PIKANGIKUM FIRST NATION -- A Superior Court justice has overturned a lower court ruling that an Indigenous man should serve his impaired driving sentence in the OPP cells on the Pikangikum First Nation.
The OPP had appealed the ruling on the grounds that the detachment is not a correctional institution, and is not designed, resourced or staffed to accommodate sentenced inmates.
In October, 2017 a Kenora judge sentenced a 30-year-old man to a total of 60 days for two convictions for impaired driving. The man had been convicted of the same offence in 2014.
Pikangikum is a fly-in community, more than 200 kilometres from the closest correctional facility. The judge ordered that the sentence be served on weekends in the OPP lockup, which would allow the man to keep his job.
At the appeal hearing, his lawyer argued that the law gives discretion for courts to sentence a person to imprisonment somewhere other than in a correctional institution, but the Superior Court judge disagreed.
In quashing the warrant of committal issued in October, he noted that "It was clear from the beginning that the Detachment was not appropriate accommodation to ensure compliance with this sentence. Indeed, the court below (Ontario Court of Justice) understood that the Detachment could likely not house the offender...and designed a 'sign-in/sign-out' process to allow the offender to not be in custody."
The lower court's committal warrant stated that the man must present himself at the OPP detachment every Friday at 6:00 p.m. until Sunday at 6:00 p.m., and "if the Pikangikum OPP are not in a position to house you, they are free to release you, and you are to return the following weekend."
The Superior Court justice remanded the case to sentencing again at the next available sitting of the Ontario Court of Justice in Pikangikum.
