A Metis man who used a stolen car to play a high-speed game of chicken with police in High Prairie, Alta., has been sentenced to 30 months behind bars by a judge who noted the driver’s Indigenous background “meaningfully reduces his moral blameworthiness.”
Daniel Tanner Bigcharles was convicted this past May in Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench on two counts of assaulting a peace officer with a weapon, fleeing from police, dangerous driving and resisting a peace officer.
Canada’s legal system demands that Indigenous criminals be given lighter sentences to remediate injustices, real or perceived, like colonialism and racism. Yet, a new wide ranging Postmedia/Leger survey suggests that almost half of Indigenous Canadians disagree with this approach and want equality under the law.
One of Canada’s most difficult conversations today concerns indigenous employment.
It is difficult because two things can be true at the same time.
Indigenous Canadians have faced — and continue to face — real barriers to education and employment.
In a piece republished by The Hub, Karen Restoule, director of Indigenous Affairs at the prestigious Macdonald-Laurier Institute, described what she calls Canada’s ongoing struggle to address the legacy of the country’s Indian Residential Schools, highlighted by a recent incident involving a white nationalist group peacefully and lawfully demonstrating near BC’s former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
The BC Conservatives campaigned on a firm pledge to protect property rights, tapping into a deep-seated public anxiety triggered by the landmark Cowichan Tribes v. Canada ruling. As the incoming government takes office following its historic majority victory, it must act on this commitment from day one. However, the true test of leadership for Premier-designate Lorne Doerkson will be balancing political rhetoric with constitutional reality.
I’m a lawyer. And I’ve been watching Canadian governments talk about ending the Indian Act for most of my adult life.
In 1969, Trudeau and Chrétien actually tried it. Their white paper proposed scrapping the statute, ending separate legal status and treating First Nations people as ordinary Canadians. Indigenous leaders called it assimilation and killed it; the paternalistic act stayed.
The name of the Indian Act itself indicates how old and outdated the legislation is. While using the term Indian for indigenous North Americans fell into common disuse decades ago, governments didn’t dare take the chance of putting the act to Parliament to revise the name. The act has become sacred, and while it has been amended many times since its creation, it has rarely been for the better and it was usually quietly done.
A new report from the Fraser Institute calculates that the federal government has paid out more than $110 billion to First Nations for lawsuit and class action settlements since 1974, with the vast majority of that amount coming from recent class action lawsuits.
Class action payments since 2007 have cost the government an estimated $83.2 billion, the report found. That’s 73.5 per cent of all payouts since 1974.
An Edmonton judge has rejected a joint sentence recommendation as “unhinged” for an Indigenous man who stabbed a stranger in the buttocks during a group mugging less than two months after he was released on bail on conditions prohibiting him from possessing any weapons.
Shaye Riley Bird, who still had the bloody knife on him, as well as blood on his pants when police picked him up, pleaded guilty in Alberta’s Court of Justice to the May 3, 2026, assault causing bodily harm and breaching the conditions of his release in March. Both his defence lawyer and the Crown recommended Bird get 180 days in jail for the assault, and another 30 days to be served concurrently, for the bail breach.
OTTAWA — Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says he told Prime Minister Mark Carney that Canada should abolish the Indian Act during a historic meeting with premiers and First Nations leaders.
Speaking with reporters during a midday break in the meeting Monday, Kinew held up his First Nations status card, which he said identifies him as an “Indian within the meaning of the Indian Act.”
“It’s time to abolish the Indian Act,” Kinew said. “It’s long overdue that we have a relationship with Indigenous Peoples in Canada that reflects who we are as Canadians today.”
Wake me when Kinew calls for all funding to be cut off.
VANCOUVER — “I want our sons and daughters to grow up in a B.C. that is the envy of the world,” newly-elected B.C. Premier Lorne Doerkson emphatically told an ecstatic, screaming crowd at the Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver Saturday night.
The crowd howled repeatedly throughout his victory speech, perhaps at maximum decibels when Doerkson promised to protect private property rights in the province. “I believe in the protection of private property rights and a British Columbia where parks are open to all British Columbians,” he said, pausing to let the cheering die down. (Ever since a court ruling last year recognized Aboriginal title over Richmond, there was been unease in the province over whether people actually own their property or not.)
The raven is a part of Chanie’s story, guiding him to the spirit world when he did not make it home. In the Seven Grandfather Teachings, the Raven also represents honesty and is a reminder to live with integrity. We chose the raven as the symbol of Secret Path’s 10th anniversary to honour Chanie’s memory and the responsibility we share to carry this work forward.
The foregoing is a statement from the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund website, from the page celebrating the tenth anniversary of “The Secret Path.” This multimedia package — an animated feature-length video, a collection of Gord Downie songs, and a darkly drawn graphic novel — purports to tell the true story of how 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack died while running away from an Indian residential school after allegedly being abused by a priest.
An Alberta judge has discounted the sentence for a Métis woman caught selling drugs she believed had already killed two people, linking her crimes to “the intergenerational legacy” of residential schools.
Justice Derek Jugnauth sentenced Kendall Delaney to six years in prison after she pleaded guilty in the Court of King’s Bench to trafficking methamphetamine and fentanyl.
On June 2, 2022, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau gave the Siksika reserve in Alberta $1.3 billion as a land claim settlement. In March 2025, I toured the reserve and shot a video showing appalling housing conditions, rampant garbage, wild dogs, and general disorder on what should have been one of the wealthiest reserves in Canada. In response to the video, the reserve charged me with two counts of trespassing. That case is still before the courts today.
The leaders of a powerful push against what they call Indian Residential School “denialism” have seen their anti-denialism critique published by the Calgary Herald.
The authors of Don’t let denialism distract from truth and reconciliation progress, Sean Carleton and Niigaan Sinclair, are University of Manitoba political activists posing as scholars.
