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Justice hinges on a simple principle: equal treatment under the law. Yet Canada’s courts increasingly deliver sentences based not on the crime, but on the criminal’s identity — eroding the foundation of fairness.
Consider a recent Calgary case. A 25-year-old man repeatedly sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl, threatened her family, planted an explosive under her mother’s car, and dragged her by her hair to maintain control. The Crown sought a ten-year sentence, deemed appropriate by the judge. Yet the sentence was cut to eight years, citing Gladue factors — considerations of the offender’s Indigenous background, poverty, and foster care experience. The victim’s trauma remains undiminished by her attacker’s hardships. Justice demands consequences match the harm caused, not the offender’s ancestry or circumstances.
Introduced to address Indigenous over-incarceration, Gladue principles consider systemic disadvantages during sentencing. But when they reduce punishment for violent crimes, they create a two-tier system — unfair to victims, other offenders, and society. Two people commit the same crime, cause identical harm, yet face different sentences based on ethnicity or status. That’s not justice; it’s a slide toward a system where group membership trumps individual accountability.
This issue extends beyond Gladue. The Supreme Court has upheld sentence reductions for permanent residents to avoid deportation triggers — two years or more means automatic removal without appeal. Judges impose “two years less a day” for serious crimes like drug trafficking, explicitly favoring non-citizens over citizens for identical offenses. This is justice bifurcated by status, not conduct.
Systemic challenges — intergenerational trauma, poverty, addiction — are real and demand action through education, mental health support, and economic opportunity. But courts aren’t social service agencies. Their role is to hold individuals accountable and protect society, not to offset societal wrongs through lighter sentences. When judges play social workers, they undermine public trust in equal justice.
Trust in the legal system depends on consistent principles. When sentences vary based on identity, victims feel betrayed, communities lose faith in law enforcement, and Canadians view each other through lenses of advantage rather than equality. The solution isn’t to ignore systemic issues but to address them outside sentencing — through investment in communities, foster care reform, and addiction treatment.
Sentencing must focus on the crime and its harm. Judges should weigh genuine mitigating factors — remorse, cooperation, rehabilitation potential — but not group identity or characteristics shared by millions of law-abiding citizens. When justice calibrates outcomes based on who stands before the court, it abandons its core principle. Victims, like the Calgary girl, deserve consequences proportionate to their suffering, not diminished by an offender’s background.
Canada’s justice system is becoming multi-tiered, where outcomes hinge on identity rather than actions. This isn’t progress toward fairness — it’s a regression to a time when law favored status over equality. Justice demands a return to consequences tied to deeds, not demographics.
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Josh Bredo is the Founder and Editor of unjusted. He spent nearly a decade in provincial custody for manslaughter, and now advocates for commonsense reforms to Canada’s justice system.