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Happy Canada Day (Sorry to Rest of Canada and World About Our Terrible Wrongful Death Laws in BC)

On Canada Day, we would like to congratulate all of the other provinces and the Yukon Territory for already modernizing their wrongful death laws, in many cases long ago.

On behalf of British Columbians, we would like to apologize to the rest of Canada for our most westerly province still being stuck in the colonial era with our 174-year old wrongful death laws, whereby it’s still FREE to kill children, seniors, and the disabled.

We would also like to apologize to the rest of the developed world, where this modernization has already been largely implemented across the board.

We’re sorry that when you send your children here as international students and they are wrongfully killed, you only then discover that they’re worth nothing under our law, and BC wasn’t as safe a place as you thought it was for your beloved lost child.

As we know, apologizing is a very Canadian thing to do.

Our politicians like to apologize and cry crocodile tears in the media, to pander and score brownie points, without having to do any actual legislative work.

They’re too weak to take on ICBC, reign it in, and bring forth a modern standard of dignity, value, and decency for the citizens of the province under the law.

The price we pay for political inaction is being lead by our inferiors.

Petition your MLA/Attorney General/Premier now so we can put the pressure on to ensure that one day we have a province we can be proud of when it comes to legislating adequate protections for everyone in BC equally under the law – https://intheirname.ca


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About the BC Wrongful Death Law Reform Society

‘In Their Name’ is the campaign of ‘The BC Wrongful Death Law Reform Society’ – a BC registered non-profit organization comprised of volunteer families who have lost a loved one to wrongful death in BC and were denied access to justice. In response to the biggest human rights issue facing the province today, our goal is to modernize British Columbia’s antiquated wrongful death legislation, which predates confederation (1846). Under current legislation, the value of a human life is measured only by the deceased’s future lost income, so long as they had dependents.

As a result of the province’s antiquated law, access to justice has been denied to the families of the wrongfully killed who do not meet this discriminatory criteria. This has affected especially vulnerable groups, namely children, seniors, the disabled, and anyone without dependents when they are killed by the negligent or intentional acts of another.

BC is presently the last of all the provinces, yet to have undertaken this critical legislative modernization to allow for dignity, value, and protections for all its citizens under the law.

When it’s ‘free’ to kill in BC, wrongdoers are not held accountable. This lack of general deterrence holds the province back in terms of incentivizing innovation of safety measures and protocols to prevent wrongful deaths in the first place.


Here’s How You Can Get Involved…

The Premier of British Columbia, David Eby, is responsible for the modernization of BC’s wrongful death laws. Our Society provided David Eby with the drafted ‘Wrongful Death Accountability Act’ when he was acting as the Attorney General for British Columbia for 6 years between 2017-2022. The new Attorney General, Niki Sharma, also shares responsibility as she is the Minister responsible for the ‘Family Compensation Act’ – the current guiding piece of legislation that the civil courts must follow in cases of wrongful death. Minister Sharma receives feedback from the regional ‘Members of the Legislative Assembly’ (MLAs) and follows orders from the Premier, David Eby, who is ultimately responsible for modernization.

Reform is presently at a standstill, as the BC NDP government does not presently view access to justice for the surviving family members of the wrongfully killed as a priority in this province. This is despite the fact that the families behind our Society have been fighting for modernization for over two decades. And despite the fact that all other provinces, including the Yukon, have already modernized in most cases long ago.

The only way to move this forward is by creating massive public awareness and outcry for legislative modernization. Only under the scrutiny of the public and the media will our politicians be forced to take this necessary, and long overdue action.

How many more people will need to die from the same preventable wrongful actions before our politicians will do their job?

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