I don't believe so.
For example, Prince Edward Island does not have bilingual prosecutors so they call on either the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, our Moncton office where all our prosecutors are bilingual, or the New Brunswick prosecution service, a provincial service. Therefore, whenever there is a trial that has to be conducted in the French language in P.E.I., either the feds or the New Brunswick prosecutors handle it.
Lately it's been mostly us and we have not heard of instances where issues surfaced. I can imagine it would be a problem if they wanted.... That's why we have this federal-provincial working group on the access to justice that's working on jury trials.
We have seen situations, such as those that surfaced in British Columbia a few years back, where someone wanted a trial in French and elected trial by jury, knowing that the system would not be able to respond, therefore hoping that eventually the charge would be withdrawn or stayed. That's something I have seen.
I'm a member of that subcommittee, and it's something the court administrators have mentioned to us. They've said they have not run into problems yet, but they can see that they would because they would not be able to find 12 good citizens who would be sufficiently bilingual to handle a case like that.
There are very few areas in the country where it would happen, because B.C. has adopted the policy of centralizing jury trials in one jurisdiction. I think it's Surrey but I may be mistaken. In any event, all bilingual jury trials will go there and the province will pay the cost of moving people there so they don't have to find local citizens in northern B.C., where there just aren't any.
The interpreter situation is another one that's been.... But it has been mentioned that those who have responded.... Again, Newfoundland, at the heads of prosecutions table, has said that there could be problems in Labrador. There have not been so far. They can provide the judge and the prosecutor, but they are not so sure about court personnel, and they might have to....
Then again, all these various actors are members of a federal-provincial group. They can call on each other for assistance in situations like that, so they're confident that they could respond, but then again, if it's a jury situation, maybe not and that's the thing.
Of course, obviously all the details that stem from trying to run a bilingual trial, where most witnesses are in the majority language but the accused wants a trial in a minority language.... For example, for a preliminary hearing, there is no defence evidence and only the crown presents evidence. Obviously that preliminary hearing is mostly going to be run in English, because often all the witnesses are going to be anglophones. It's not really different from providing interpretation to a Polish speaker, because obviously the system has to ensure that the accused understands the proceedings. Except for submissions by counsel, there wouldn't be a lot going on in French in that kind of a situation.