Should there be mandatory minimum sentences?
Lisa Silver The U of C assistant professor of law says no Our legal system is a reflection of who we are as a society. The values at the core of that system promote fairness and justice. These [...]
Justice
Justice
Taking Back the Neighbourhood
When he moved into a 1960s-era northside bungalow in Lethbridge six years ago, Clint Russnaik liked his new neighbourhood. It was a “great place,” he says, somewhere where “nothing bad happened.” [...]
By Jeff Doherty
Courtroom 356
If you want a glimpse of criminal justice in Alberta, walk up to Courtroom 356 in Edmonton on a weekday morning. Once you go through the glass doors into the foyer, the air smells just a bit of [...]
By Jay Smith
Justice For None
Blair Jason Hinkley, accused of aggravated sexual assault, was released from an Alberta prison in 2016 because the Crown took too long to bring the case to trial. Hinkley was then arrested again, [...]
By Barb Howard
Retrospective: Game Changer
In 2008 the Beaver Lake Cree’s chief councillor, Alphonse Lameman, filed a court action against the governments of Canada and Alberta, alleging that the cumulative effects of industrial [...]
By Arno Kopecky
Are We Serious About Truth and Reconciliation?
For well over a decade I’ve talked to Canadians about the issues Indigenous peoples face. I’ve challenged stereotypes and tried to build relationships that will get us beyond stubborn [...]
Close Contact
The Correctional peace officer counts his inmates differently than his colleagues in other units of the Edmonton Remand Centre do. Each prisoner stands at ease beside his cellmate outside his [...]
Medicare On Trial
An epic battle is underway in a Vancouver courtroom, with doctors, patients and experts clashing over how best to meet the healthcare needs of Canadians. Less visible—but nonetheless central to [...]
Canada’s Top Judge
The Grand Entrance Hall of the Supreme Court in Ottawa is beautiful in an imposing, not to say forbidding, way. Lined with three kinds of marble in chaste tones of beige and gold, punctuated by [...]
In Praise of Protest
On January 24, 2012, the Stop Castle Logging protest had been underway for 13 days in temperatures down to −35 degrees and a wind-chill reaching −45. Alberta Forest Service (AFS) had served [...]
By Sid Marty
MOST READ
MOST READ
The Plans to Strip-Mine Coal in the Mountains
It looks like spectacular wild country, but some see it more as a big money sandwich.
The top layer of that sandwich is comprised of alpine grasses, forget-me-nots and stonecrop, glacier lilies and ancient, brave pines whose branches have been gnarled and weathered by centuries of wind. In summer, solitaires and ...
Herd Memory
On a cold day in February, I flew over the tightly knit stands of black spruce and jack pine in northwestern Alberta, straining my eyes below, eager to catch sight of a woodland caribou. My dad, a wildlife biologist, called them the “grey ghosts” of the boreal. Woodland caribou have ...
The Big Man in Cargo Shorts
Leonard was the first to find him. The man was face down in the school’s outdoor learning space, next to a planter of basil. He was fat, his calves the size of a turkey dinner, his hair a gnarled mess of seaweed. Leonard wondered if the man was dead and ...