Joe Borowski at the Conference


At the Middleton “Friends For Life” conference, Mr. Borowski began his speech by thanking the clergy in the audience for attending. He said that the clergy should be encouraged to come out to pro-life events because parishioners from whatever faith like to see their shepherds at these meetings as it gives them courage and it encourages them to come and to participate. If your pastor is with you at a pro-life gathering you feel you are getting some support.

Mr. Borowski went on to relate to the audience the status of his court case. By way of a sports metaphor, he explained that it is the one who wins the last game that will win this legal series and that the last game is the Supreme Court.

He said that he thought perhaps the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brian Dixon might be a good omen, as a few years ago this same judge had voted in favor of permitting Mr. Borowski to bring his case to court to challenge the law.

His message regarding the Regina decision written by Justice Matheson was reassuring to everyone. He told his audience that, although the decision seemed to go against him, nowhere in the 32-page decision is any of the expert testimony given by his witnesses rejected by the court. He reminded his audience that the government chose not to bring forth any witnesses and that now this expert and valid evidence is “carved in stone” and will follow him all the way to the Supreme Court. It cannot be challenged and has to be accepted as valid even though another judge might disagree with it.

Mr. Borowski discussed the written decision further, as follows:

The Supreme Court justices will be dealing with a 31-page document, which in my view is equivalent to a charter of rights for the unborn. In that document the judge not only accepted the evidence, he said because of medical advances in our society there is no question that the unborn is a separate person from the mother.

He ended up by saying, in effect, “however, it is not my responsibility. It is not the responsibility of this court. It is up to the politicians.” That was his out. He didn’t challenge it, he didn’t say we were wrong, he just said ‘I can’t do it.’

I suppose it is much the same if city police are chasing a crook and he is out in the country, beyond city limits. They have to turn it over to the RCMP because he is in their jurisdiction. So (Justice Matheson) is simply saying ‘It is not my jurisdiction.’

Well, we respectfully disagree, and we have launched appeal proceedings in the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan. We have been waiting for a trial date to be set. It is our hope and belief that a trial date will be set for this fall.

Once we have cleared that hurdle, an appeal will be made to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court is the end of the line.

Mr. Borowski went on to describe the witnesses that he introduced to the Court. He said he brought in 15 witnesses; nine of them were expert witnesses and six were non-expert.

He mentioned that one of the most distinguished, most famous, and most effective witnesses was William Liley who is known as the father of fetology.

The Interim will be reprinting some of his testimony, beginning in this issue.