Justice committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good morning to you and members of the committee. It's an honour and privilege to be asked to appear before you today to address the committee on the specific issue of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the judicial system in Canada, especia

Justice committee  That's an excellent question. To Ms. Hardie's point and her reference to Justice Lynch, a lack of decorum is a serious problem, and so is the ability to assess credibility fairly, where credibility is often the essence of how any case, criminal, civil, family or child protectio

Justice committee  Absolutely. Not everybody is equipped with a grand computer room and multiple screens. Some are calling in from their phones, and that depends on the kind of phone they have. This creates an inequity. We would never want a witness to be more likely to be believed just because t

Justice committee  Self-represented litigants, as much as it is their right to proceed without counsel.... That raises issues of the cost of legal services, which is another matter. We can talk about a duty counsel, and so on. It is a serious problem. In fact, right now, it is leading to great back

Justice committee  I'm proposing a conversation between different branches of government. The courts are not always right. The Jordan decision was well-intentioned, but it's adding huge problems because courts of general jurisdiction, or trial courts, have to then give priority to criminal cases.

Justice committee  Definitely the Zoom hearing for matters that are based on a paper record are ideal because you can't just make written arguments on affidavits and then have the judge pop out a decision. The exchange between bench and bar is very important, especially when there may be some impac

Justice committee  Well, to your point, Mr. Maloney, the situation is exemplified by a recent trial that was done by Zoom, a public trial in the civil justice system, Fabrizi v. Chu, and there was a huge issue of credibility. Who saw what? Who recalled better? The case was 12 years old when it was

Justice committee  Yes, sure.

Justice committee  Through you, Madam Chair, merci, Monsieur Fortin. The issue of whether the trial is remote or in person is equally affected by the fact that judges who have general jurisdiction have to be deployed for criminal cases first. Otherwise cases get stayed if they've taken too long t

Justice committee  Thank you. It's a great question, Mr. Fortin. Remember this is temporary. The charter provision for the override is five years maximum. It will expire if a future Parliament doesn't re-enact it, and Jordan would be the law again. It has its limitations. I'm talking about a ti

Justice committee  That is a very important question. The Jordan case was controversial and imposed exact time limits of 30 months or less. It was a great burden on the courts, and the deployment of judicial resources to criminal matters did begin to delay judicial resources for other types of ca

Justice committee  Well, certainly, remote appearances on routine criminal matters are being embraced. They were looked at even before COVID, but now they're being embraced more than ever. Why should someone have to be brought from a distance while being in custody—if they were denied bail pending

Justice committee  I sure can. It depends on the case, Mr. Cooper. For appeals on questions of law, the open court process is actually enhanced by Zoom because more people can get access to a hearing before three judges of an appellate court or even the Supreme Court of Canada through Zoom. That's

Justice committee  Our courts in Ontario have fully embraced the Zoom technology, and it's working extremely well just because.... It's a concept of private-public sector partnerships in a way. It's a good platform from the private sector. It's been chosen over others. The court was free to do that

Justice committee  These are two very separate but important issues. I was a duty counsel in my younger days, when you had per diem duty counsel. The presence of an individual who can assist and advocate not only helps the individual unrepresented litigant in family and criminal cases in particular