Brian Sinclair, Joyce Echaquan died years apart in hospitals. Only one of their inquests points to change
CBC
This column is an opinion from Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Josée Lavoie, Christa Big Canoe and Annette Browne, members of the Brian Sinclair Working Group, which works to understand how systemic racism impacts Indigenous people in health care institutions and beyond. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.
"If Snow White had gone there, she would have got the same treatment under the same circumstances," testified Dr. Thambiraja Balachandra, chief medical examiner of Manitoba, during the 2014 inquest into the death of Brian Sinclair. "Brian Sinclair or Snow White — it's the same."
"Would Joyce Echaquan still be alive if she were white?" asked a reporter at a 2021 press conference following the release of Quebec Coroner Géhane Kamel's investigation report concerning the death of Joyce Echaquan. "I think so," Kamel replied.
These two statements about the role of racism in untimely deaths of Indigenous patients in Canadian hospitals were made seven years apart.
The first ridicules the notion that racism played a role in the death of Brian Sinclair, who died of a treatable infection after having been ignored in Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre emergency waiting room for 34 hours in September 2008.
The original scope of the inquest included Brian Sinclair's treatment as an Indigenous person and testimony during the first phase of the inquest showed that incorrect assumptions about Brian Sinclair were made by a number of front-line staff that ultimately impacted decision-making to refuse him care.
However, on Jan. 10, 2010, Judge Timothy Preston ruled racism out of the scope of the inquest and instead focused on delays that occur once a person presents to an emergency department and measures to reduce those delays.
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