Front Burner - Inside the Humboldt Broncos crash sentencing hearing

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

This week, the truck driver who caused the Humboldt Broncos bus crash is facing his sentencing hearing. CBC reporter Susan Ormiston joins us from Melfort, Saskatchewan to talk about how the victims' families are feeling about the possibility of some closure and to explain how complicated it could be for the judge to decide Jaskirat Singh Sidhu's punishment.

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about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. It's been almost a year now since the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. At approximately 5 p.m. this afternoon, a semi-trailer unit collided with a passenger bus carrying members of the Humboldt Broncos. So far, the accident has claimed the lives of 16 people. Another 13 were severely injured. The deadly collision triggered a national outpouring of grief at a scale rarely seen in Canada. A GoFundMe page has now become the website's

biggest campaign in Canadian history. I think the whole of the country is feeling the very same way. We are all Humboldt Broncos, and we will be forever Humboldt Broncos strong. This week, the truck driver who caused the crash is facing his sentencing hearing, and the families and loved ones of the victims had a chance to share how their lives have been profoundly altered. I know my son's not coming home. I know he's not going to come and lay on the couch.

He pled guilty. It was easier for me to say I forgive. But it's still an emotional struggle. My colleague Susan Ormiston spent the week in Melfort, Saskatchewan covering this story. And she's here with me now to talk about how the families are feeling about the possibility of some closure. And to explain how complicated it will be to decide the fate of Jaskieret Singh Sidhu. This is an unprecedented case. And the judge will have to look at the gravity of the consequence. That's today on FrontBurner. Hi, Susan. Hi, Jamie.

It's been an extraordinary week. I have been finding it very difficult to watch and listen to some of these stories. So I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be sitting in this courtroom. Can you take me to that courtroom for a minute? What is it like there? Well, consider a gymnasium. We've all seen them in community centers. And then it's transformed overnight into a makeshift court.

And on one side, there's families and victims' assistants and lots of Kleenex boxes. And on the other side, there's the Seydoux family occupying a whole front row, sitting silently. And behind them, any onlookers and media. So the court is divided up like that. And the judge is on a podium listening to the victim impact statements, more than 80 people submitted statements. And then it's filled with people who are reliving the most traumatic, devastating moment in their lives nine months ago.

It was intense. It was in the lead up to it, your heart skips a few beats and mouth goes dry. It was like pent up anger and depression and sorrow from the nine months since the crash. They now know what it's like to live without the people they love. They now know that the trauma extends. It's not over. One mother told me there is no closure when you lose a child. It doesn't go away ever. You wake up every day and you're always missing something. It's, yeah, I don't have closure. I don't know if I will. I don't know if this will make it better or worse. And story after story related very similar themes of pain and loss. And there was a whole range of emotions.

And the collision site, it's just 65 kilometers from this makeshift courtroom. Yeah, Melfort was chosen because this is where the charges were laid. So 65 kilometers down the road is an intersection of two highways, which is forever changed. There's a memorial there with crosses sprouting out of the snow. It's frigidly cold here, you know, minus 29, minus 32 without the windchill. And inside this court, just constant sobbing. Bernadine, you, I think it was you who said, I have trouble using the word death. Death just seems so final. And I know my son's not coming home. I know he's not going to come and lay on the couch,

but I'm just kind of not ready for that yet. Silence, sobbing, excruciating detail of the night they found out about the collision. You know, we heard from one mother, Andrea Joseph, who was extremely angry. She directed her anger squarely at the driver, Jasker, at Singh Sadu. She said, who gave you the right to make the decision? You knew damn well you could hit someone. Have you ever kissed a dead body before? It's cold. You don't know how that feels. No parent or sibling should have to stand over their child's body. Moments like that.

It's not an accident. It is not a mistake. You coldheartedly went through that, knowing what you were doing, and you damaged our poor boys. I think you guys know what I want from my statement. It was 16 lives, and it's typically 14 years per life. That's what he should get.

What are some other stories that you've heard this week? I think it was people telling us about what happened that night, how they found out that their son, and in one case a daughter, was killed. saying she waited in a Tisdale hospital for news that her son might be going to hospital in Saskatoon or whether she was going to visit the coroner. And when they called her name, she didn't even want to go because she knew that the news was that he was dead. Detail after detail like this. And I understand today you heard from the family of Xavier LaBelle? this. And I understand today you heard from the family of Xavier LaBelle. Yes, this was a story we'd never heard before. Xavier was the player who was misidentified along with Parker Tobin. So we heard from LaBelle's parents who told us in excruciating detail about how they didn't know for more than 48 hours that their son was alive, how they actually had to go

to the morgue to identify his body. And they were told that the body before them was their son. And Tanya said, I knew it wasn't. I knew that the shape of his jaw and what he looked like, that it wasn't my son, but I was being told it was. And that confusion lasted nearly three days. And suddenly it was discovered that in fact, Xavier Lebel was alive and it was Parker Tobin who the Lebels had been grieving over. And they had to go to the hospital and reclaim their badly injured but surviving son. The other family, the Taubens, had been standing vigil over Xavier thinking it was their son. That story is very difficult to hear. I know there have also been some stories of forgiveness this week. Yeah.

Marilyn Cross is the mother of Mark Cross. He was the assistant coach. And he was 28 years old. And she turned to the driver and said, Mr. Sadu, I grieve for you as well. I don't hate you. I see a young man, not much older than Mark. I grieve for the loss your family will experience, the loss of your freedom, your future. She said, I'm relieved you pled guilty and I admire your courage. And then she said, and in the future, I hope you make every effort to live a productive life, make the world a better place, just like our son Mark would have. It was an extraordinary

spirit there. And at that point, we did see Sudu bow his head, reach for tissues, and tear up. Has he been reacting like that often this week? Yes. He sat silently, often looking up, not avoiding the gaze of the parents talking about their trauma. Often he would look at them and then turn his head and bow it down, and quite frequently would tear up and wipe his eyes. He has shown remorse, There's no question of that. And for that, the parents are grateful. I feel that he feels full remorse. I feel that he's sorry that he wishes that it never happened just like we do. I know he didn't get up that morning to do what happened, happened. He wasn't the Waffle House shooter or the man that drove down Yonge Street. He's not the same guy.

But it happened. And so we're happy that he stepped up and said, I'm guilty. I saw this week a really powerful moment came when the coach's wife offered forgiveness. You know, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel in court. I knew that I needed to forgive him. And I knew before, as I was writing it, that's what Darcy would expect and want. But honestly, seeing him, my heart just breaks for him. Yes, Christina Hogan. She talked about her children losing their father.

What an amazing guy he was. And she was very meaningful in the court. His life is turned upside down from all of this too. And while it was a preventable mistake, it was a mistake. And, you know, we've all made mistakes. We heard a lot of people struggling to forgive. Some parents saying they had, some saying they couldn't. I think everyone was on a different stage in this grieving process. It's hard to forgive. As a person of faith, a Christian, I feel I'm commanded to forgive. And sometimes that's harder to do than we would like.

How are people reacting in the courtroom? Well, crying into tissues, heaving crying, silent listening to stories. One woman, Raylene Harold, told me that she'd cried more this week than she had in the last year. I've heard all these stories before, just from the funeral cards or whatever, but hearing the parents saying again today is exactly, I've cried more this week, just like I have all year, because all their stories are our stories, right? I know that there were many unanswered questions

after the crash in April. He's now bled to 29 counts of dangerous driving, causing death and injury. What do we know now about what actually happened that day? I think from the family's point of view, too little. They expect to hear why he drove through the intersection, why he didn't stop. And so far, in the agreed statement of facts presented by the lawyers, that question is not answered. We know that he drove through the stop sign at highway speeds. We don't know why he did. And the questions are, did he ignore the stop sign because he was in a hurry, or did he not see it, or was just a momentary inattention. That's the big one.

So we know that he wasn't drinking or texting, but we have no idea other than that. We may hear more, but so far they haven't got it. They also want to know about his driving record. Was he a poor driver? Was he properly trained? The blame that they attach to this terrible tragedy extends beyond the driver, both to the driver's employer, to the rules regarding truckers training, and to highway safety laws that failed to put a safer intersection there. There was a fatal collision there more than 20 years ago where six people died. And they believe that something had been done then to make that intersection safer. This would never have happened. The families of these 16 young people who have died and 13 people who are seriously injured in this crash, do you think that they're going to be able to get any of these answers in this sentencing hearing or somewhere else?

I can't say. I'm sorry. I don't know. Because without a trial, there's no sort of contentious examination of facts, you know, leading evidence, questioning that evidence, what's there. It may be that the families leave unsatisfied, that they don't know much more than what they did about what was going on in his mind that day. You know, it strikes me that another place where it feels an impossible task to satisfy these families will be in his sentencing itself. I feel like whatever the sentence is, we're going to be disappointed. If it were 14 years, we're going to be disappointed. I think the only thing that would leave us not disappointed would be something new,

something different, something that set precedent. Do you have a sense of how the judge is going to weigh this? How sentencing could work in a case like this? As you know, I'm not a lawyer, but I've spoken to many lawyers about this. Sentencing is a very personalized way in that every case is quite different, but the judge does have to consider case law, what other examples of similar charges, what sentence that's produced. And in this case, we're looking at dangerous driving causing death and injury. And while the penalties are 14 years maximum for death and 10 years for injury, up to this point in Canadian legal history, we haven't seen sentences anywhere near that. In fact, you see a range of between two, four and five years sentence for dangerous driving where there are more than one fatality. driving where there are more than one fatality. So this is a range, but I should caution that this is an unprecedented case. We've never before seen in Canada so many casualties from one

collision. And the judge will have to look at the gravity of the consequence. But again, I'm told that in law, what they start with is the offense what behavior did he start with what was he doing that caused the collision as opposed to how many people were impacted by it being the first thing that they look at What do the families have to say about sentencing? They want a precedent, and they want a stiff enough sentence to act as a deterrent. And deterrence is one of the things the judge will look at. judge will look at. They want to say that even if it's inattention, even if Sadu believes he made a terribly tragic fatal mistake, it was preventable. And they want a message sent out to drivers in general, truck drivers particularly, that we have to take more caution on our roads. They also want a message that maybe we should look at seatbelts on buses

and that maybe we should pay more attention to intersections where there were previous bad collisions or tragedies, that these should become paramount. And so they want something so that they can walk out of here and say, my kid didn't die in vain. Maybe change will occur so that someone else won't have to go through the pain and suffering that I've just told this court about. And that's pretty universal with everyone here. I hope all the ministers of transportation across Canada are listening.

I hope for Lily's sake and my other children's sake that you are having very important conversations. I wish you were here. I wish you would have listened to everything that was said. This is something that should have been changed 20 years ago. Some of the laws around the trucking industry... Is there a sense from the family that they're glad that they don't have to sit through a trial? Yes. Many have gotten up and said directly to Sudhu,

I'm grateful that you chose to take responsibility for your actions, that you spared us a contentious trial. And that will be a factor when the judge looks at his sentence. And of course, him pleading guilty did make that possible. Yes, he decided to plead guilty. And that's why this terrible chapter would be wrapped up much sooner than it would have been had there been a trial. There's also the matter of these driving violations that have emerged this week. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, more precisely, they're logbook violations. So in a crash like this, the investigators for the Ministry of Highways will go and say, okay, to the bus driver, let's see your logbook. And in the case of the bus driver for the Broncos, there were no infractions. When they looked at the

logbooks for this driver, there were many examples of omissions. For example, not writing down the province he was in or not correctly putting down when he was on duty or off duty, when he signed off a load. These are essentially bookkeeping infractions, and the Crown has not made this one of the aggravating circumstances to date. But there are questions remaining about if he didn't know how to do his paperwork properly and he didn't fulfill that, what else was he doing improperly? Was he trained?

Was he responsible enough to be hauling a rig like this? Clearly, Mr. Sidhu was overwhelmed by the position that he was put in by a much bigger, much thicker industry. He never should have been in charge of a vehicle that size on that road. I said earlier, he probably didn't even know what his responsibilities were as far as logging work. He was thrown into a situation where he had no chance for success. Do we know how the 13 surviving players are doing? Are any of them there this week? There was a question whether the surviving players would come to give victim impact statements.

And to my knowledge, none of them did come to this hearing. I know that Ryan Strzeznicki of Airdrie, Alberta, who is paralyzed from the chest down, he didn't want to come. He didn't want to give a statement. He wants to move on with the difficult task of rebuilding his life and training for sledge hockey. There are other players who've been tweeting about the proceedings saying their hearts go out to all the Bronco families here. But it appears that none of the surviving players wanted to go through this trauma again, and it has been excruciating.

Some of the former players are still playing hockey. There's a couple in university elsewhere, and several of them are still working hard at rehabilitation. Very long and arduous journey for all of them. Do we know what's expected to happen next? When will we know the sentence for the driver? So by the end of this week, we will have heard the sentencing arguments from each of the lawyers, the defense and the crown. We don't know whether they've agreed on what they're recommending to the judge, but at the end of that process,

Sudhu will be asked whether he wants to say anything to the court. And then at the final part is the judge's decision, and it's widely believed that she will reserve her decision, that she'll want to write a judgment, and that she will deliver that sometime to come. Bear in mind that this is a precedent-setting case. So what happens here is not only subject to appeal, as always, but it will be scrutinized by the large Humboldt-Bronco community and by many Canadians. Susan, thank you so much. You're welcome.

A lot of Canadians donated money to support the victims' families and the survivors of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash. More than $15 million was raised on GoFundMe. If you were wondering what happened to that money, the money was almost equally split between the families of those who died and the survivors and their families. That is, after a payment processing fee of about $500,000. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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