OTTAWA: Justin Trudeau has nominated the first judge of color to sit on Canada’s Supreme Court, a historic first in an institution that has only ever had white justices in its 146-year existence.
Mahmud Jamal, who has been a judge on Ontario’s court of appeal since 2019, trained as a lawyer and appeared before the supreme court in 35 appeals addressing a range of civil, constitutional, criminal and regulatory issues.
“He’ll be a valuable asset to the supreme court – and that’s why, today, I’m announcing his historic nomination to our country’s highest court,” Trudeau said on Twitter. Jamal must still be vetted by the House of Commons justice committee, but this is a formality.
Jamal was born in 1967 in Nairobi, Kenya to an Ismaili Muslim family originally from India. His parents immigrated to England when he was two, where he said he was “taunted and harassed because of my name, religion, or the color of my skin”.
In 1981 the family moved to Edmonton, where his “experiences exposed me to some of the challenges and aspirations of immigrants, religious minorities, and racialized persons”, he said in a document submitted to support his candidacy.
“I was raised at school as a Christian, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and absorbing the values of the Church of England, and at home as a Muslim, memorizing Arabic prayers from the Quran and living as part of the Ismaili community,” he wrote.
“Like many others, I experienced discrimination as a fact of daily life. As a child and youth, I was taunted and harassed because of my name, religion, or the colour of my skin.”
He later converted to the Bahá’í faith after marrying his wife, who immigrated to Canada from Iran. Jamal and his wife have two teenage sons.
Jamal will replace Justice Rosalie Abella, the first refugee and first Jewish woman to sit on the court. who is due to retire on 1 July.
Trudeau has frequently said there is a need to address systemic racism in Canada. He said many white Canadians had awakened “to the fact that the discrimination that is a lived reality for far too many of our fellow citizens is something that needs to end.” “Systemic racism is an issue right across the country, in all of our institutions,” he said.
Canada is a multicultural nation with almost one-quarter of its population of 38 million identifying in the last census as a member of a visible minority group.
But recent attacks on Muslims, its historical treatment of indigenous peoples and police brutality against Black people and other ethnic minorities have highlighted the ongoing legacy of racism in Canada.
