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Applying the Jordan framework: Are courts placing too much of the burden on the defence?
In R v. Jordan, the Supreme Court put a hard cap on the duration of criminal trials — sending a thrill of panic through the justice system in the process. The ruling is roughly two and a half years old now. Time for the training wheels to come off.Now, that backlog of pre-Jordan charges has been largely cleared — the transitional period is over. But Crown and defence lawyers alike report that trial times aren’t speeding up; statistics cited in a recent Law Times article show that in the Ontario Court of Justice, average times to disposition and the number of court appearances have not diminished since Jordan. If the SCC intended the ruling as a salutary shock to the system, it didn’t work.So what happens now?
[ ...Suite ]Date de parution : 2018-12-18
RCMP’s forensic firearm testing backlog adding delays to justice system
The RCMP’s forensics labs are taking nearly four times longer to analyze firearms than they did just four years ago, adding delays to a criminal justice system under pressure to speed up after a recent Supreme Court decision.
[ ...Suite ]Date de parution : 2018-12-16
Court delays persist, despite Jordan
The Supreme Court of Canada decision in Jordanand the problems it tried to address are still top of mind in the criminal courts in Ontario nearly two-and-a-half years after it was released.
[ ...Suite ]Date de parution : 2018-12-03
The performance pay saga reaches a settlement
The issue is the prorating of performance pay in relation to pre-promotion period for the year in which lawyers are promoted. If a lawyer was eligible for performance pay and was promoted during the year, the Employer, rather than pay out a prorated performance pay for the period pre-promotion, paid out nothing at all regardless of your performance rating for the year. The AJC originally filed a grievance in 2011 and in response to that grievance, TB had conceded in the context of the adjudication hearing that pre-promotion service should be recognized. Unfortunately, the adjudicator originally disregarded TB's concession in his decision of 2015, requiring the AJC to file an application for judicial review, which eventually resulted on December 22, 2016 in a remedy limited to the right to pre-promotion performance pay for the year 2010-2011. Thus, the AJC filed another policy grievance on July 27th 2016. The hearing was scheduled for October 2018. We are pleased to announce that we now have a signed Memorandum of Settlement on this matter with TB.
[ ...Suite ]Date de parution : 2018-10-30
Not all Questions are Good Questions: Avoiding Discriminatory Interview Practices
Much ink has been spilled over a recent decision by the Commission de la fonction publique (the "Commission") on the topic of discriminatory interview practices. In Association des procureurs aux poursuites criminelles et pénales et Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales[1], the Commission found that the plaintiff had been discriminated against when she was denied a position due to her pregnancy.
[ ...Suite ]Date de parution : 2018-10-11
Federal government facing pushback over bill to transform justice system
One thing that both the prosecution and the defence seem to agree on is that the federal government’s push to cut preliminary inquiries in most criminal cases will not solve the long-standing problem of delays in the criminal justice system.
[ ...Suite ]Date de parution : 2018-10-01
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B.C. judges should get pay and pension hike: appeal court
31-03-2015
B.C.’s Provincial Court judges have won another round in their salary battle with the province.
In a 2-1 ruling in Provincial Court Judges’ Association of British Columbia v. British Columbia (Attorney General), the B.C. Court of Appeal said Provincial Court judges are entitled to the suggested salary and pension recommendations first made in a 2010 report by the Judges’ Compensation Commission. They were rejected by the B.C. legislature in 2011.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge had directed the government to reconsider the matter, but last year, the legislature rejected the recommendations again.
The judges appealed and the B.C. Court of Appeal said last Friday, they are entitled to the compensation as recommended.
The compensation commission’s 2010 report said judges in the province earned about $231,000 a year. That put them in second place for provincial court judges in Canada after Ontario.
The commission made 15 recommendations to the government regarding provincial court judges’ pay. They included freezing pay in 2011-12 and 2012-13 but increasing 2013-14 salaries by the accumulated increase in the B.C. consumer price index over the preceding three years.
The government rejected six of the 15 recommendations, saying pay would be frozen in 2013-14 as part of attempts to control public spending.
However, the Provincial Court Judges’ Association of B.C. won a judicial review ordering the government to reconsider.
In his decision, Justice Edward Chiasson wrote that the legislature should not have considered financial data from 2013, and should not have given new reasons for its decision denying the increases.
“In my view, the Legislature was neither entitled to reconsider its response to the 2010 JCC report on the basis of 2013 financial data, nor to advance new substantive reasons for rejecting the report. On that basis, I would allow this appeal.”
“I would declare that the PCJs are entitled to the recommendations in the 2010 JCC report,” he concluded.
Dissenting Justice David Harris said the court is intruding on the province’s turf of allocating public funds.
“The second basis for rejecting the salary recommendation was that the actual financial circumstances of the Province had turned out to be worse than they had been forecast to be in 2010,” Harris wrote. “I agree that it was illegitimate to rely on the actual data, rather than the forecast. Nevertheless, it is artificial to read the 2013 response without any regard to the 2011 response. Part of the rationale for the 2011 response was that it was unfair and unreasonable to award judges’ salary increases out of the public purse when others paid from it were shouldering the burden of hard times. In my view, that rationale continues to inform the 2013 response. On a fair reading, it is the foundation or the underlying premise of the rejection of the recommendations.”
Chaisson agreed that a court “must be very reluctant to instruct a Legislature how to proceed . . . but in the context of establishing judges’ compensation there is precedent for doing so.”
“Continuation of uncertainty is not in the best interest of either party and is not consistent with the scheme of the process mandated by the Judicial Compensation Act. PCJs still do not know what remuneration they are to receive for the period 2011 – 2014,” he added.
The commission in 2010 also recommended pension-accrual rates of 3.5 per cent for judges starting April 1, 2013, and that the government change the law so judges who work past the age of 70 can make pension contributions.
