us. Which is great. A couple more people coming in. Give another minute or two. Recognize some names in here. Great. Hope everyone is warm and cozy tonight after all this mess of weather we've had today. Let's give another minute or so and then we'll get started. Robert, I didn't hear our music. It's OK. That's all right. I've got my playlist here. We can maybe put it on at the end. All right. Well, we're coming up to about five minutes after. I think it's probably a good time to start and I'm guessing others will join us as we go along. Good evening, everyone. My name is Michelle Williams and I'm joined by a panelist here, Brandon Roll, David Curry and Robert Wright, as you can see. Unfortunately, something has come up that Professor Maria Duga is not able to join us, but she has very generously shared her notes and things with us, so I will do my best to express her thoughts, although we will certainly miss her as an expert in this area tonight. So first of all, I want to welcome you on behalf of the Criminal Justice Coalition here at the Schulich School of Law. And also, I'll introduce momentarily the panelists in a little more detail, but just to let you know that if you do go on to the social media pages for the Criminal Justice Coalition, the Instagram, you will find Facebook, you will find more detailed biographies. I'm not going to share everything about people's backgrounds here tonight just to give you some highlights. And I want to thank Professor Adelina F10A for both her leadership with the Criminal Justice Coalition and working with students and others and faculty in really expanding our offerings around criminal justice here at the Schulich School of Law. So I appreciate her leadership and her invitation for us to join you tonight. So just to get us started with some introductions, I'm going to start with David Curry, who's here with us tonight, who is a member of the African Nova Scotian community in Lakeel and the Lisigig, if I said that right, Bear River First Nation community. And again, I'm giving you a truncated version, so I recommend the full bio to everybody. But he worked for several years as a staff lawyer with both Legal Aid Ontario and Nova Scotia Legal Aid. And since 2017, has been a crown attorney with the Public Prosecution Service of Nova Scotia, and he works out of the Digby office there. So a little bit about Mr. Curry. Thank you for being with us. I am going to give you a little idea about Professor Jigai. Even in her absence, because she's done extraordinary work in this area. So she is also a graduate of Schulich School of Law, an article that Nova Scotia Legal Aid. She did both her JD and master's degree at the Schulich School of Law. And she was the first African Nova Scotian person to clerk at the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal. She started her work as an assistant professor in 2019 tenure track. And she teaches a torts, Legal Research and Writing, Intro to Legal Ethics, and Copyright Law. And her research interests are in the intersection of race and criminal justice. And she's a leading academic expert on IRCAS. And her research and analysis was relied upon by the ANSD-PED Coalition in their intervention in the Anderson decision, which we'll talk about more later. The next person is Brandon Roll, who's here with us tonight. Also a proud graduate associated with the IBM Initiative, which I'll mention a little bit later as well. He joined Nova Scotia Legal Aid in 2013. And since 2017, has been a managing lawyer of the Healthx Youth Office and most recently also the Adult Justice Office, as I understand. And he's done a lot of work through Nova Scotia Legal Aid on access and equity to justice issues. He is a dedicated, part of a dedicated network of IBM alumni who's working on these issues. And can I go public, Brandon? So exciting to say publicly that he will be continuing this work in the very, very near future as the senior legal counsel with the newly established African Nova Scotian Justice Institutes. We're very excited about that. And I'll just introduce myself a little bit more briefly. I'm a professor or faculty member at the Schulich School of Law, teaching criminal law and African Nova Scotians and the law, and also have an interest in critical race theory of restorative justice in other areas. Because in addition to that work, I also co-lead the African Nova Scotian Strategy here at Delhousie, as well as being involved with the African Nova Scotian Decade for People of African Descent Coalition and a number of other projects. So really happy to be here today.  He does a wide range of work and people probably know of his work, including extensive pro bono work that gave rise to the People's Counseling Clinic, of which he is a director. And as a pioneer, we sort of call him the Godfather, if you will, of Urcas in both this province and the country. And he is also serving in an interim capacity as the executive director of the newly established African Nova Scotian Justice Institute. So we are really pleased to be here with you today. We do have an option for you to put questions into the discussion board there, and Robert will be monitoring those. So depending on the nature of the questions, we may take them up as we go or hold some of them more toward the end of our discussion. But please feel free to put in questions as we're going along. I'm going to begin by talking a little bit about African Nova Scotians as a distinct people to situate our conversation tonight. Then I will share some of the information that Professor Jigga had sent along about statistics about anti-Black racism in the criminal justice system. And then talk briefly about the IBM Initiative and its role in a lot of, or the role of its alumni, if you will, and students in the development of these innovations. And then we will continue on throughout our time with you, sort of bouncing back and forth in terms of the dialogue and sharing information among and between us. So my share screen is going to work properly here. I'm just going to pull up a few slides for you. All right, can people see that?  Okay, thank you. So I wanted to, again, as I said, start by situating really African Nova Scotians as a distinct people, because I think it would be a mistake for us to talk about anti-Black racism in the abstract without understanding that we are asserting or countering issues of anti-Black racism from a positionality as a people, as a distinct people of African Nova Scotians. And so in that sense, I want to underline that we are not as a people defined by the anti-Black racism that we have and continue to experience and resist. In other words, we're more than the racism that we endure. But instead, we do understand ourselves to be a distinct people in the way that you might think about the Acadians or the Québécois as having a particular distinctiveness as a people. And so just a definition there on the screen, often African Nova Scotian is used in at least two different ways. And the first is the one that constitutes or is the definition of us as a distinct people. And I'll just reiterate it for you here that African Nova Scotians are Indigenous Black, are distinct people who descend from freeing enslaved Black planters, Black oilist refugees in the rooms, and other Black people who inhabited the original 52 land-based communities that are part of McMoggy, that part of McMoggy known as Nova Scotia. And so sometimes we refer to ourselves as African, that's George Elliott Clark's name, first African Nova Scotian, Scotian Indigenous Black and so on. And just a couple of points about that. It is a lineage-based definition. So it's descendants of people who came in those earlier ways of migration. And it's also a land-based definition connecting us to the communities in which we were settled. Another way that African Nova Scotian is used is to describe all people of African descent residing in Nova Scotia. And so I just wanted to point at that when we're talking about African Nova Scotians as distinct people, we are referring to that first definition there. So I just want to make a brief mention of what is probably stating the obvious. But a reminder, I think it's always important to remind ourselves that in the beginning Africa was whole. So oftentimes our identity gets conflated into having been enslaved. But it's important that we remember that for thousands and thousands of years people of African descent who were the first humans to be known on Earth had very sophisticated civilizations that existed that traded with other nations across the continent of Africa that was severely interrupted by the European invasion that resulted both in colonizing of the continent of Africa and also of course in the transatlantic slave trade all of which was justified and arguably continues to be justified through both explicit and implicit ideas that somehow people of African descent are inferior in some way to whites. And so that ideology was what fueled enslavement and also colonization of the continent of Africa. And so I won't say much more about that but really the point is to remind us that we come from great people and that part of that culture and remnants of culture got carried through to our presence here in Nova Scotia. You see a little bit there about our migration into this area of the world. And I wanted to just say a few words more specifically about that migration. We often sort of look at these dates and sort of think of it as a history lesson and so on. And I think it's important to underscore the significance of how our migration shaped who we are as a people. So there's a brief listing of some significant dates there. Most people probably heard of Matthew DeCosta the first known black person to be in the province. But as far back as 1713 we had enslaved African people in El Royale as it was then called otherwise Kay Bretton. And so from the beginning of our presence here in the province we were in a situation of having both slavery being legally practiced in this province as well as having free black people alongside enslaved people. And so as a result of that the notion of blackness got conflated by virtue of the legal status of slavery as being an inferior status. And I think that that continues to inform many of our structures and institutions today. So it's important to acknowledge where that arose.  And later we had black Jamaican maroons black refugees many of our people left because the conditions in Nova Scotia including the anti-black racism racism was so severe that we chose to leave. And then later on we were joined by black workers from the Caribbean in the U.S. primarily into the Sydney Kay Bretton area to work in the mines. And so that's a sort of chronological overview of the migration. I think there's a couple of important points to make and I'll try to do this briefly. The first is that as a result of this this migration it wasn't just sort of that we came it was how we came, right? So partly enslaved and even if we weren't enslaved the conditions of enslavement elsewhere forced us into this part of the world. So we were fleeing slavery elsewhere even if we weren't enslaved in Nova Scotia directly. And so you can see how slavery is entirely shaped how we came to the province one way or another. And that arguably we were settled here by those conditions as opposed to being settlers or a settler society in the sociological sense of the settler society. So that's one thing to keep in mind. The other thing is from the beginning our conditions and access to power resources and opportunities were entirely circumvented by virtue of race. So that meant that we for example were situated in segregated land-based communities that were impossible virtually to sustain ourselves and our families on because of the nature of the land being very rocky. So we were forced into being a form of cheap labor akin to the roles of slavery as a result of how that land was allocated. And also we were given much less land. Conversely whites were given much more land that they were able to sustain themselves with and build wealth on. And remember of course that all of the land is unceded megama territory that has yet to be fully resolved. So that's the sort of overall conditions that we found ourselves in coming to this province. And that was sustained further by structural racism that those conditions created. So effectively we lived in two different spheres in terms of being geographically segregated in terms of temporal segregation. You couldn't even be in white towns past a certain time at night or you could be subjected to violence. Virtually all public and private facilities were segregated and again that was enforced by law. So we had legal segregation for example in education and then we had customary segregation virtually everywhere that was enforced by law. The Viola Desmond case is a classic example of that where she goes into a movie theater there's no law that says she can't sit in a certain place but when she asserts her human rights the law is brought to bear against her and done so in a way where race is not really acknowledged in the legal system even though everybody knows that that was entirely about race. So those conditions continue today. You think about the nature of segregation it's morphed into what is known by the human rights commission here as consumer racial profiling. So you think about cases like Santina Rayo and others where again you are being policed by virtue of having a black body and I'll talk a little bit more about street checks and that sort of racial profiling as well. Now it's important to say at this juncture and as we go along again we're not defined by that extreme racism that we've endured that has shaped the structures that we live in. We are much more than that experience. The being forced into segregated communities meant that we were isolated but we were also insulated and we had space therefore to perpetuate and grow and create a distinct culture and way of living and supporting each other that developed into a distinctiveness that we know as African Nova Scotian culture today and that includes spiritual practices political practices economic development in our communities and that sort of thing. So it's important to again not only think of our history as being a negative history but to remember the vast contributions that we have made to this province and certainly beyond that. And so in terms of how we understand ourselves I think it's important and this is the positioning that we took for example in the Anderson case was to position ourselves as a distinct people and to bring this history into the understanding of the criminal justice system and our distinctiveness has been recognized including by the United Nations as well as by institutions such as for example here at Dalhousie University recognizing us as a distinct people. So I'm going to stop there on that point. I don't know Robert if there were any questions that came up so far on that. No, there weren't any questions and I just encourage people to place the question on the Q&A. And I'm sorry that's it's gone a little bit longer than I anticipated but I wanted to jump into now Maria Dugas notes about the specific existence of anti-black racism in the criminal justice system. We're probably perhaps speaking to the converted here tonight in the sense of not disputing that that anti-black racism does exist in the criminal justice system but I do think it's helpful to remind ourselves of the statistics that demonstrate that. So where we measure anti-black racism we find it. The problem is that we don't measure probably as enough as we should. And so you can see here we have issues of over-incarceration both at the federal level and at the provincial level. We have issues of harsher experiences when incarcerated. So the number of complaints that are brought within the prison system are disproportionately or disproportionate to our population brought by black Canadians within the system. We have over-representation as I mentioned in terms of incarceration in Nova Scotia. And then of course we have some relatively recent data that underscores what we have known for generations for centuries really which is that we were over-policed. From the time that we were labeled as labeled by virtue of running away from slavery as being people that should be rounded up and captured as we're running for our freedom that as far back as that time set the stage for our bodies being police even up until today in a way that others are not. And so if you think about the recent wartly report as it's been referred to we know the statistics of black people being six times more likely to be street checked by police. We also know by virtue of a formal independent review led by former Chief Justice McDonald but a position that African Nova Scotians had taken from the minute that the statistics were released by the CBC about street checks we know that they are illegal. It you know it took a couple of years for other folks to kind of confirm what we were saying but that did happen that the understanding that street checks are illegal but Wartley tells us also that 30% of black males and Halifax have been arrested for a crime at some point in their life compared to 6.8% of white males and remember being arrested for a crime does not mean that you committed a crime. So these statistics indicate the level of surveillance that our people are under in all sectors really. And unfortunately instead of taking a proactive response to Wartley we have some problematic responses in certain moments including at times by the Public Prosecution Service who in the case of Anderson at trial sought to use police contacts that is not somebody being arrested or convicted of something but police contacts as a basis for for an aggravated sentence. So we still have a lot of work in order to ensure that the information that comes from Wartley reports and others like it are used properly in furtherance of justice for African Nova Scotians. I already mentioned the over incarceration rates so I won't go into that in much more detail but just note that the anti-black racism does not stop at the doors of the prisons that it continues for people inside the jails and the prisons and that also we have concerns about it across the legal profession and in terms of even the numbers of judges who are on the bench and the fact that that needs to grow further in future years. So I'm going to sort of end there in terms of the issue of racism and the criminal justice system we could spend the whole rest of the evening talking about that and the last thing I'm going to say at this stage is just that one of the talking about anti-black racism versus African Nova Scotian criminal justice innovation and on the innovation side it's important at this point to introduce the IBM initiative. Probably people are familiar with the IBM initiative it was designed to decrease racism and discrimination in the justice system by increasing the representation of MiGvon, African Nova Scotian and other black and indigenous lawyers coming out of the Marshall inquiry and we now have creeping up to about 250 law graduates who came out of that initiative and I think it's important to note that that work is being led by Kelsey Jones who is herself an IBM graduate but it's not a coincidence that Brandon Roll, David Curry, Professor Duga and so many others including judges who have been at the front lines of this work this quest toward justice for African Nova Scotian and others have come out of the IBM initiative and that network continues to affect justice. So I'm going to stop there and stop share and turn things over to Robert who is going to sort of talk a little bit more about the history of African Nova Scotian innovation and resilience. Thank you, Michelle. I guess much of the history that Michelle has shared if you think about it kind of in the backdrop of that history is the story of African Nova Scotian innovation and resilience. I should say innovation resistance and resilience. We should understand that though people of African descent in North America have this mixed history of both freed and enslaved individuals that they were never a people who were idle or passive in the treatment that they received and that is certainly the case here in Nova Scotia. If we think about it the first recorded black person in Nova Scotia if we just think about that for a minute Matthew DeCuste he was an interpreter with the Portuguese likely a North African and if we think about that I mean we haven't connected the dots very well but in North Africa and the Portuguese Empire interpreters had a very very special role in society they were adventurers they were they were kind of the pointy edge of exploration and so really when you think about that individual being here it represents an individual with tremendous with tremendous responsibility who had already amassed a tremendous amount of knowledge about a diversity of peoples who comes here and settles here in Nova Scotia and they say as early as 1604 and then we had both enslaved and freed blacks here and you can imagine the cultural exchanges that existed between our freed and enslaved brothers and sisters and of course there being freed communities here gave enslaved Africans places to run to and so there was tremendous protection and collegiality innovation resistance in those communities and if we think about in the if the 1700s we have the record of the first kind of slave riot or race riots in Nova Scotia in Canada in 1784 in Shelburne and when we think about that of course these folk in free black communities were being targeted because they were seen as taking from white settlers economic opportunity we need to remember who these folk were these black loyalists they were not just farmers and fishers they were veterans who left the United States to come here as as British loyalists so it didn't take them long to form militias to resist the violence that they were being perpetrated that was being perpetrated on them by by virtue of their blackness and then later on when you think about the maroons coming here to to settle in Nova Scotia these were not a conquered black peoples but a people who were treated with by the British and brought to Nova Scotia who themselves were had tremendous skill as as as builders tremendous skills as military tacticians so they were if there was a natural fit between them and the many of the black loyalists who after the race riots recognized that perhaps they should see greener pastures and so in the Sierra Leone company in the 1790s took freed black folks to settle Freetown in West Africa and Sierra Leone that these folk were the natural suspects to undertake that work so we already see before the beginning of the 1800s this innovation this resistance this resilience of black people here in Nova Scotia and those are our ancestors you know in the 1800s in the 1830s we established our first black churches and not long after an association of you the African United Baptist Association was was founded why indirect resistance to the exclusion of black worshipers from white churches so in the very earliest part of our time here we established our own communities we established their own institutions in order to meet our community's needs now we I could go through this year by year but let's just suggest that that this is a theme that you'll see time and time again decade after decade in each sector in the area of sports of black folk in the 1890s established the Colored Hockey League you want to do think of these black folk as Canadians they were so Canadian they established a Colored Hockey League so that they could participate in and grow the sport in their communities where they were excluded of course from from from white hockey not something that of course necessarily resonates with me as a non hockey player but it is an evidence of the innovation and the desire for African Nova Scotians to be both black and thoroughly Nova Scotian when World War One broke out these folk again remember the history of these folks these were not passive unskilled individuals these were the descendants and often they were the descendants and they were actually the resistors military resistors who when World War One broke out wanted to serve but were excluded from the Canadian military and so the number two construction battalion was established to give black Nova Scotians an opportunity to serve their country on foreign soils fighting this this war and black Nova Scotians time and time again demonstrating their desire to contribute and their ability to fight against the pressures that would exclude them from participation often forming their own organizations to do so even though the Nova Scotian home has like many and most institutions that were caring for very vulnerable peoples at that time orphanages have we've we've long since seen the the the harm that has been caused in those institutions but in 1920s the Nova Scotia home for colored children was established because children of African descent were not being served by the state in other locations and we could go on the Black United Front and its organization in the 1960s as a political organization to bring the needs and the desires of Black Nova Scotians into the public discourse to ensure that there would be justice and equity and for African Nova Scotians was established in the 1960s and and and they they established on a 10 point plan which if you read it if you you can look it up and read it it's interesting to read the things that we want we want freedom we want free employment for our people we want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black and oppressed communities we want decent housing we want education for all people we want our community to be healthy we want an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of Black people and other people of color and all oppressed people in this nation again if you read in that text these are Black Nova Scotians organizing to advance not just the rights and the interests of Black Nova Scotians but all oppressed peoples in Canada so it shouldn't surprise us then it was that it was Black activism and Black agitation that created the the the the framework for the for the formation of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission it was that commission was established initially to address address the injustices that were experienced by Black Nova Scotians or in the language of the day to solve the Negro problem and we can see how that institution expanded in its thought and mandate to address all of the social injustices that experienced by by by people in Nova Scotia one could even say that the Nova Scotian Human Rights Commission has lost its way from the point of view that it has taken up the capacity to address the needs of disabled Nova Scotians and queer Nova Scotians of which I am one and Nova Scotians in all areas of protected grounds save for the protected ground of race where from my perception the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission has seen to have lost its way and strayed from its original origin we could go on the Black educators Association the African Nova Scotian Music Association the Health Association of African Canadians the Black Business Initiative African Nova Scotians have had for the entirety of their time here a history of innovation resistance and resilience and the contribution to this province of the creation of institutions to advance the needs of the most vulnerable among us that's our history and so when we we titled this Anti-Black Racism Versus African Nova Scotian Criminal Justice and Innovation this innovation goes back to the 1600s and the first people of African descent placing their feet on these shores Thank you Thanks Robert I'm before coming back to you Robert you talk a little bit about the development of Urcas and the X case I wanted to make sure that we sort of punctuated another important point in our resistance and innovation which we may not think of as such but it really is an important point along the way here and that is the case of RDS most people are probably already familiar with that case but it's important to frame that and understand it as a contemporary example of African Nova Scotian resistance to police brutality and anti-black racism in the courts and in judicial decision making so for folks who may not know you may recall that RDS who is now sort of indicated himself publicly as Rodney Small so I'm not saying anything that isn't public Rodney Small was himself the victim of police brutality having been put in a choke hold by a white police officer in the African Nova Scotian North End community in Halifax around Uniac Square for attempting to help his cousin who had also been detained by the same officer and instead of charges being laid against the officer for assault or excessive use of force Mr. Small was overcharged with a number of counts in relation to allegedly interfering with the officer's work and Judge Sparks the first black judge in Nova Scotia and the first black female judge in all of Canada after thoroughly weighing the evidence determined that Mr. Small was not guilty and in the course of making that decision in response to some crown questioning made observations about the racial dynamics in the case and as a result of doing that she had the full weight of the police union and the prosecution service come down on her then further bolstered by judicial decisions in this province now it was African Nova Scotians through the leadership of people like Rocky Jones who also helped to start the IBM initiative itself and was a recent graduate at the time who really came together and fought all the way to the Supreme Court for Rodney Small and for Judge Sparks and for the ability to speak truth about race into the justice system in this province and I think it's really critically important to note that to note the role of the IBM initiative in that to note the fact that community groups from Nova Scotia were part of the intervening intervener teams that had been involved in the RDS case and so that was a real case of asserting our voice and within the courts I think that was fueled in part again by the existence of the IBM initiative but it certainly wasn't the first one in our history if you think back to the habeas corpus cases trying to get freedom from being enslaved but it is an important contemporary moment along that path toward justice and I really thought that we needed to recognize and remember that tonight also remember the price that Judge Sparks paid in terms of not being appointed to the then newly formed unified family court even though she was a senior family court judge and the community was outraged about that and certainly publicly registered that outrage as well and the final thing I would say about RDS is just to acknowledge the recent retirement of Judge Sparks after 30 years of service on the bench despite everything that happened extraordinary career and even though has the right to retire and not do anything else has taken up a new leadership role as a commissioner with the land titles initiative so again marking that point in our history of resistance and the path toward justice so I'll turn it back to you Robert in terms of the X development yes well so by now I think people are quite familiar with the case the RVX to which is the first case in which an impact of race and cultural assessment was ordered and just to give a little bit of background there as a mental health clinician former director of child welfare I had been doing a significant amount of work in the intersection of race and mental health and the intersection of race and child welfare intersection of race and justice work and I think that at the same time there was an acknowledgement perhaps a growing acknowledgement nationally and certainly locally that these that we needed to continue to work against the systemic race anti-black racism that exists in the criminal justice system should remember that it was in teen that the office of the correctional investigator wrote its report identifying that the the differential experience of black inmates in the federal penitentiary was a significant problem and they had had not looked into that for almost 10 years so in 2013 2014 I had been approached by a number of lawyers already to see if there was any way that I could support them in bringing arguments to the court related to the race of their clients when clients were being adjudicated in cases where their race and the disadvantage that they had experienced due to race were clearly involved either in their pathway to crime or even in the very nature of the crimes and that these issues were not being properly reviewed properly assessed at trial or in sentencing actually before RVX I had actually written two cultural assessments that were requested by lawyers but they never saw the light of day there were such new tools I think that that defense lawyers used them in their dialogue with prosecutors to arrive at better sentences but they didn't place them before a judge but in 2014 in the RVX case I think there was a perfect storm there was a young black man a young offender who had been charged with an attempted murder he had been convicted and there were three section 34 reports that were ordered and on file with the court now the section 34 reports are essentially pre-sentence reports that are regularly and routinely ordered for juvenile offenders that are conducted solely by the forensic mental health team at the IWK hospital so those assessments were on file with the court and they seemed to suggest as the prosecutor was asserting that the perpetrator in this case the convicted offender was a seriously criminalized non-repentant or remorseful individual who was so seriously and characterologically disordered that he would need a significant sentence in order for him to be to be rehabilitated or to be not dangerous that was what the prosecutor was asserting and was actually pushing I think for the lawyers can perhaps tell us more about this but I think a life sentence or a sentence of 17 years I think was what they were gunning for for this young man who had just turned 16 at the time of his crime and the section 34 assessments were actually concurring with the prosecutor these were all assessments three of them conducted by psychiatrists psychologists and social workers at the IWK hospital all of them white none of those reports in the thousands and thousands of words that were written in those scores of pages none of the reports made anything more than passing reference to the to the fact that the young man in question was black and so the defense attorney at the time the came to me after dialogue with many of her colleagues at Legal Aid and said could you write me a report that spoke to the racial background of this person and helped us have a different way of seeing them and so having done it a couple of times kind of in a dry run I conducted such a report and we called it an impact of race and culture assessment and I think that one of the reasons why these reports today are done by mental health professionals is because I needed to write a report that stood up and spoke to the issues that were raised by the section 34 reports that had been done by psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers and briefly I found in my assessment in my interview of that individual in checking with his collateral contacts so visited with his father his mother is his grandmother spoke to individuals in the community who had been previous teachers and coaches and friends and mentors I found a very different person I found a young person who was a certainly impacted by the criminal behavior that he saw in his community certainly impacted by the unhealthy availability of guns that was available in his community certainly impacted by the negative things but I found a young man still very much a youth who was malleable whose personality was not set who was as much the victim of his circumstances in terms of the production or the the leading to that crime as he was a perpetrator and I think that the judge in the case and Derek who's then a judge at the provincial court found that that report gave her a different lens from which to view the young person and that that lens was enabled her to not sentence the young man as an adult but to sentence him as a youth so when we think about the development of that that assessment we need to recognize that but for the work that had been occurring in Nova Scotia Legal Aid but for the employment of black lawyers who had natural connections in the black community black lawyers who had been studying together as a cohort had been thinking about these issues together were informing their colleagues but for the fact that there were black clinicians in the community doing these similar things had these things not come together our Urcas would not exist and so we need to think about that in terms of how we work collaboratively to address anti-black racism in the criminal justice system with allied professionals in the community so I'll leave my comments there I know that we have much more ground to cover I do note that there is a question in the Q&A if someone is of African descent and is charged with the first degree murder can they receive a cultural assessment I will leave that question in the ether I know that we have some folk who will speak and perhaps we will just cover that question as we go on the next case that came along after X was the RV Middleton case which I was fortunate to be a part of and that was in 2016 but before I get into the particulars of that case I do think it's important just to highlight and to reiterate a couple of the concepts and this African Nova Scotian DNA that Professor Williams and Mr. Wright have been talking about the resilience and the resistance so there are two C's that that I see as being an overarching concept or theme here is contribution and community and so and so I'll highlight some of those perhaps as I go through the the Middleton case and how they are always present when it comes to this this idea of anti-black racism and African Nova Scotians innovating to activate against anti-black racism again the contribution in community so there have been this as Mr. Wright had been talking about this undercurrent of discussion in the community in the African Nova Scotian legal community about advancing you know Glidoo analysis analogous to Glidoo approach when it comes to the sentencing of African Nova Scotian so at that time I was with Nova Scotia Legal Aid and Mr. Rohl and I were both with Legal Aid at the time and we had some discussion on advancing that issue and the idea here is always to find ways to contribute to the dismantling of the disparities in the justice system so that goes for whether you're with Legal Aid or defense attorney or if you're with the Crown Office or if you're a judge that you know at all levels at all involvement and that goes where even whether you're African Nova Scotian or not but it's particularly a focus of African Nova Scotians to contribute to the dismantling of the disparities that exist and so it's in that theme of how do we contribute to that and it was at this time that the African Nova Scotians in the law class was offered through the law school through Professor Williams it was the first year that that had been enacted and so I was highly interested in taking that course and obviously talked to Mr. Rohl and so I wrote Legal Aid requesting to attend that course ultimately I think the first in first instance it was denied so I wrote back and reminded them about the martial recommendations that required Legal Aid to have for lack of better term experts or folks within Legal Aid that could speak to these issues as it pertains to the Black community so what better way to do that than to have the education from the law school in the class and then ultimately they did agree to provide us the time to go to the course as well as cover the cost of attending and it was out of that class again with trying to find ways to contribute to dismantling that it highlighted the path in my view of how we would do that and the concern from my perspective at the time was X was a youth court decision and so the utility was diminished I would say in terms of the adult context we needed a we needed a case in the adult context that these that this was applied so they could have broader reach and and acceptability in the community so Mr. Roll and I also went to a Legal Aid conference one year every year Legal Aid gets together and has a conference and we drove to the conference together and this was a highlight of our conversation we discussed this at length so again there's the community aspect the IBM community there's the resistance the nose but still persisting and it's the community that really gives African Nova Scotians the strength to to build a resistance and in that resistance we're able to be resilient and innovate and so it's in that context that Mr. Middleton's case came along with that background he was charged with assault resisting police breaches and things of that nature so what I would describe as runner-to-mill offenses but because of his criminal lengthy criminal record he was facing jail time automatic for for further convictions so I made a request for obviously the Crown was seeking a jail sentence I was seeking something other than that perhaps a jail in the community in probation but I saw this as an opportunity for the IRCA in the adult context to be to be advanced looking at the right case and also had the right judge in my view to to digest these issues and to give us a fair to listen to these issues fairly and to not set it back this is a concept I remember Rocky Jones reiterating as a young lawyer I'll never forget it one of the things he said is the intention might be great but you always have to make sure you're persistent in not setting the law back when it comes to advancing issues without the Nova Scotians so so there was a lot of thought that went into the right case right judge all of that sort of thing to not set the law back but to advance it and so in Mr. Middleton's case as I say he was charged with a runner-to-mill offenses we sought to have the court order a IRCA through as part of the pre-sentence report relying on section 721 sub 4 so again using the concept the court is already familiar with this pre-sentence report but as a part of that order a report that's an analogous to to the Gladiou report but completed by specialized people with specialized knowledge education experience relating to systematic backgrounds and factors of racism that affect the African Nova Scotian community and so that was the legal authorization that allowed for the the order for the report and then and then after that I became aware that Nova Scotian League wouldn't pay for the disbursement I'd to pay for the report so I appealed that decision and ultimately it came back at that appeal level to say no we're not paying for this so again it's that resilience right but still finding a way to contribute so I took those refusals for disbursements to the judge and clearly let over her this was a legal aid client from an African Nova Scotian background who obviously couldn't afford to have these reports paid for and obviously legal aid was unable to do it at the time and so the responsibility lies with the court if you want to come to a fit and just sentence and if no one's prepared to pay for it the obligation's on the court in my view to cover that ultimately the judge did agree with that and that was the first case where the court paid for a report and so it was distinguished and that on those two grounds in my view that it was the first adult context where these reports were ordered by the court and paid for by the court so it set the groundwork for the cases that followed and again it's in that spirit of contribution and community and that was highlighted throughout that throughout that case in terms of getting the objective that paved the way for the other cases and I believe Mr. Rolls is going to comment on the next case that came after that you're on thank you yeah I guess before I do that I just want to pick up on some of the things that you mentioned about first of all acknowledging the panel here you know the expertise on this panel is you know bar none right this is the best that we have and there's a couple of themes I would suggest if we have students on the line find your people right Robert says that all the time find your people you're going to need those people for support as you do this work the other piece there is you can bring these ideas into the practice right that's an exciting piece for me if you're a student things that we talk about in law school bring that into the practice and you know we're figuring out the pathway to do that the other piece that I noticed as well you know that amazing historical context that was laid out by Professor Williams and Robert to me that's the baseline of knowledge that is required if you're going to serve African Nova Scotians and justice system so we think about things like judicial notice yes we could take notice of slavery and systemic racism but do you actually know the story of African Nova Scotians and I thought that was one of the subtle things that Justice Derek did and Anderson was to say you know judicial notice is not enough we need that historical context because that story would otherwise not be told or even known in some cases when we think about all of the different locations across the province so I thought that was an important piece and to me like that's the baseline that's where you start when we're having this conversation so to pick up on the cases I suppose Gabriel would have been the next one and so around this time Mr. Curry I want to call him DC you know this is my guy in law school Mr. Curry and I were having these discussions and then Gabriel came along and this might speak to the question as well this is a young man who was charged with murder ultimately convicted of second degree murder and an IRCA was ordered in that case but it was to inform parole and eligibility so the impact on sentence is a little bit different but at that time I'm connecting to someone named Faisal Mirza in Ontario and that's back through Michelle right so Professor Williams excuse me connecting with Professor Williams who puts me in touch with Faisal Mirza and that becomes important later because he's arguing these line of cases in Ontario that are picking up the mantle and bringing this sort of to the national scope when we think about IRCA's Gabriel I would suggest was an incremental step forward Justice Campbell devoted about 40 paragraphs to discussing the IRCA and the value of the IRCA but he sort of struggled with what do I do with this information you know how can I reconcile moral agency versus these constrained circumstances and you know I would suggest we got stuck there as a province for about four or five years maybe two or three years in any event with judges saying you know I appreciate that this is important but I don't necessarily know how to apply this to the sentence to the benefit of African Nova Scotians beyond acknowledgement and Professor Duda touches on that in her paper which again to me is a must read if you're going to do this work so after Gabriel or during the time of Gabriel and the following years we see Jackson and Morris come out in Ontario and again that's that link Faisal Mirza is arguing those cases and Justice Nakatsuru really sort of lays the groundwork to establish that pathway to mitigation yes we can acknowledge that constrained circumstances diminishes moral blameworthiness and actually impacts the sentence if we're going to arrive at a just sentence that was the next step that needed to be taken and that was the piece I would suggest we were missing here for a little while so Jackson and Morris picked it up and then as we're doing that work we're thinking to ourselves oh Morris might go up you know to the Supreme Court of Canada that it did go to the Court of Appeal and they had asked us to intervene we weren't in a position to do that but we thought let's get ready if it goes up at the Supreme Court of Canada and so we're connecting we being you know legal aid is connecting with Professor Williams Professor Dugas my colleague at Legal Aid Lisa Shigiri and we're doing this work to get ready in case Morris goes up what would we say how would we bring the Nova Scotian voice into that proceeding and as we're getting ready for that Anderson comes along and so you know that was the case that was here and we were ready to make these arguments but before we dive into Anderson I think this this was a transition point to talk about the importance of that academic work going on behind the scenes as we're building you know our legal arguments the necessity of that partnership so maybe I'll turn it over to Professor Williams now Thank you yeah there's there's sort of two other pieces to introduce here before we get back to Anderson itself one is the work of the African Nova Scotian decade for people of African descent coalition our A&S D-pad as we call it for short that formed after we had organized real cross-section of African Nova Scotian organizations to make submissions to the United Nations working group of people of African descent working group of experts on people of African descent in their Canadian mission visit here in 2016 and Halifax was the first stop on purpose because we were sort of the cradle of Black culture in the country and so out of those that organizing the coalition was formed and one of the first issues that it took up was the issue of street checks which you recall where first came to the fore in this part of the country by virtue of the CBC investigation that was done and reported on the street check numbers and so the what became the justice strategy working group of the A&S D-pad coalition was and continues to be very active in its work in part because of the street check issue but also because there was a real gap we have a lot of other African Nova Scotian organizations but we have not had certainly since BUFF Black United Front an African Nova Scotian Justice organization and as we were doing all this work off the sides of our desks we realized we really had to think through building an institution like that that could continue this work more formally and that started our conceptualizing visioning what an African Nova Scotian justice institute would look like and so I think it's important to bring that layer into the discussion because that was happening parallel and as a result of the justice strategy working group and the A&S D-pad coalition work we were able to join with council like Brandon Roll through Nova Scotia Legal Aid to apply for and were granted intervener status in the Anderson case and it's because I think of the body of work that we had built up publicly and otherwise that we were granted that intervention status so I wanted to highlight the importance of that and going back to David Curry's words going back to the importance of the community and the commitment and the contribution that was made by virtue of the coalition work the second point that I wanted to make is really going back to on behalf of professor Juga but making sure that this point gets made and that is to talk about the importance of the academic contribution to this work and in link to the IBM initiative again but also to the question of judicial education and so I'm going to be drawing directly from her notes here so she says for those who don't know and I'm going to read it in her words if you don't mind because it's just easier to do it that way but this is professor Juga speaking on me for those who don't know I published an article in the Dalhousie law journal the summer of 2020 on the need to include Urcas in sentencing decisions for black Canadians I wanted to highlight that I almost stumbled into this work and now appear to be one of the leading experts on the topic she's very modest she is the leading expert on the topic in terms of academic work that is she says that's not too bright but simply to say you never know where your career might take you so another point for students who may be on the call to note that she says I was introduced to Urcas by now judge Ricola Brinton and Krista Thompson the lawyer who argued X well I was articulating a Nova Scotia legal aid I was immediately curious why they weren't being used in every case and why and how the crown was arguing against them at the time I thought if there was an academic article on point then maybe the courts would have something to rely on going forward in doing this work and she notes judges don't usually go out on a limb and want some authority for novel arguments so the importance of the academic work and research here when I decided to go back to school for a master's degree I knew I wanted to write about this topic I ended up taking Professor Williams African Nova Scotia in the law course and happened to be there at the same time as Brandon although I knew him previously through my work at Nova Scotia legal aid I workshopped early drafts of the paper with Brandon and other folks at Nova Scotia legal aid to make sure the paper I was writing would be useful to them in arguing cases somehow this also led me into judicial education I happened to be clerking at the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal at the same time that Justice Derrick was appointed there I also submitted my paper as a writing sample when I applied to the court knowing that the judges at least those on the hiring committee would have to read the paper that she had done shortly thereafter Justice Derrick contacted me to ask if I would be interested in participating in a judicial education conference on the topic since then I've done multiple national judicial institute NJI for short events for judges across the country this enabled me to get in front of the judiciary and talk about this work before the case was decided in Anderson and before a lot of the provincial and superior court judges were seeing the reports in their courts for example I'm doing an NJA conference for PEI judges in May so I think there you can see as Professor Jiga notes the importance of the academic side the research the publishing to provide judges and everyone who's interested in the issue with deeper thought and analysis of the issue of Burkas of the development doctrinally of the case law in order to help lay a foundation for understanding and a willingness for judges to move forward in the direction of Burkas as one small I think remedy for the centuries of anti-black racism that informed the criminal justice system so I'll now give it back over to Brandon to talk about Anderson itself thank you and I guess I'm just thinking as you're speaking the other benefit of Burkas from my perspective has been we're going to make you talk about this in court you know the history has been we'd rather talk about anything else other than race but this forces the issue we're going to talk about it and you're going to have to give judicial commentary on it you're going to have to make decisions based on it so yeah it's been amazing to watch it evolve but in Anderson I didn't argue that the case below that was argued by Drew Rogers of Nova Scotia Legal Aid just briefly the facts he's 23 year old young African Nova Scotian stopped at a random traffic stop pulled over the officer as he pulls him over goes into his computer sees that Mr. Anderson has a record sees that Mr. Anderson has criminal contacts sees that Mr. Anderson has these uncharged contacts with police that Professor Williams spoke of earlier and on that basis sort of determines that there's an officer safety issue and searches Mr. Anderson and during the course of that search finds a a loaded handgun on Mr. Anderson and so the charter issue was argued at trial on the basis that the search was not charter compliant Judge Williams found that it was and Mr. Anderson was ultimately convicted of five weapons offenses including a possession of a prohibited weapon a loaded prohibited firearm and during the course of the sentencing proceedings Judge Williams was really proactive right so I think she may so the timeline I think was Drew Rogers said you know we'd like a Priya PSR with a cultural component so pre-sentence report with a cultural component that comes back we know that probation doesn't offer that so that comes back without that component and then Anurka is ordered in fact a race and cultural assessment and that comes back and Judge Williams says you know what I'd like to hear from Robert Wright who was the supervisor of the author who wrote the report who's Natalie Hodges and I'd like to hear from Jude Clike about what's available in corrections I'd like to hear from Sovast Benjamin but what's available in the community and she used her power under the criminal code to call that evidence which is power that judges have that they don't often use and pull those witnesses in and got amazing testimony from all three and decided to on the basis largely of what was in front of her through the Urca impose a conditional sentence order community based sentence and you know part of the story that we'll tell later is that part of the discussion in Anderson was do I send this person to jail where I know he will fail or do we give him an opportunity with culturally appropriate programming in the community and part of the story is that it's been working he's doing well so that's a piece that we might talk about later but ultimately we get that decision from the crown Professor Williams talked about some disturbing themes that were that were put forward by the crown but the crown decides to appeal that decision and they appeal it under this umbrella of seeking guidance and that caused some some different reactions from the community you know why are you appealing a positive decision for African Nova Scotian you know that led to a positive outcome and you know this guidance piece in part I think the crown's rationale was it was a provincial court decision we don't know what superior courts are going to do with this decision we don't know what direction this law was headed but that initial decision you know it's worth analyzing why are you appealing and so I'll turn it over now Mr. Curry perhaps just to talk about you know that crown perspective when the matter was appealed and then we can discuss further you know how the appeal came together and what that looked like well I just say briefly that the crown the attorney general has a right to appeal and that right is to be exercised with restraint and in the public interest and when we're looking at appealing sentence there are basically five criteria that the crown must take into consideration the first one is the whether or not the sentence is contrary to the the criminal code the position taken by the crown in the court if there's an error in principles number three number four if the sentence is too low or it's manifestly inadequate in the fifth and final round is if the crown's seeking some sentence guidance in the court and that's the particular ground that was used as I understand it in Anderson and it's important I think to kind of know the couple of things about Anderson that I felt was different for a lack of better term first thing is the crown position changed over time in terms of their appeal that I would at least to my experience is rare especially how much it varied over time the other I think important aspect was that now you have to keep in mind that the crown attorneys at the public prosecution service for Nova Scotia you have an appeals division that kind of deals with and makes these decisions that's separate and apart from for example the crown not in all cases but in a number of cases including Anderson and in this particular case the appeals division did consult with the equity and diversity committee within PPS and that's co-chaired by Ingrid Brody QC and Josie McKinney and there's a number of folks on that committee that do very good solid continuous work and part of that work was at least I wouldn't say consulted but there was discussion between that committee and the crown office the appeals division throughout that process so there was at least the opportunity for input from the racial context and I do think that that again I would suggest is on ordinary in any event that's kind of the background the main thing is that the crown position shifted over time I think it started with or at least at one point it was about seeking a test from the court important in terms of being able to apply a particular test and perhaps Mr. Rohl could speak more succinctly with respect to that but then it changed the seeking guidance from the court approach that he spoke about earlier yeah I think initially that the grounds included a piece about challenging the expert evidence that was dropped and then it was this idea of an exceptional circumstances test so in these exceptional circumstances we can grant a conditional sentence order for offenses like these for African Nova Scotians and that was problematic for a couple of reasons right you're creating these barriers that didn't exist in the first place that are perpetuating the problem that you're trying to solve and you're applying a new test in law essentially it was the position that we took when we heard that position taken by the crown that didn't apply elsewhere and so now you're bringing in a test that didn't apply elsewhere specifically for African Nova Scotians is the position that we took in response to that and so you know the intention of the crown that that can be discussed elsewhere but what it looked like was this you know exceptional circumstances test that hadn't been applied before wasn't really necessary and was contributing to the problem that you're trying to solve through discussion with counsel I think community applied pressure as well against the crown position and through the committee that Mr. Curry talked about that position ultimately evolved into something different in that exceptional circumstances piece was dropped eventually but I think it's also worth noting here you know how we organize this strategically in terms of the litigation the justice strategy working group was contacted but within legal aid as well we were representing Mr. Anderson so we had to go to apply to legal aid and they were flexible enough to say yes you can also represent the intervener then we had to select the intervener which is a process as well and we approached the coalition the coalition's not five people the coalition's a huge group so how do you structure it so you're getting feedback from the community through the coalition and through the justice strategy working group so all these relationships that have been built over the years now are coming into play in developing this community led strategic litigation that actually presented the historical context in Anderson that actually presented the model on how you apply this evidence which was ultimately adopted so we see the community having a voice in changing the law in Nova Scotia and that to me was an amazing thing to be a part of so you know that process in and of itself is critical race practice in action linked directly to all the things we've been talking about you know the historical piece mixed with the the IBM and the community piece it was all coming and merging at this one moment in Anderson so that's why it was to me a very special case and I don't know Professor Williams if you wanted to talk about some of the main takeaways from Anderson because there's been a lot but you know Justice Derrick again it's not a coincidence that Justice Derrick heard X that Justice Derrick you know at one point worked with Dr. Jones those things aren't a coincidence and it's all part of this theme that we're talking about so I'll pause there and perhaps turn it over to Professor Williams Yeah I just echo a couple of points about the process of the case you captured it so well that the community through the coalition so when I say coalition it's a coalition of 30 plus African Nova Scotian organizations from across the province plus many many hundreds more individual members and so it's really one of the main ways we have in this province governance wise to bring the voice of African Nova Scotians forward collectively and the coalition I think was certainly concerned about why this case was appealed in the first place when it when actually it worked right I mean the Urca actually did the did the right thing and was applied but also we were very concerned about the position that the crown took in the first instance that some exceptional circumstances test some higher bar was going to have to be met by African Nova Scotians in order to avail themselves of a conditional sentence in these circumstances and that that was that really an untenable position that the crown was initially taking so and and you know as a coalition we have the ability to bring those arguments forward in court but we also have some other ability to you know publicly discuss our concerns and situations and as was mentioned Justice Derrick of course wrote for the entire court and and there were five judges and so you know the court was taking the matter clearly very seriously and signaling that I think in terms of the hearing itself there are there are so much to take away from the Anderson case and I guess the first thing I would say about it is that if you are in criminal practice in any way representing or working with an African Nova Scotian person you must know Anderson inside out my opinion because although it's a it technically a sentencing decision certainly the principles I think that Justice Derrick forwards in terms of understanding the African Nova Scotian experience justice system apply to the system as a whole so I'm just going to highlight four key points and pull up the screen to do that hopefully this will work again and so here we go so the first point is in my assessment Anderson reframes the methodology for sentencing of African Nova Scotian offenders in that through providing a detailed analysis of how systemic anti-black racism impacted Mr. Anderson's life and choices and also indicating to some degree how the law itself has been complicit in reinscribing anti-black racism and what I certainly find interesting about this case although I'm not sure that the that Justice Derrick or other members of the bench would so identify it in my assessment it is clearly a critical race case or it's grounded in a critical race approach in so far as it centers the history and context and lived experience of African Nova Scotians and it calls upon lawyers judges to not only examine how an existing sentencing rule is applied but it tells us that we have to actually sort of pierce the veil if you will of that existing law to determine whether other sentencing principles are themselves infused with anti-black racism and to interrogate those as well and so just briefly it's not just whether this sentencing range should apply to an African Nova Scotian offender in this particular circumstance it is asking is the range itself just or was the range developed built upon anti-black racism that was infused in the criminal justice system and so that is a really I think progressive and critical race approach to ask to ask the decision makers to interrogate the law itself the other thing I would note is that it requires judges to take account of the social context of racism and historical injustice and to explain how they're taking account of that and sort of not just to treat it as a check mark but to actually engage and preferably to write the reasons so I think there's a push toward the decisions themselves forming an educative or playing an educative role as the law progresses in informing others to read the decisions and then finally I think really important point is this issue that or the importance underscored by the fact that if judges don't engage in that level in depth of analysis that that is potentially an error of law so those would be four things that that I would highlight there's much more in the decision and that's why I commend it to everyone to read and so Brandon I don't know if you wanted to pick back up in terms of comparing or drawing some observations about Anderson and Morris which was decided shortly thereafter or somewhat thereafter Yeah I think I want to stay on Anderson for a moment just to say the intention of keeping it broad and contextual and saying this is a lens through which you'll apply sentencing principles was so valuable because you know we've talked about this Robert and you know and the panel at large this work is in its infancy you know we're talking about 2014 when the first IRCA was written and so there are there are ways that this will grow that we haven't even thought of yet you know and to that point I got an email today from somebody who was involved in a case as a victim and said I want to talk to you about how valuable the IRCA was through my experience as the victim how it framed the offender in a different light how it changed my victim impact statement to a message of hope and so that's not a that's not a a use of an IRCA that I would have ever thought of and so I just think it was so valuable that that the court adopted this contextual approach to allow this type of of sentencing this type of law to grow rather than try to place it in a box which has been the approach historically you know we have to try to peg it down somewhere it applies to this sentencing principle but maybe not over here and maybe that's a good segue into Morris where I guess the first thing I would say about Morris the Ontario Court of Appeal case that was sort of happening at the same time one of the factors that was really interesting was it was argued before Anderson but Anderson came out first and you know from my perspective that was a really good thing because Anderson's actually picked up quite a bit in Morris and so the message that I I guess I'd like to share about that case is that it also is a net positive case in terms of the outcome in Ontario in Ontario now the sentencing range is different because of Morris a lot of these principles are infused in that decision so there are ways that the decisions are different the focus of the court is a little bit different they disagree on certain points but ultimately it's adopting you know this the same principle that you have to apply these factors at sentencing for African Canadians you have to acknowledge that this can be mitigating on sentence if you can establish diminished moral blame-worthiness and sort of sort of showing you the pathway there maybe not as pronounced as Anderson but you know in speaking with the folks in Ontario that case it's doing is doing its work Anderson is doing its work we've seen the provincial court pick this up in terms of saying this is a call to action and we're going to change the way that we sentence African Nova Scotians I think you could have a very long discussion about both cases but I think the important message is we are evolving you know the law is evolving we're moving forward in both cases we're a real step forward that we're not separated we were connected with those folks doing that work everything that we talked about before happening in Nova Scotia informed the way that they're doing it in Ontario and Faisal Mirza and the people out there will be the first ones to tell you that so you know this speaks to the national impact that African Nova Scotians are having and will continue to have as we know that Urcas are going to roll out nationally with this federal funding and so perhaps I'll leave it there on the Morris piece because I know we probably want to engage in some some questions and other discussion Yeah and I think Robert is going to pick up on the way in which Nova Scotia has become the national leader in rolling out Urcas I just wanted to add one other thing and that is the degree to which the court was informed by the work of Professor Duga and again the importance of that research work and the publishing and the thought that went into analyzing the line of cases to that point that the judges could refer to so Robert I'll turn it back over to you Yes I would just and I'm not going to speak long because I think we I'm eager to get to the questions but just to say that as you see how we go from the ancient history if you will of African Nova Scotians to this current location of this concerted effort by this community of practitioners in various sectors pushing back against systemic racism anti-black racism in the criminal justice system we have this community of people who've been working together really evolved into seeing the need for an African Nova Scotian organization that was designed specifically to address justice issues and so we some of us who had been involved in D-pad who have been involved in these discourse these conversations for decades framed in 2019 the framework for what we imagined as an African Nova Scotian Justice Institute and again I just want to to go back to say that this was not a new idea we were simply breathing life and considering structure for something that had been envisioned by our ancestors people who have been alive and on the field and working as recently as Dr. Rocky Jones to people who came to these first shores and were agents of change and advocacy for African Nova Scotians from the earliest days and so we framed up an African Nova Scotian Justice Institute we imagined what it would look like we imagined what it what its purpose would be we imagined how it would be staffed and we presented that model to the Department of Justice here provincially and we're successful in getting funding so in the fall of the oh I'm sorry no in the summer of 2021 the provincial government funded us to put make alive this thing that we're calling an African Nova Scotian Justice Institute and we have been developing its activities and by next week we'll have begun to staff it significantly to continue this work that we've established so now back to you Professor Williams perhaps what I'll do is I'll start to look at some of the questions that have been in the chat and we can start there I guess the first question is someone asks if someone is of African descent in his charge for the first degree murder can they receive a cultural assessment? So if someone is convicted of murder so remember the impact of race and cultural assessments are going to apply to sentencing so someone's convicted of murder yes you know you can order a cultural assessment of course you would if it was an African Nova Scotian but the way it's going to impact the sentence is going to be different you know because murder carries a life sentence you're really at that point arguing about parole eligibility and what that number should be so it's a little bit different context but still extremely valuable and it should be ordered in every case We have another question that Megan Neves asked the question does Nova Scotian have organizations that work to help the African Nova Scotians who've been wrongfully convicted and I think that that's perhaps a question for really how will the justice institute organize to begin to address those kinds of cases not just issues? Yeah and I think you can extend that to people who are being wrongfully prosecuted before you get to that point and I think an SD pad and has been active in that area and we'll continue to advocate on those cases I think it's fair to say we sent an open letter on the Riley case saying we don't believe that there's a realistic prospect of conviction but the Crown is pursuing that and that's an example of you know a case that we feel is being wrongfully prosecuted and that's the type of work that we want to take up but of course we're just building this infrastructure and those wrongful conviction cases require significant significant resources to fight and you know Innocence Canada will assist with people in Nova Scotia but to Robert's point how do we build that homegrown same approach for our people? Can I just add one point on wrongful conviction there is a specific recommendation well at least one more than one probably in the Marshall inquiry about how wrongful convictions should be dealt with and that was not followed by the province in the case of Gerald Barton who was a historic wrongful conviction case so there is a lot of work that needs to be done there even to live up to the Marshall recommendations Perhaps even studying and understanding the nature of wrongful conviction and how wrongful conviction occurs speaks to how we need to establish prosecutorial and judicial and police practices that would mitigate against wrongful convictions in the first place is something that we should be we should be thinking about I mean the science around wrongful convictions has I think this the seven points for wrongful conviction you know tunnel vision eyewitness testimony things like systemic discrimination and racism these are known factors that contribute to wrongful convictions which if addressed in police training and in prosecutorial training and in judicial training would address the issue of wrongful conviction before there are there are wrongful conviction cases interesting just we've got a couple of other questions there's the one here can all of the successes in Nova Scotia be translated to all people of African descent in Canada this is a really interesting question about the generalizability of our work we speak often about African Nova Scotians and we speak about the unique and distinct nature of African Nova Scotians but of course not all Black people in Nova Scotia would be African Nova Scotian by that definition and certainly what is the generalizability of this work to people of African descent across the country anyone I thought you were going to keep going on that or I'm asking the questions tonight well I think it speaks to as we think about and I know Megan longly asked that question so thank you Megan and Megan was CEO of Legal Aid when we were doing some of this work and was very valuable in pushing this work forward but I think it speaks to when we roll out these Urcas nationally how are we going to identify the experts in that area that know their community that know the specific history in those jurisdictions that the Black population Ontario is obviously much different than the Black population in Nova Scotia the same goes for Saskatchewan and and BC and Manitoba and out West so you know is I think it's about finding the expertise and that's why I thought you were going to pick this up Robert in those jurisdictions to make sure that the court does get that comprehensive history and pathway to the courtroom that you see in the African Nova Scotian impact of race and cultural assessments but to me it starts with the expertise like the reason that these reports are so effective here is because of the expertise behind the reports and that's what was required because we knew and it has brought itself to bear that these reports would be challenged in a way that no other reports have been if we think about pre-sentence reports how often do you see the pre-sentence report author dragged into court and cross-examined I would suggest that's very rare if we think about glad you reports perhaps a little more often but still pretty rare if we think about Urcas especially when they were first introduced I would suggest it was almost every case okay you assessor tell me who your collaterals were tell me what records you looked at what about this what about that so the expertise has been challenged from the beginning and I thought it was a very strategic decision to say we are going to write this from a forensic lens to the point that it must be accepted and that's the standard I think that has to be set across the country as we roll these out that's great and the experiences of you know of anti-black racism are not unique obviously to African-Nova's Goshen so whether someone's in Ontario or Saskatchewan or wherever I mean there's those those two main overarching concepts of community and contribution they've made a contribution to their communities and you know it's the community itself that'll be able to to do that work in my view to find the experts who are there they're known to that community and so it's an easy it's easily transferable across the across the country because we have you know work is being done at at all levels to try to combat anti-black racism always been the case and so the community itself will be able to identify those who are experts to be able to you know to create that work in that area that's specific to that to that community Can I just add I think it's important wherever you are that it's not anti-black racism in the abstract right and this is this is the importance of asserting ourselves as a distinct people and talking about the way in which we have experienced anti-black racism related to who we are as a people and our history and I think that that the challenge is anywhere in the country if courts are not prepared to see the whole person of African descent in relation to their community and their culture and so on and they've done a disservice in that moment but also to the collectivity to which that person is connected Well I would say in answer to the question then yes there is a generalizability here and I think that the principles that you just articulated Michelle are important so that if we are we are writing an IRCA on a person of Haitian descent who happens to be in Montreal we will talk about anti-black racism as it is applied to Haitian immigrants in Montreal talking about the history of Haitian immigration to Canada talking about the way in which Quebec has had some influence over its immigration such that it is able to select individuals who come to settle there using an immigration process who are first language French speakers and then to talk about how French immigrants have been received in Quebec and what their experience has been what their history of systemic discrimination has been both in Quebec and perhaps even the colonial nature of the history of Haiti and how that has impacted people and then bringing what we know about the psychological impacts of that on the individual the social impacts and what that does in terms of fomenting an environment of criminality the systemic discrimination in policing and the like so we have learned how to do this here and in fact Nova Scotians have been asked to stand up the training for assessors across the country and we've already begun to do that and we've been seeking those experts across the country who would be able and qualified to become her assessors so yes people of African descent no matter where they are I think another question that is being answered is can this model be applied to other peoples other than people of African descent the obvious answer to that is yes but I would say in the same way that the human rights commission was established to address anti-black racism and very quickly upon its establishment left its original mission to take on the needs of other peoples and actually lost the capacity to understand the needs of black people let us secure this world this tool as a tool of anti-black racism before we allow it to run away from us and become a principally a tool to address anti-Asian racism or anti-immigrant racism just give us half a minute to hold on to this tool to start to address anti-black racism before you give us the responsibility to train other peoples to use it I'm certainly in favor of that but again just give us a half a minute I'd invite people to ask their questions in the Q&A section and I'll go to a question from Isaac Sauer who admits that this question is a bit of a niche question but have there been any innovations in response to algorithmic discrimination in policing that's that's an interesting question while some folk try and answer on this I might google algorithmic discrimination in policing any comments on that I would say quickly no in the sense of the work that we've been doing hasn't veered in that direction you may be aware that Dalhousie is sort of picked up a project I think primarily led through the computer science department that may be creating some space to think about these issues but through the coalition or the institute and I'll defer that part to Brandon I'm not sure that it's it has come up high on the agenda which is not at all to suggest it's not important but but for the most part no we haven't waited in there well I think the the second part of the question is about risk assessment for parole and so that issue of risk assessment within corrections I think is an area that we definitely want to focus on I know Robert is doing some work with corrections you know applying these these risk assessment tools these generic tools to racialize folks doesn't give you you know the comprehensive outcome that you want when you're talking about you know how do we deal with this at African Nova Scotian person in front of me or African Canadian person in front of me this risk assessment tool may not be the most effective tool so that generically to answer the question is an area that we definitely want to focus on and I don't know Robert if you wanted to pick up that that work that's happening in corrections sure just teasing a little bit there about algorithmic policing so so really in the 19 I want to say the 1970s sociologists really got taken up with the idea of mathematical models of predicting human behavior and there were some folks who said we could use math to figure it all out and and I think that that really laid the foundation for these these actuarial models for assessing things like risk in policing and so if we think about the V rag and the sore rag and these kinds of actuarial tools that are used by social scientists to predict the risk and the recidivism of particular individuals that these tools have been used extensively in in correctional assessment and classification assessment parole assessment and the like they they're problematic from a number of points of view first of all I would say that these tools are designed in laboratories and the people that they again that that they are applied to don't live in the same laboratories where the tools were were created so that's one of the problems the other thing of course is that these tools were not designed with the full diversity of of Canadian citizens in mind they certainly were not also designed with an understanding of the influences on people's assessment of recidivism and even the construction of the tools like the idea of anti-black racism being written into an actuarial assessment so if you think about it for example a person who is incarcerated who doesn't have a residence to be discharged to is actually a higher risk person than a person who has a residence well who does that discriminate against is that an actual actuarial factor that contributes to risk or are we just locking up poor people longer than people with money right because many people who who do not have income lose their residences upon admission into an institution and if people are socially isolated so anyway I won't I digress currently so for about the last 15 years I've been talking about the need to steer clear of actuarial assessments in predicting risk for people of African descent people who are of African descent go into our correctional facilities and using those tools are assessed at the highest risk for classification and yet black people have among the lowest recidivism rates upon discharge from prison so there's clearly a mismatch between our tools for assessment and the experience of recidivism so for 15 years I've been talking about this and for 15 years I've been ignored but recently the Ontario branch of correctional service candidate has been designing new training for probation and parole officers and the folk at Carleton University in particular Ralph Saren and his team at the the risk assessment lab there have been asked to kind of review that work and I've been contracted by them to be a part of a team of individuals who are giving a cultural lens to that training and I guess without telling tales out of school I'll just say that the cultural lens that is being applied to the training has demonstrated the need to go back to the drawing board if we're going to have probation and parole officers accurately assessing the risk of diversity of peoples we need to take a journey away from actuarial tools and look at these sociocultural models for understanding risk that can only come from a rich understanding of history like we've presented to you today and what Urca's attempt to bring so I guess that's what I would say that that's where we are in Canada in terms of this idea of pushing back against actuarial and algorithmic models for policing and for a risk assessment and I hope Isaac that that's answered your question a little bit I flinched at it but I hope that's been helpful you had that great answer ready you just wanted to see us struggle with it first it is a very interesting thing though I mean it's back to Urca's too doesn't it we talk about that risk as well the information someone's bearing their soul in Urca and we'll divulge things about who they associate with and then how does that get used in corrections when they classify a risk are they using those associates to then determine a higher risk at the corrections level so that's an area of focus as well how do we mitigate that before it arrives at corrections yeah yeah Josie asks an interesting question is this change rate algorithmic assessments also happening for forensic dangerous offender and long-term offender assessments not yet but we're on the case I guess that's what we'd say risk let me say this I've been in addition to doing this work I'm a sex offender assessment and treatment specialist and and so risk assessment as it relates to sexual offending and reoffending is something that's been a tremendous interest interest of mine since the mid 90s and and we are as a tool a group of people those experts in in assessing in treatment of sex offenders we are really pushing against this it's not just a race thing it certainly is a race thing but those who work with those populations are recognizing that they're the tools that we're using are really not great tools we have for whole classes of offenders really stopped assessing them as whole human beings and have assessed them as perpetrators of very distinct offenses and and you know urcas are a tool that could be used and in these dangerous assessment hearings to bring as judge Derek said a different lens through which to see the offenders someone asks if the institute will look at child welfare law and if so how can this work on urcas be translated to this area any takers all right again I'm not going to speak for what the institute is going to do but I would note that professor Duga is taking a look at the child welfare issues and has a small grant that she was awarded to do that here at Dalhousie so they're definitely I think will be some move in that direction so I guess there are these questions keep coming up and and what I would say is this and I don't know many of the people who are on this call but I will point out and I say this all the time when we talk about urcas if it wasn't for the fact that Krista Thompson called me up and said hey can I talk to you about the possibility of writing an assessment on a file of mine I would not have been the pioneer of urcas but for that call I would have just been a community practitioner running around talking publicly about ideas of race and justice so it took a lawyer who was litigating a case that involved a very a real live person in front of a real live judge to call a person like me into that discourse for urcas to become a thing so although I'm you know and I often say and Michelle that I find I feel like a spectator when I'm on these panels because the work is initiated by legal practitioners who have an innovative mind to push against these things and in particular anti-black racism in this case so if you have a question as to whether or not these kinds of arguments can be brought to a dangerous offender and a long-term offender assessments then go find an expert and invite them into your into your case and find a way to advance that argument I am not an academic well I mean I'm not a practicing full-time academic whose job is right writing and research I'm a community practitioner right who created urcas because of my practice not because of my scholarship and I would challenge you when you have a question like this particularly when the literature is vacant to innovate within the context of the community of practitioners that you have surrounded yourself with because you've known that that's how best you should practice to innovate a solution to the question that you're advancing remember that Professor Duga's academic work came after the RVX decision was made so in that case the practice preceded the academic analysis so as a practicing lawyer you're on the front line you know and I look to people like Mr. Roll and Mr. Curry these are giant innovators who are out there pushing the envelope standing on the frontier of what is currently done and known and just taking another step well Judge you need this material to make a good judgment so you really should order it never been done before but you should order it and pay for it and the judge said I guess you're right Mr. Curry and ordered it I wondered Mr. Curry it could you speak to what did it take to do that what did it feel like to do that if we're talking to people who are legal practitioners did it take courage did it take boldness did it take I don't know what did you eat that morning for breakfast I yeah it takes all of that right but at the end of the day it goes back to those two things that I mentioned before community so you have to have you have to have the willingness to have these discussions with other African Nova Scotians and others that are practitioners that practice in the area to sort out the how because we don't want to set anything back either by just trying to push forward because we've seen that before as well we want to push forward in a way that's going to be successful to advance the issue so that it's developing community to help you get around the nose in the obstacles and it's also both this willingness to contribute you have so to me there has to be an intention right from the beginning that I'm going to find a way to contribute to the dismantling of the disparities that we know exist in the criminal justice system and finding ways to do that and that's the guiding principle and then you find the ways in the system to do that whether again whether you're it's on the criminal defense side of its family law you're practicing if you're a judge if you're a crown develop programs develop that the community that allows you to contribute in a way that dismantles a system that we know is disproportionately and disparagingly affecting you know the aboriginals and and African Nova Scotians so yeah so when you say what it took it's the conversations and it's the intention that we're going to try to address and dismantle this and to me it was very easy because it was low hanging fruit as far as I'm concerned because we already had Gledoux since 1999 and that that's been here and it's the same section it's analogous to that when we looked at overrepresentation the numbers are compared are as bad or worse for African Canadians as they are for aboriginals across the country so in those two communities in particular for the historic reasons right and so it was ripe for the picking in terms of of course that would be applied and then it's just a matter of finding the law to back up what the intention is and the how was what took the most the most time in terms of what law you'd be following in terms of and again I remember Chief Justice Kennedy telling me as a law student that if you want a judge to step out and do something build the branch or to step out there and those words stuck with me you know and it's a part of that branch that we developed the how to what's what's the authority that we'd ask a judge to do that and it's out of necessity that that kind of played itself out but yeah it's about finding a way to we all should be look not only at Canova's oceans but certainly all lawyers should be looking for ways especially criminal lawyers should be looking at ways to contribute to the dismantling of the disparities no matter what your title is maybe I could follow that up with oh yes are we a time for a time yeah and I'm conscious of the time and and just want to make sure that we respect people's time and in joining us tonight and so I'm happy to if anyone wants to stay on but for folks who have been here with us tonight just wanted to thank you for for coming with us and sorry we sort of can't see you and have that level of dialogue but certainly appreciate your presence here and your interest in this topic and so I just wanted to say that to to folks as we say good night and I'm happy to stay Robert and others if you wanted to talk a little further so perhaps we should we should leave the conversation there and look forward to the next conversation yes and I think that is as we have done this work we have we have established a lot of the practice elements of this work and and have identified the experts in the work I will just leave with one last question from a long time colleague and sister social worker of mine Janice Aitken who asks do you see a place for allyship from non-African Nova Scotian people within the current criminal justice stakeholders to assist you or do you feel it will take the continued push from only African Nova Scotians to achieve your goals and I don't know who will answer that last question it's always both I think yeah yeah I would just remind people that Krista Thompson was a white woman Krista Thompson who was the lawyer in the X case was a white woman who had community with black legal practitioners in her office who happened to have the right case and she used the community connections that her office mates had to reach out to find this tool and I guess Brandon as you take on the mantle of the director of legal services for the justice institute I would imagine that that you would see the justice institute as a place not for white practitioners to unload these questions but for white practitioners to come to gain support for the work that they want to do in this work yeah absolutely I think it ties back into the last question too I was thinking about that I'm not a family law expert but what can I bring so maybe it's a strategic partnership with people like Shauna Paris Hoyt Alicia Brown-Fagan who have been introducing this idea of cultural assessments for parental capacity assessments for example let's merge the practitioner with the in-house expertise that we do have the roster of experts that we know are flexible and can adapt these types of reports to any environment and provide the strategy and consultation and so yes of course that's what we're going to do in the criminal justice world as well the majority of judges are still white the majority of practitioners are still white that's where the shift needs to happen right and so it goes into things like establishing accountability through criminal law practice standards which we're doing holding people accountable but also providing support as they advance these arguments and you know that's that's the beauty of the work because we can be housed in a single place but provide access and consultation and support across the province so ideally that's how we're going to do it but we'll see how it unfolds and yes we need the allyship to move the profession forward and the law forward of course you know can I just add you know I think that the small P political leadership and direction and visioning has to come from the African Nova Scotian people about what we want for ourselves but there's so much landscape to cover right once you you kind of charted that course that we really do need allies to work with us in that and one book that I found very helpful that I share with my class very early on in the course is I think it's is it Anne Bishop I'm sorry I'm not recalling the exact name but I think it's in about the third printing and it's a really great yes how to be an ally yeah really great really great I find it very helpful in terms of trying to be an ally with groups that I'm not I don't identify with myself but want to support so I would recommend that as well I'm sure people are already kind of aware of that too yeah so let's tie this in a bow yeah well again I just want to say what a privilege it is for me to be in the company of these folk on this panel like I say I often come to this space and feel like I'm I'm a spectator to these folk who are just the movers and shakers and legal leaders in Canada on on addressing systemic discrimination that exists in the criminal justice system and we have come together as a community of practitioners bringing our academic chops and our criminal law practice chops and our community clinical practice chops all together to mix up this great gumbo that is the current manifestation of the history of African Nova Scotian innovation and resistance and you are living in a time where you are our colleagues and our friends and we look forward to practicing with you in the days and the weeks and months to come so maybe Michelle if you want to have the last word I'll let you say good night yes that's all I will say is good night and thanks and and everybody stay well till we meet again bye bye for now