Good morning.
I hope everyone can hear me properly because I don't have the proper headset.
Thank you, members of the committee for inviting me here today to represent the Professional Transcriptionists and Court Reporters Association of Ontario for a discussion of the impact of COVID-19 on the judicial system.
I'll read my statement in order to stay within the five-minute time allotment. It's just a very brief intro.
PTCRAO is a not-for-profit business association with membership spanning across the province of Ontario. Through 55 years of operation, we have adapted and evolved to meet many challenges. Our mandate has never changed. We are committed to ensuring that the profession of court reporting and transcription services are provided to the highest professional standard. Now we face our biggest challenge.
In Ontario, from the onset of the pandemic, the justice system went into immediate action. Lockdowns and restrictions because of COVID accelerated the rapid modernization of the courts and gained immediate and positive response. The path to modernization went straight to Zoom and teleconference calls as a way to exist in a virtual world that COVID created.
I'll just make reference to Zoom because it's more efficient, but all these comments apply to teleconference as well. To zoom directly to the point, as a reaction to COVID, in the understandable rush to ensure the courts remained functional, stakeholders and decision makers overlooked the most important foundation of the justice system, which is the official court recording. They replaced it with a one-channel Zoom solution. Without a stable, eight-channel audio recording that is properly preserved and securely stored, a verbatim-certified transcript is almost impossible to produce. The voice of a victim or a witness to a crime can no longer be heard if words are lost on a one-channel recording. This is our main concern and focus, and the reason we appear before you today.
By regulation in Ontario, a transcriptionist must be authorized by the Ministry of the Attorney General to certify court transcripts, herein referred to as ACTs.
Here are some examples of the problems with Zoom. On one channel, you cannot separate speakers if they talk over one another. On one channel, if there is nothing to identify same-gender speakers, they are simply noted as “unidentified”. On one channel, dogs barking, babies crying, doors slamming and dishes being washed in the background are just a few examples of interference. At times, Wi-Fi connections fail, audio becomes unstable, sound becomes distorted and words are lost or become garbled and warbled. The audio cuts in and out. There have been bail hearings where lawyers are sitting in their cars on cell phones. Sometimes participants phone in, often from custodial institutions. Sometimes they appear via Zoom, but the most a transcript can reflect is that they are all participating from multiple unknown locations.
Ultimately, transcripts must reflect the truth and deficiencies created by lost audio must be noted. Justice is not served if a transcript cannot be certified to verbatim accuracy. We support whatever makes courts run smoother and quicker, but by doing so and by making those things priorities, we have sacrificed the most important element that keeps the justice system safe.
The Liberty digital software system, which was implemented across Ontario in 2010 by the original MAG and court reporting services team, was almost flawless. We had moved from four channel analog tapes to state-of-the-art digital recording and transcribing equipment across eight channels. Speakers could be identified, voices separated and volumes controlled. This push to modernize the courts during COVID has stripped away any progress, effort and time that went into developing this state-of-the-art digital recording technology. It has pushed the fundamental importance of the checks and balances in the court system to near non-existence.
We read the article in the National Post that references comments that Supreme Court Justice Mona Lynch made before you. I quote:
“A colleague of mine was conducting a family hearing by phone, and one of the parties said, ‘Oh, just a minute,’” Lynch said. “There was silence. And then she heard: ‘Can I have a medium double-double?’” She called the incident amusing and “quintessentially Canadian,” but said it also reveals “the lack of respect and attention participants pay when the court proceedings are not in-person, in the courtroom with a judge.”
We agree with Justice Lynch on that and we are here to answer any questions the committee has.
Thank you.