Justice committee  Remember, I'm talking about section 94 respecting courts and section 96 respecting judges. The judges were appointed not by provincial governments but by your government. That's first and foremost.

Justice committee  I respectfully disagree with you. The federal government has sole power to appoint or not appoint section 96 judges and fill those vacancies. Sometimes the government has been slow to do so, which causes a backlog in and of itself, but that's not what we're here to discuss today.

Justice committee  Mr. Virani, not at all. I will be happy to report to you that I've been a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada, but I've also voted for Liberal and NDP and Green candidates whom I respect and who have run in my ridings. I'm non-partisan on this. I come to you as a cou

Justice committee  I've been voting for 40 years, but I've never lived in a Quebec riding, Mr. Fortin. Sorry about that. I would probably vote for you if I could, because I respect you very much.

Justice committee  Those measures have been implemented, and are being embraced. In fact, the system would collapse without mediation and pretrials. However, this is about the use of judicial resources in courts of general jurisdiction. Judges are being monopolized by criminal cases in the adjudi

Justice committee  There is, and it's mandatory: Rule 24.1 of the rules of civil procedure in Ontario.

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

Justice committee  Right. There are many who say that maybe we have to end the preliminary inquiry, because it's largely a discovery mechanism, but certainly in terms of being present before the court—a preliminary inquiry really is about hearing the evidence, maybe testing the evidence and somet

Justice committee  Don't tell them I said that.

Justice committee  Yes. It is. No doubt a judge applying Jordan, in the wise words you just quoted, would perhaps use the fact of the COVID pandemic to not grant a stay. But remember, every time you deploy a judge to a criminal case to deal with anything, because it's a priority over all of the oth

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  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  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