It’s official: Canada’s race-based sentencing regime applies to Māori New Zealanders — and it’s so powerful that it can shave what should be a seven-year sentence down to one, and protect offenders from being publicly identified.
We learned this from a B.C. meth-trafficking case that was published Friday . It arose from a bust that happened at the Vancouver International Airport back in February 2025, in which a Māori-Tongan woman was intercepted in her attempt to fly 20 kilograms of methamphetamine back to Auckland in her suitcase. In Canada, if sold by the kilo, it was worth between $80,000 and $90,000; in New Zealand, it was worth at least four times that.
