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Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50819
It's been up and running for four years, but the jury is still out on how independent Canada's new Public Prosecution Service really is and if it has the resources to properly conduct cases under the wave of new Conservative tough-on-crime laws. By Tim Naumetz BLIC LAW B rian Saunders had two inspirations when he signed up with the federal Justice Department in 1977. Public service was in his blood and — among the goals that would lead him one day to head the new Public Prosecution Service of Canada — he wanted to go to court. "All of my father's family and my mother's family were public service," the youthful-looking Justice Department veteran says. "My father's family, all his brothers and him, were in the military. My mother's family were all school teachers and nurses, so I was brought up in families that had a sense of working for the public." Defence counsel would, and do, say their side of the court- room is also a public service. But for Saunders there was no question, considering his family background, about where he would be standing when he made a case in front of a judge. "Maybe I watched too many TV shows that resembled Perry Mason, but the thought of going to court interested me, and I was told when I joined the Justice Department if you want to go to court, go into prosecutions, because you'll learn how to be a litigator," he says. Saunders, officially the director of public prosecutions, sat down to talk to Canadian Lawyer along with his two deputy directors Chantal Proulx, who heads the regulatory DANIEL BRIEN