EDITORIAL: Canadians need to be vigilant in the preservation of civil liberties

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Drybones.

In that case, a provision of the Indian Act prohibiting the consumption of intoxicants off-reserve made it possible for Indigenous Canadians to be fined or even imprisoned for drinking a few beers in a pub while doing something as simple as watching Hockey Night in Canada on a Saturday night.

This was a pre-Charter case that nonetheless recognized, for the first time, that Indigenous people were protected by the same civil liberties as everyone else in Canada.

Today, most observers could opine persuasively that Canadian law and society have come a long way since Drybones. However, a recent case that saw an Indigenous man and his 12-year-old granddaughter pre-emptively and arbitrarily detained and handcuffed in a Vancouver bank branch are stark reminders that perhaps there is still much work to do be done on the road to true social and legal equality in this country.

Global News reports that the man and his granddaughter were handcuffed by Vancouver police after bank staff were “unable to validate” their government-issued ID.

The man told Global that an employee called 911 and reported a fraud in progress.

What the case underscores is that, just as it was for Drybones, there is still an ongoing double standard.

In 1969, it was expected that an Indigenous person would not be found drinking a beer off-reserve. Today, it seems, there appears to be an unspoken impression that these Canadians do not belong in our major financial institutions, either; so much so that if found there, they will be suspected of committing crimes such as fraud.

Then again, could there be a much deeper issue at play here than just respect for racial minorities? One that fundamentally impacts the civil liberties of all Canadians?

Also making headlines is the issue of how the now legal but equally arbitrary detention of innocent motorists on our roads is occurring so that samples of their breath can be sampled, seized, and analyzed.

Anyone required to do so also leaves behind a sample of their DNA, the use of which is presumably subject to the caprice of our “estimable” federal government.

For those unaware, there exists a national DNA databank cataloguing the identities of persons convicted of crimes in this country, but it normally takes a judge to authorize the taking of such samples from an offender as part of their sentence — but only after they have been convicted of a crime.

Canada’s new impaired driving law, though cloaked in the guise of a public safety initiative, actually permits the government to seize our bodily samples and our DNA, without our consent or even the right to legal counsel.

Also newsworthy is a report that our thin-skinned federal Liberals considered legislation that would have required journalists to be screened, approved, and credentialed by the government in order to hold a license to report the news. So much for the sanctity of the Fourth Estate. Fortunately, the Liberals later backtracked on the idea.

It has been stated that the measure of a free society is how it treats its least advantaged and that a democracy is never more than one generation from slipping into totalitarianism.

It seems to me that these recent news stories are a siren call to all Canadians to be vigilant in the assertion, exercise, and resulting preservation of our civil liberties from encroachment by powerful institutions such as banks, the police, and most of all, our governments.