Brandon Sun - PRINT EDITION
Due process:
1. a course of formal proceedings (as legal proceedings) carried out regularly and in accordance with established rules and principles — called also procedural due process.
2. a judicial requirement that enacted laws may not contain provisions that result in the unfair, arbitrary, or unreasonable treatment of an individual — called also substantive due process.
— Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The Manitoba government’s omnibus budget bill, which was tabled in the legislature earlier this month, included legislation that would allow it to circumvent the courts to shut down illicit tobacco sales.
As The Canadian Press reported, the bill would give the province the power to issue its own stop-operating order to anyone selling tobacco without a provincial licence.
The bill follows a lengthy battle with the owners of the Dakota Chundee Smoke Shop near Pipestone, who have been selling cut-rate Mohawk tobacco since last November without paying provincial excise taxes.
Since it opened, provincial authorities with the Manitoba Finance Department have raided the store five times, seized thousands of cigarettes and laid a total of 66 charges that are still before the courts.
But after each raid, the Dakota restocked the shelves and reopened the following day.
Under the current process, the government is required to lay the matter before the courts and convince a judge that illicit tobacco has been sold repeatedly, in order to get an injunction.
Such an injunction was granted last May by the Court of Queen’s bench, although the Dakota have vowed to remain open, a situation that is both frustrating for the province, and embarrassing at the same time.
“We want to make sure that the mandates that we get from the people of Manitoba and the laws that are put in place can easily be administered,” Finance Minister Stan Struthers said. “We think we have to move forward judiciously and rapidly in these kinds of cases.”
Certainly having the power to issue its own orders would allow the province to act faster — an understandable desire for any government — but we fear this legislation wrongly sidesteps legal due process, even for members of the Dakota First Nations who ironically claim provincial and federal laws don’t apply to them as they have no treaty with Canada.
There are comparisons to be drawn between Manitoba’s proposed legislation and the federal Conservatives’ Bill C-30, the so-called “lawful access” legislation that was first tabled in the House of Commons in February, and then later withdrawn following a public outcry.
That federal legislation would have forced Internet service providers and cellphone companies to hand over customer information such as names, mailing addresses, ISP addresses, phone numbers and email addresses to authorities upon request, without having to first obtain a court-issued warrant.
Critics of the bill said it would have invited fishing expeditions by police and federal authorities, and allowed other forays into private information without having proper justification. In the same way, the proposed Manitoba legislation would skip the jurisdiction of the courts and allow the province to act without judicial justification.
Even if it didn’t have the potential to tread on the rights of Manitobans — which could lead us further down the rabbit hole if left unchallenged — we question the need for such legislation in the first place.
The courts have sided with the province regarding the need for an injunction, arrests have already been made and charges laid. The problem for the province is that the Dakota simply won’t roll over and give up, in spite of repeated attempts to shut down the smoke shop.
The Dakota created the smoke shop in the first place to speed up a challenge to their status as refugees in this country. While we can criticize their actions and tactics, the Dakota deserve to have questions surrounding their legal rights decided quickly and fairly, one way or another.
The province would do well to help expedite that process instead.
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition June 20, 2012
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Due process:
1. a course of formal proceedings (as legal proceedings) carried out regularly and in accordance with established rules and principles — called also procedural due process.
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Due process:
1. a course of formal proceedings (as legal proceedings) carried out regularly and in accordance with established rules and principles — called also procedural due process.
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