Photo: Facebook Chad Alphonse.

CORRECTION:

While the B.C. Ministry of Attorney General initially said they had yet to make direct funding available for Gladue reports, it has since clarified that they have directly funded three Gladue reports, with one of those being for Chad Alphonse.

Additionally, 131 reports were funded by the Legal Services Society, with partial funding from the government, through legal aid during fiscal 2017-2018, while 155 reports have been produced or are underway through legal aid this fiscal year.

While the Crown sought a sentence of four to eight years for the man who killed 26-year-old Waylon Jackson, Chad Alphonse was instead given three years of probation for his manslaughter conviction.

Alphonse's defence counsel Terry La Liberté says a “main feature” of the suspended sentence was his Gladue Report, a legislated type of pre-sentencing report that describes an accused's history as an Indigenous person in Canada and how it's impacted their life.

La Liberté says the Alphonse case was precedent-setting in B.C., because Justice Catherine Murray ordered the Gladue Report, forcing the government to pay for its preparation.

While the Gladue Report comes from a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision, La Liberté says the provincial government has fought back against court-ordered Gladue Reports, and to his knowledge, a judge has never ordered one before in B.C.

“In the past, the government sent lawyers to insist that (the accused) would pay for it themselves if they weren't on legal aid, so this is a bit of a breakthrough in that regard,” La Liberté said.

“The judge was adamant, she wanted a Gladue Report and we didn't have to fight... we had no opposition. I believe, partly, because of the very strong position taken by a judge who was not going to be involved in the funding aspect of it.”

In her decision, Justice Murray pointed to Alphonse's Gladue report findings which found he grew up around “family members, friends and acquaintances who were struggling with mental health issues and abused substances to self-medicate,” including his parents.

In a statement, the B.C.'s Ministry of the Attorney General said they began funding the Legal Services Society last year, which in turn can provide Gladue reports for those who qualify for legal aid.

La Liberté says the report is not a defence report though, but a report mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada and the Criminal Code, and says the onus for payment shouldn't be on the accused.

The average cost of a Gladue report is more than $2,300.

The 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision said that in sentencing, a judge must consider how the accused's Indigenous history affected their life, and “explore reasonable alternatives to incarceration in the case of all aboriginal offenders.”

“It has to do with the fact that First Nations people were the only Canadians subjected to residential schools, reserves, Indian Acts,” La Liberté said. “No other minority or immigrant or anybody has ever been subjected to that demeaning and racist environment and yet for First Nations people it was institutionalized.”

The Ministry of Attorney General says they are working to make funding available for those ineligible for legal aid, but a timeline of this development could not be provided.

La Liberté says Alphonse has worked to rehabilitate himself since the March 2016 killing. He was released on bail into the VisionQuest Recovery Society in August 2016 and stopped drinking following Jackson's death. His probation conditions now allow him to live with relatives in Kelowna with a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the first year.

“We hope that this case, in terms of other First Nations people who are being charged with offences, will see some hope," La Liberté said. "That if they do put the work into rehabilitation, really try hard, they're going to be rewarded by not having to be sent to jail like all the generations of First Nations people have been."

While La Liberté says the suspended sentence will let Alphonse work on his rehabilitation, the victim's parents were visibly upset by the sentence, abruptly leaving the courtroom Wednesday after Justice Murray announced her ruling.

The Crown says it is reviewing Justice Murray's sentencing decision, and will not comment on the likelihood of an appeal at this time.