The Ben Mulroney Show - Canada's Injustice System

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

On today's episode of 'The Ben Mulroney Show,' Ben welcomes  Kathryn Marshall, Founder of Marshall Law, and Cait Alexander, Founder of the EVE (Ending Violence Everywhere) organization. The government of Canada moves to dismiss a landmark charter challenge as survivors demanding an end to Jordan Timelines. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Ozone gives you a better way to play in Canada. Perfectify practice. With so much experience to draw on,

it's like having your own coach. Whatever your favorite game, we have your playbook. OZoon. Well played. Discover free sports tips, casino games and poker guides at OZune.net. There's a legal maxim that it's so general that everyone should agree with it, that justice delayed is justice denied, right? If something takes too long, then it's like no justice was delivered at all. When you start applying that to the real world, it has some pretty horrific consequences. And in 2016, the Supreme Court, I suppose, thought they were doing the right thing in a case called R.V. Jordan. They imposed essentially time limits on court cases, 18 months for a provincial court and 30 months for a superior court between charge and trial.

And if you went past that time limit, courts had to presumpt. stay the charges. And the, uh, the knock on effect has been grotesque, especially on alleged victims and victims of sexual violence. Uh, as so much so, uh, that there is now a court case, uh, that is being mounted against this very, um, terrible miscarriage of justice. And we're joined by two incredible women, Kate Alexander, she is the creator of the Eve initiative. She knows firsthand about this miscarriage of justice and Catherine Marshall, the founder of Marshall, law. To the both of you, I say thank you for being here today. Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having us. Catherine, let's start on the legal front and talk to me

about this court challenge as well as what the government is pushing back with. So we're suing the government on behalf of 21 survivors of our criminal justice system who've had their cases thrown out due to the disgusting delays in the system. These are people who have horrible abusers and terrible things have happened and they didn't get their day in court because we do not have a functional court system. The government is going to be moving to dismiss the lawsuit. They're bringing a motion in December. They've claimed that it's not their problem to fix. You know, they're passing the buck. Despite the fact that publicly they claim this is an important issue, but, you know, behind closed doors with lawyers

is a different story. We had, we had a prime minister who loved call him myself a feminist. And, and most of the, most of the clowns that followed him around are still in office. They would gladly drape themselves in, in feminism. And so for the liberal government to be pushing back on, on this egregious situation is making my head spin, Kate. Absolutely. And thank you again for having us. This is, it's been over 10,000 cases since 2016 that have been stayed. That is the number and that is climbing every single day. Jordan's rule stayed my attempted murder case.

Despite the evidence, despite the SWAT team being at my house, despite being a compliant, credible witness, my Crown Attorney literally looked at me and said, we don't have time for this. I said, well, then what do you have time for? It's almost dying, not enough. And so with the court cases that are before, with the criminal court cases that are present,

the majority of them are intimate part of violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. That takes up most of the court's time. And so the numbers that reflect these drug and rule stays are of those type of crimes. And it's absolutely terrifying. That's why we're seeing increases. in crime that are astronomical.

And we actually launched this lawsuit during the election. So whoever won the election shall inherit the lawsuit. It was a nonpartisan attempt. And we, yeah, there was a lot of hopes that the conservatives would have won so that they would deal with this properly. Yeah. Catherine, it feels to me, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, you know, you're in the legal arena every day, feels to me that we are living in a time where the courts

prioritize the alleged criminal. rights over the victims far too often. You know, we see it in an attempt to change the over-indexing of Aboriginal men in prison. They came up with mitigating circumstances that would allow for lesser sentences, not thinking to themselves that by doing so, they were probably denying real justice for the victims. And in a lot of cases, those victims would be Aboriginal women. Am I wrong in this assessment? I mean, it's completely accurate that our court system views the rights of defendants as paramount.

And the whole system is built around that. And long has been forgotten that the rights of the victims and the complainants matter too. And actually, that is the pillar of fundamental justice in this country. Right now in Canada, there is no guarantee that if something happens to you, a crime, that you're going to get your day in court. And that is profoundly wrong. And as Kate mentioned, you know, in her case, her case got stayed. Many of our other client's cases were thrown out despite having overwhelming evidence to show that the accused did the crime.

They didn't even get a chance to give a victim impact statement or have one single hour in front of a judge or jury. And that's completely traumatic to be told, oh, you know, a day before trial that they're not proceeding. Yeah. And then the abuser walked free with no record. Kate, you know, I saw a video that you made. I think it's part of this campaign that you've been mounting. And you said, like, word is out. In Canada, if you want to do this sort of thing, this is the place where you do it.

Because there's a real chance that you're going to get off scot-free. And there is something to be said about word getting out. And people knowing that this place is, if you want to do a crime, Canada is a great place. The beautiful country that I used to call home. I mean, I moved to the U.S. to save my life. I had to put the American border between myself and my abuser because he would have ended my life had I stayed in Canada. Because there is not a functioning justice system.

He almost already got away with it. And I can't. I'm lucky. I'm lucky that I was able to leave. We see this every single day at End Violence Everywhere, where people cannot. escape what's going on. We have we have survivors that have abusers that have 38 plus charges and they're still let out on bail and then there's the threat of the possibility of Jordan's role being implemented to throw out all of the charges and

criminals know it Americans look at me and go what is going on in your country they're not aware of it and then they and then my friends say like what are you talking about they did what the government did who yeah prosecutors in this in the US are just like what are you what are you guys doing What are you doing? Catherine, the last word is to you. I've got about a minute left. What do people need to know about this case?

How can they help? How can they get involved? How can we mobilize? Visit jordanchallenge.ca. This is the website we have. You can sign a petition there. We're never going to give up. We're going to keep going until the government does the right thing.

And we would love people support, share videos online, go to the website, and, you know, make sure the politicians know that this is unacceptable. Yeah, the numbers. ladies are just, it's shocking. As a result of the Jordan law, over 56% of cases are stayed significantly 30% of intimate partner violence cases

are also stayed 30%. It's so hard, like if there's one thing that people who didn't know learned during the Me Too era, it's like how hard it is for women to get to that point that their voices are heard and that people take them seriously

and to hear that 30% of them are stayed. And you do not fix them mistake with another mistake. If you have a criminal justice system that is working at a snail's pace, you don't fix it by giving people a get out of jail free card. You fix it by speeding up the process. Turns out I do have a little more time left. So Kate, the last word to you. This motion to dismiss from the federal government is a motion to dismiss survivors, blatantly and obviously. And I look at my own experience. And I would rather have been beat up again than have the government stay my case. I would rather, if I were able to,

stay alive, have the life kicked out of me, then have the abuse of the government and the court system. Kate Alexander, the founder of ending violence everywhere, Catherine Marshall, the founder of Marshall Law. I'm with you. I'm behind you. Godspeed to the both of you. And come back when there's something else to report. But this is terrible news. I'm glad that you're pushing back. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much.