I'm the Chairman of the Association des juristes d'expression française de la Colombie-Britannique. The purpose of the association, which has been in existence for a little more than five years, is to facilitate and promote access to justice in French in British Columbia.
Apart from all the federal legal bodies, such as the Tax Court of Canada and employment insurance cases, the only access to justice in French in British Columbia is provided by section 530 of the Criminal Code. That section provides that an accused may elect to be tried in the official language of his choice, in the language that most suits him: English or French.
Consequently, there have to be judges, prosecutors and defence counsel capable of speaking the language chosen by the accused. We will therefore have to ensure the succession of all justice professionals who must work in French and English, the two official languages.
On this point, one of British Columbia's problems is that education in French is offered up to grade 12, in the French-language and immersion schools. There are also colleges enabling students in eastern Canada to get a college education or even to complete the first year of university. However, there are few job opportunities in law or related fields. Students finish their high school or college educations and, if they want to study law, have to go to Ottawa, Montreal or Moncton. Do they come back? We'll see.
One of the challenges facing British Columbia is to ensure a succession in the justice field, not only among lawyers, but also among support staff. We need clerks, court reporters and probation officers who can write reports in both official languages.
A report was submitted to you. I want to congratulate the Access to Justice in Both Official Languages Support Fund because, without it, the Francophone jurors study that was prepared, a copy of which was submitted to you, would not have been possible. That study shows that, in a minority setting, it is difficult to identify which people are bilingual, Francophone or Anglophone. To date, there's been no mechanism under provincial law for that purpose.
To provide a brief summary, in virtually all the provinces, a list of potential jurors is prepared based on the voter list. That's the way it is in virtually all the provinces. That's also the case in British Columbia, except that the way people are selected, using the voters list, doesn't enable us to identify whether they are Francophone, Anglophone or bilingual, because they can be of another nationality or speak either official language.
This is generally a provincial jurisdiction. We called upon your provincial counterparts. We would emphasize, however, that this is also a matter of national interest. Section 530 of the Criminal Code, which is a federal statute, applies across Canada, and the criminal justice system cannot operate if one day there's a shortage of jurors. So ways have to be found to identify jurors.
We suggest two. First, we suggest using the federal voters list. When the federal voters list is prepared, could we have mechanisms for identifying persons among voters who are Francophone, Anglophone or bilingual, across Canada? Then that information would be forwarded to the provinces so that they could use it to establish lists of prospective jurors.
We're making a second suggestion. We've seen from our analysis of the Statistics Act that this is probably the best current survey of official languages. The questions that are put to Canadian citizens are such that, based on the statistics, and if people have answered the questions honestly—we assume so—we can identify segments of the population that have linguistic ability in French, English and both official languages.
We suggest that this information be available to the provinces at the time a list of prospective jurors is prepared.
In the reports that we've submitted—the summaries—on page 10, for example, one suggested question could be included in the questionnaire submitted under the Statistics Act or in a questionnaire submitted under the Canada Elections Act. That question reads as follows:
Do you agree that the information collected with respect to the official language(s) learned and still understood by you be used to compile lists of prospective jurors pursuant to section 530 of the Criminal Code which provides that persons accused of a criminal offence in Canada have the right to be tried in the official language of their choice?
I'll close by adding that it is in everyone's interest that the justice system works well. Consequently, it's in the interest of an accused to be able to defend himself in the language of his choice, and it's also in the interest of the prosecution to be able to prosecute an accused in either official language.
Thank you.