NDP-appointed Alberta Justice Jasmine Sihra has raised the ire of Albertans after she sentenced a transgender parent to only five years in prison for stabbing his own two children, aged 8 and 7 years old, in February of 2025, including deliberately stabbing his daughter in the neck with a serrated kitchen knife after entering her room late at night in their home. The daughter was airlifted to Edmonton with a severed esophagus, a potentially life-threatening injury.
While physical descriptions of the attacker are scarce, public social media posts describe Attwood as “very tall”, specifically 6’7″, which further disgusts many observers due to the relative size of his child victims.
Albertans were further enraged when they found that Canada’s bail system allowed the attacker, “Alice” Michael Attwood (aka Michael Joseph Attwood) to remain free on the streets up until trial, where Atwood lived in a minivan and posted disturbing videos admitting to the stabbings. Albertans also strongly questioned the conclusions of an “expert” forensic psychiatrist who examined Attwood and reported “no evidence of serious mental illness”.
Justice Sihra was appointed to the Provincial Court of Alberta in 2016 during Alberta’s former NDP administration of Minister of Justice Kathleen Ganley: the appointment was part of a group of judicial nominations announced by the NDP government, with Ganley directly involved in the process as the responsible minister. Ganley has stated that “we the people of Alberta stand with the trans and gender-variant community”.
Chris Warkentin, Federal Conservative Deputy Whip and Member of Parliament for Grande Prairie, released the following statement on Alice Michael Attwood’s release from custody after stabbing two children:
“The Carney-Trudeau Liberals’ disastrous catch-and-release policies have made Canadians unsafe. 35-year-old Alice Michael Attwood of Grande Prairie stabbed two children on February 19, with one needing to be airlifted to the Stollery Hospital in Edmonton for emergency surgery to address the child’s severed esophagus.
“Two days later, Attwood was free to return home and livestream himself playing video games on his YouTube channel while one of the children faces months on a feeding tube, and the remainder of the family must try to find ways to ensure their children’s safety.
“This is unacceptable. Monsters like Alice Michael Attwood should not be allowed to roam around our streets just two days after stabbing two children. But the Carney-Trudeau Liberals introduced Bills C-5 and C-75, which allows monsters like Attwood back into our neighbourhoods on bail and house arrest, instead of rotting in a prison cell where they belong. Conservatives will repeal those laws.”
The sentencing has prompted widespread criticism among many Albertans, who argue online and in public commentary that the justice system applied bail and sentencing in a disproportionate, inconsistent and possibly politically-motivated manner. Many Albertans have been drawing a comparison of Albertan Tamara Lich, who is Metis, who was denied bail after her peaceful arrest for mischief for her role in the peaceful convoy protest in Ottawa in 2022 – unlike Attwood, who was apparently quickly released within 2 days. In the case of Lich, Justice Julie Bourgeois, who denied her bail, had previously ran for a federal Liberal Party seat in Parliament. Federal Government prosecutors were asking for a jail sentence of 7 years for Lich for mischief, which many Albertans feel is vastly disproportionate to the 5 years that Attwood was sentenced for direct, life-threatening violence against vulnerable children (attempted murder-level assault).
This has fueled debate on both proportionality in the justice system as well as political influence of the justices involved.
