Canada’s Criminal Legal System is Unjust: Senator Kim Pate

“If we want to create a more just legal system and prison system, then we have to start with ensuring there’s more equitable access to everything from clean water, housing, education, food security, health care, and economic security overall,” Senator Kim Pate said. 

On January 25, Pate delivered the 43rd Viscount Bennett Memorial Lecture at the University of New Brunswick Law School in Fredericton. Her talk was titled, “Why and How We Need to Decolonize, Decriminalize and Decarcerate.”

Senator Kim Pate spent over six years in Canada’s Senate, working on eliminating mandatory minimum penalties, extensively focusing on Canadian prisons and the criminal legal system. Before that, she spent decades as an advocate, particularly for incarcerated people.

From 1992 until her Senate appointment, Fry was the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies.

Pate is committed to her work: “Part of what I see my responsibility to do, particularly in the Senate, is to shore up and ensure that we have equitable social, health and economic systems in this country so that every person has an opportunity to self-actualize and to get an education, to contribute to the community in a way that makes sense for them and in accordance with their skills, interests and abilities.”

Fredericton city council recently voted in favour of rezoning an area of the city to house a new provincial jail. 

Pate said the New Brunswick government should have invested the resources in the community to benefit all citizens in New Brunswick rather than very few, like correctional officers.

Pate commented: “I think it’s, unfortunately, very short-sighted on the part of the government.”