Part Two
by Robin Mathews
by Robin Mathews
We turn away, easily, from injustice done to others.
Anyone in Canada who can read should
read this book by Bruce Clark. It opens up such important aspects of
history and politics and justice in Canada that it should be required reading
by all those in the country who can read. At least two points of focus are
present in Bruce Clark’s Ongoing Genocide. Perhaps the most important is
the betrayal of the Constitution and laws growing from it by the Courts in
Canada and the Legal Establishment in order to impose upon the indigenous
peoples an arbitrary and illicit regime that has and does lead to their
deracination, alienation, social isolation, unnecessary illnesses and very high
levels of suicide. (Quite apart from robbing them of their real status in
law and in the courts.)
Part One of this column, devoted to
the subject, reviewed the process by which “as an unvarying constant” the
judicial and legal Establishments in Canada have created an illegitimate regime
of judge-made law that goes unchallenged and that contradicts the clearest
Constitutional statements and flowing from them - the precedents upon
which the fabric of justice is (normally) maintained.
Part One also proposed that bastardized
law and adjudication are not confined to indigenous matters but are very
frequently almost as a parallel and so, perhaps, in some sort of relation the rule of actions in the Higher Courts
whenever Established Power, criminal government, and/or large Corporate
Power come into contention with the Constitution (and, therefore come into the
realm of Canada’s judicial and legal Establishments).
What needs also to be focused upon
is Bruce Clark himself, his struggle to gain justice for the indigenous
peoples, his having been cited for Contempt of Court, imprisoned, and disbarred and, therefore, prevented, ever again, from engaging in the practice of law.
The reason he was disbarred is
simple and in perfect harmony with the large betrayal of the Constitution and
laws properly growing with and from it. The assembly undertaking the
adjudication of his status agreed that Clark was serious, articulate, informed,
and skillful in his presentation of fact and argument. Brought against him at
some point was an allegation that his unpopular opinion had been answered
(already) forty times! If it had been answered even once (by, of course,
a judge) a record would be available: none exists. That his position was prevented
from being articulated in any way recognizable by the Court is quite another
matter. Being denied the right to articulate the position for the court to
consider is quite another condition.
And so “with the greatest regret of
course” and only because he would not accept the fraudulent denial (and
attempted erasure) of the Constitutional realities concerning the indigenous
peoples Bruce Clark was, regretfully, disbarred from the practice of law: because
of the finding that the solicitor is ungovernable (p. 98)
His story is known by many familiar
with indigenous history in Canada. It is not unknown among judges and
lawyers across Canada. And yet there is no movement among bright young
lawyers (or bright old judges!) to re-visit the persecution of Bruce Clark
and to seek justice in his case. Seeking justice apparently has very
little to do with the lives and the professional conduct of the members of the
Legal and Judicial Establishments in Canada.
Unfortunately, in his description of
the usurpations of the Constitutional identity of Canada’s indigenous peoples,
Bruce Clark cannot do anything else but point to the (knowing) participation of
the Judicial and Legal Establishments in that process. Judges (and
lawyers) have to know when judge-made law is usurping the Constitution and
Constitutionally-empowered law.
Populations (not just Canadians)
respond to knowledge of serious injustices done to others with remarkable
calm. History has many astonishing precedents. In the 1630s Galileo was
forced by the then all-powerful Roman Catholic faith to recant his proposition
that the earth moved around the sun and was not the centre of the solar system
(or, indeed, of the whole universe). We laugh, now, about the foolishness of
power at that time forgetting, perhaps, that Galileo was punished for life and forced to live under continuing house arrest.
In time, perhaps, Canadians will
laugh at the stupid Canadian State, the stupid judicial and legal
Establishments which engaged in the destruction of Bruce Clark’s career as a
lawyer, permanently punishing him (like Galileo) for speaking the truth.
But for anyone with the smallest
sense of fair-mindedness and a shred of belief that justice can win out in
Canada, justice for Bruce Clark sometime in the future is not good
enough. Where is the lawyer or the judge who will begin, now, the
movement to erase the astonishing injustice and indignity visited upon Bruce
Clark? Surely there is one man or one woman in the legal and judicial
Establishments willing and able to take on that task. Unless of course
being a member of either of those Establishments absolutely rules out
such a possibility.
Contact: Robin Mathew
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