Justice committee  No, I don't think so. Not every case is as traumatic as the ones we've sat on. Most people who sit on a jury for a robbery or something don't need any post-traumatic counselling after a trial. In the cases where it is traumatic, and there is very graphic evidence that people hav

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Again, as I mentioned, in my case, the counselling was mandated by the court due to Justice LeSage, who after the trial needed counselling himself, as did many of the court staff, including the reporter sitting in the courtroom and pretty much everybody who was a part of that. It

Justice committee  As I mentioned during my testimony, intimacy between my husband and me came to a dead stall. I was 35 years old at this time, and extremely lucky that he is a very patient man. He gave me all the time in the world. Without the counselling, we never would have gotten our life back

Justice committee  I agree. After the Bernardo trial ended, I was only sequestered for one evening, and basically I got the question, “What took you so long?” You can't answer that. You can't discuss what the other people in the room would like to do or not like to do. If there were a court-appoi

Justice committee  Oh, certainly. Ms. Homolka is living a very wonderful life. That was pretty hard to swallow and made everybody there angry—you build this anger—because, of course, she was part of the testimony of the trial. It's very hard to understand. We're not lawyers. We're not a part of t

Justice committee  I'm fairly sure that court staff, like court reporters and interpreters, receive access to counselling because they sit in those court rooms every day. Maybe the same person who is available to them could become available to jurors at the end of the day, if they feel the need to

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  I agree with that, especially in my case. There were days when it was just overwhelmingly traumatic for me, especially the days when there was video evidence, because they played it over and over again. Maybe if I had had the opportunity to speak to someone at the end of that day

Justice committee  Definitely when the trial ends, people need to figure out a way to get over the anxiety of the trial and the stress and the trauma of it. But during the trial, when you go home every day, you're told you may speak to no one about this. So you can't speak to your husband about wha

Justice committee  I would just say that you can see how much trouble the courts are having in actually getting jurors to want to participate. Not only does it take them away from their normal, everyday life, but, yes, there is no compensation for doing that, and they do it out of civic duty.

Justice committee  Thank you to the committee for allowing me to appear before you today. I am a first-generation immigrant and extremely proud to be a Canadian citizen. I have the privileges and rights and freedoms this country offers, but with those rights come responsibilities. One of those res