During February we celebrate the achievements of Black people as part of Black History Month. This year’s theme, “Black Legacy and Leadership” invites us to celebrate the diversity and achievements of Black people in Canada, and reflect on Canada’s painful history and the distinct challenges that Black people in Canada continue to face in their daily lives. To this end, I would like to acknowledge the historic contributions of Black people to our legal system.
In the 1960s, Jamaican social worker and politician Rosemary Brown worked to raise awareness of racism and sexism in BC and Canada. As the first Black woman to be elected to the BC legislature, and the first to raise intersectionality in the Canadian context (PDF), Rosemary introduced legislation to remove sexism and racism from the BC education curriculum, to reduce discrimination based on gender and marital status, and to advance human rights in BC.
BC’s first Black judge, the Honourable Selwyn Romilly is widely recognized for his legal legacy despite the historic barriers he overcame as a Black jurist. He decided over 720 cases, with nearly 450 reported at the Supreme Court level. Several of his judgements have been summarized in the ‘Weekly Criminal Bulletin,’ the ‘BC Digest of Criminal & Sentence Cases,’ and the ‘Charter of Rights Digest.’ Voted by BC lawyers as one of the four best provincial court judges in the province, he helped establish the first Allard Law Student Award dedicated to supporting Black Canadian law students.
In addition to these contributions, it is important to highlight the systemic discrimination that Black people continue to experience, and our role in dismantling systemic racism in the legal system.
Selwyn Romilly experienced discrimination during his career and after, including being wrongfully handcuffed and detained. This arrest mirrored a false imprisonment of his brother, Valmond Romilly, also a provincial court judge, nearly a half-century prior by the same police department. Rosemary Brown faced sexism and racism when seeking housing and employment in university.
The overrepresentation of Black people experiencing family violence in the criminal justice system, immigration and refugee matters and child welfare (PDF) point to the need for action in our organization. Canada’s Black Justice Strategy, and the recent Roadmap, includes calls for the advancement of Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCA) (PDF), including the expansion of funding for IRCAs, related training, and proper use of IRCAs in sentencing Black offenders. It also calls for a Race and Identity-Based Data program to understand existing racial disparities and patterns of discrimination in the justice system.
At Legal Aid BC, we have a system in place to provide IRCA reports. We are beginning to collect data to identify and address systemic racism experienced by Black and racialized clients, lawyers, and employees whom we work with. We have also begun implementing recommendations to advance anti-racism in our internal policies and processes, to align our work with best practices in equity, diversity and inclusion. Our goal as an organization is to improve equity for all groups, internally and among our clients, so that our future can be shaped by an inclusive understanding of who we are. This Black History Month we turn our minds to the experience of Black people and our opportunity to advance the widely accepted strategies to address systemic barriers to Black people and do our part to advance anti-racism in the legal system.
Wendy Jackson
CEO