Canadian Lawyer

Regional wRap-up atlantiC N.l. bAcKS DOwN ON cROwN cUTS w hen a handful of lawyers in St. John's, N.L., raised concerns about proposed government cuts to the Justice Department, they had no idea of the public outcry they would create — or that the government would ultimately back down. The furor started quietly enough with the tabling of the annual budget. Among the many measures Premier Kathy Dunderdale's Progressive Conservative government was implementing were cuts to the public service that included the elimination of roughly 200 jobs from the Justice Department. Within hours of the budget announcement, four Crown prosecutors in the St. John's Provincial Court office were laid off. That left 14 lawyers to handle hundreds of prosecutions. Defence counsel spoke up. The message "resonated with the public," says Peter Ralph, one of the lawyers who stepped forward. "I was surprised. I think the government was surprised that the story had legs." The public firestorm was so loud and vociferous the government held a public meeting to discuss the issue and within two weeks was backtracking on its original cuts to the Public Prosecutions office. The four cut positions were reinstated and a new Crown attorney job created in Happy Valley–Goose Bay. Now the Justice Department says more prosecutors, court security, and legal aid staff will ultimately remain in the system. Ralph isn't quite as optimistic about the future. While pleased with the reinstatement of the cut Crown attorney positions, the budget held other bad news for the justice system that has not been addressed. This includes an external assessment of the legal aid system. "The government is review- ing the model, which is primarily in-house," says Ralph, a lawyer with Simmonds+Partners Defence in downtown St. John's. As well, the budget axes the family violence intervention court. "That was disappointing," says Ralph. It was also, he believes, a decision made on inaccurate information. Numbers were provided to the Justice minister last summer that indicated the four-yearold court was underused. But those were "moment-in-time numbers," notes Ralph. "Over 140 men have gone through the court since it started and their recidivism rate is much lower than others." The number of sheriffs serving the capital city has also been reduced at the same time a monitoring program for offenders has been discontinued. It's a losing combination, says Ralph. "The electronic surveillance bracelet program is . . . gone and there are fewer sheriffs to oversee people on conditional discharge." — DoNALee mouLtoN donalee@quantumcommunications.ca nova Scotia'S Slow Boat to criMinal JuStice T here is nothing fast paced about Nova Scotia's criminal courts. According to data released earlier this year by Statistics Canada, the East Coast province has the slowest system in the country after Quebec. Speed is of the essence for both victims and accused, says Verona Singer, past president of the Nova Scotia Criminal Justice Association in Halifax. "Justice doesn't get served [otherwise]." Victims, she notes, are forced to continue dealing with trauma while a case winds its way through the court system, and offenders are not provided with the resources they need until a guilty verdict is handed down. According to StatsCan, what is going on in the province is painfully slow compared to the rest of Canada. In 2010-11, the national median time for a case to be completed in adult courts was 118 days. In Nova Scotia, this figure was 141 days. The time lag existed in spite of a 2.4-per-cent drop in the volume of criminal cases from the previous year. (The gold medal for fastest sprint through the court system goes to Prince Edward Island at 29 days.) "The criminal courts need to take a very hard look at what is going on," says Singer. Joel Pink, the province's foremost criminal defence lawyer, has pointed to a lack of communication between prosecutors and defence counsel that results in unnecessary rescheduling and postponements. He recommends the use of co-ordinators to manage cases at the Provincial Court level. Singer agrees. "Case management co-ordinators makes sense. It gets people talking to one another who wouldn't otherwise." — Dm www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m June 2013 7

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