Last Thursday in Prince George, a woman was sentenced to seven months in jail and two years probation for break and enter. The case of Philicity Rhea Lafreniere made headlines after her arrest on March 13, when she attempted to flee from police by floating on an ice floe down the Nechako River.
That sentence is three months longer than the sentence David Stephan received Friday in Lethbridge for letting his 19-month-old son die.
For those bewildered by the growing rage against the establishment, the lack of faith in the law and the courts, the lack of respect for the politicians who make the laws and the lack of trust in the police officers who enforce the law, the anger and resentment starts at places like this.
Stephan got four months and his wife got three months of house arrest for insisting on feeding vegetables smoothies to their toddler, instead of taking him to the doctor. Even when a nurse friend told them their son likely had meningitis, a potentially deadly bacterial infection, they didn't act. Even when he stopped breathing, 911 was not their first call.
The law and its application has not only failed young Ezekiel but all Canadians, particularly children. This case sets the precedent for parents letting their kids die for the stupidest of reasons, with the only repercussions being house arrest or a jail term reserved for petty thieves. As stated in a previous editorial, this ruling could mean parents could let their babies die of thirst, rather than give them fluoridated water, without fear of an appropriate punishment delivered in a Canadian court.
This kind of criticism is often deflected by judges, lawyers and legal scholars, swatted away as ignorance of the law, its spirit, its specifics, its history and its intent. It is these experts, these servants of the court, who are ignorant because the law doesn't belong to them but to the people who grant it legitimacy in a democratic society. The law is powerless without a state. The authority of judges and police officers doesn't exist without a citizenry that recognizes that authority.
The Stephans have received a substantial amount of support across social media in the name of parents rights, with earnest cries that a law that would strip parents of those rights leads to tyranny. The far greater danger here is a law that doesn't adequately punish parents for causing their child to die leads to anarchy.
Even if the judge in this case had thrown the book at the Stephans, the maximum penalty for their crime is just five years, the exact same maximum penalty available for fleeing from police, which Lafreniere was not charged with, presumably because the ice floe was too slow and putting her life at risk to get on the ice (and then light a fire on it in an attempt to burn evidence) was bad enough.
A five-year maximum in jail for running from the cops sounds about right. A five-year maximum in jail for failing to provide the necessities of life to a dependent sounds wrong, by a factor of four or five. Under such a change, lawyers would still be free to make sentencing recommendations, judges would still be somewhat free, with legal precedent in mind, to issue a fitting sentence.
For the Stephans, that should have been 10 years in prison each, which would have served the dual purpose of punishing the couple for their gross negligence and having someone else, someone who believes in taking kids to the doctor when they're sick, raising their three remaining children for them. As it stands now, those kids are in danger, particularly from their father who, based on his public comments, carries neither guilt nor shame for his horrendous crime.
The final responsibility for addressing such flaws in Canadian law falls to Parliament. Despite claims to the contrary, the final law of the land rests with these elected men and women, not at the Supreme Court. Stephen Harper was wrong about a great many things but his concern about the top court reshaping Canadian society contrary to the wishes of Parliament wasn't one of them. Whether it would be to use the notwithstanding clause if the court finds the new law on assisted dying unconstitutional or to order new sentencing guidelines so the courts can properly punish the parents responsible for the death of a child, there is never a bad time for citizens, through their elected representatives, to lay down the law that belongs to them.
