By Two & Out

How do we explain justice to our children after a week like this?

Jun 1, 2018 | 1:43 PM

MY CHILDREN are getting to the age where the questions they ask are difficult and complicated to answer.

I’m not looking forward to the time when they start asking the big questions about justice in the world, why bad things happen to good people, and why not bad enough things happen to bad people.

Certainly, this week complicates those answers.

In Clearwater, something very bad happened to a young boy just trying to go to school.

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A young boy the very same age as my son, the one starting to ask those difficult questions.

There’s no justice in a boy that age losing his life.

Then there’s the BC Supreme Court sentence given out this week to the man involved in the loss of another young life, a-year-and-a-half ago in Aberdeen.

The 10 month sentence seems such a pittance.

But Jason Gourlay was not charged with taking a life, and that’s where the frustration lies for most.

He was charged with leaving the scene and destroying evidence, and the sentence was rendered in the isolated context of those crimes.

The punishment fits the crime, but not the outcome.

It fits the crime that the RCMP and Crown could prove actually took place, based on evidence gathered.

It certainly does not fit the outcome of young girl robbed of her life and a family robbed of its joy.

And that’s why so many are crying out for justice this week.

We have tried to create a justice system that tries to address some of the world’s injustices.

It didn’t work this week.

Hopefully, this failure will spur us on to try harder, to do better, and if we do, maybe some of those awkward questions our kids ask us won’t be so difficult to answer.