Twenty-five years ago, I served—sorry, this is very emotional for me—on the Paul Bernardo trial. During that trial, I was required to watch graphic video of girls being raped, tortured and begging for their lives. Each night, I would go home and replay those videos in my head. After the trial, I was diagnosed with PTSD. It was an experience that changed my life forever.
While much of this trauma has been placed inside a small box in my mind, there are times when it opens and my heart starts to palpitate, probably like right now.
Entrenched in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, jury duty is a fundamental element within the Criminal Code of Canada. Every year, thousands of citizens are summoned to step away from their families and workplaces to serve. Jurors are addressed as officers of the court. A judge is a judge of the law and the jurors are the judges of the facts, but it's the jury that delivers the verdict.
As the cornerstone of the justice system, it's the most important civic duty asked of Canadians, yet there is a great lack of respect shown for their needs. Jurors are not compensated or protected from outside threats, and failure to show for a summons is punishable by fine or imprisonment.
First responders and jury members are bookends of the justice system. Jurors deliver the verdict for the same crimes answered by first responders and investigated by police. Exposed to the same graphic evidence of human cruelty, violence, homicide, sexual assault and unspeakable acts, they're not offered an opportunity to turn away from the evidence and, indeed, must often view it over and over again. They can't ask to turn it off. They must endure it.
This is the burden of the duty, along with the task of reaching a verdict based on facts and evidence. The judge, legal counsel, court staff, police and first responders are all afforded access to new and evolving evidence-based treatments, but the jury is not.
We now understand the toll these crimes have on those working in public safety and our courts, resulting in PTSD, depression, illness and mounting cases of suicide. We've worked hard to establish programs for first responders to support them in their healing, respecting the important work they perform in our communities.
Jurors are similarly impacted in experiencing the same trauma and the same devastating ill health impacts, but unlike their public safety counterparts, they have no professional training related to their role, no access to evidence-based treatments and no organization representative from associations that are working on their behalf. They have no voice.
I'm now going to hand it over to my partner Mark.