This morning on National Post Radio, Sirius XM Canada 167, GGN Publisher Shaun Proulx discussed the sentence given on Friday by Justice McMahon to the serial killer, Bruce McArthur.
“When are you going to let that go?” a mate of mine asked just ahead of my interview on National Post Radio this morning about justice not being served here in Toronto Friday.
Bruce McArthur never let Andrew Kinsman, Selim Esen, Majeed Kayhan, Dean Lisowick, Soroush Mahmudi, Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi or Kirushna Kanagaratnam go.
He wasn’t going to let Sean Cribbin go.
He wasn’t going to let “John” go.
Toronto Police, they let that man go. For years they let him go.
We, the LGBTQ2S+ community, said there was a serial killer. They let that go. We said we were living in fear. They let that go.
Justice McMahon, he let that man go. He let that man go to jail with a sliver of hope. Dark-skinned men, and men who have sex with men are worth less than others – they are not worth better police work, nor are they, or I (and you?) of equal value compared to those around us. Justice McMahon let that message go out into our collective mindset and be reinforced within our society.
Quebec City mosque gunman Alexandre Bissonnette will be eligible for parole when he is 67. The life of a Canadian Muslim is worth less than that of a white male Canadian. That idea was let go into the zeitgeist as well.
Let go of this: When three RCMP officers (POLICE) were killed in New Brunswick, justice was swift; Justin Bourque was sentenced to 75 years without parole.
The police did not let Bourque go when their own were the victims.
Justice did not let Bourque go. Bourque will never go into society again.
The biases within those who purport to serve and protect, and those who claim to serve justice – against status-quo, homophobia, racism, Islamophobia – are festering and this is eight kinds of obvious.
That is where the letting go needs to happen. Not the other way around.
To put it quite plainly and simply: I lack greatly the self-loathing required to let any of this go.
Not without speaking out, however I can. Sick societies are born in silence.
I want to let this go, of course. And I will, probably sooner than later.
But how else do you first begin to let go, other than to say something, wherever you can?
You have a voice. Let it go. Let it out.
Happy Pride, Toronto.
~ Shaun Proulx
