Good morning, Madam Chair.
I understand the question to be on whether the amendment as proposed will achieve the goal of the committee without straying into an area that is beyond Parliament's jurisdiction. The question here is staying on the side of what criminal procedure is in these circumstances and not straying into the area of the administration of justice.
The amendment that has been proposed that reflects other wording in the Criminal Code has been upheld as constitutional. The reason is that it stays on the side of criminal procedure, which Parliament does have jurisdiction over. To make it a requirement for courts administration to publish decisions would be to stray into the area of the administration of justice. There is some very old and well-established case law from the Supreme Court that tells us that Parliament cannot require provinces to spend money within their area of legislative jurisdiction.
A relatively recent case, from 1982, which was in the context of the Criminal Code, was regarding a provision that allowed a judge to require a municipality to support a young offender while they were serving a sentence. It was struck down as unconstitutional because that was considered to be an area in the provincial jurisdiction. Parliament had no business requiring a municipality to be spending money in those circumstances.
I think the concern that has been raised here is that while we can require reasons to be provided in the record of the proceedings, and essentially that is an area of criminal procedure, the provision is saying that the record of this particular trial is not complete without a record of the reasons, whether they be oral or whether they be written.
What happens after that is within provincial jurisdiction. Certainly court files are public, and when a transcript or written reasons are available, as Ms. Blackell mentioned, there are private companies that pick them up and they are published. However, it is beyond Parliament's jurisdiction to require that to be done by the courts themselves.