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REGIONAL WRAP-UP CENTRAL CANADA Saunders nominated to head Public Prosecution Service eteran Crown Brian Saunders has been nominated as the country's fi rst director of public prosecu- tions, following a year-long process to select a lawyer to head the newly created Public Prosecution Service of Canada. Employing more than 500 prosecu- in damages to the Montreal family of a boy seriously injured during a group ski lesson in the Laurentians fi ve years ago. In her damning decision handed Q down Jan. 31, Zerbisias ordered Mont Saint-Sauveur International Inc. to pay that amount to Mu- rat and Nadya Armutlu after their 9-year-old son Mathew was serious- ly injured Jan. 12, 2003 on its Mont Olympia ski hill. The judge said the company "committed serious faults and breaches of standards." "The amount of the award is among the highest in Canadian his- tory against a ski school but it con- servatively refl ects the devastating injuries which this child sustained," says lawyer Robert Kugler, who rep- resented the family with his brother Stuart and their father Gordon. (All three are with Kugler Kandestin LLP.) "The duty of a ski school is to take all reasonable measures to pro- vide for the safety of the children," Kugler adds. "In this case, no pre- cautions were taken." Zerbisias agreed, fi nding that the 17-year-old ski instructor aban- doned her young charges and subse- quently "totally failed to protect the children and keep them safe." During the last run of the day, the instruc- tor stayed with a child who couldn't or wouldn't ski down the hill and uebec Superior Court Justice Dionysia Zerbisias awarded a Canadian record $3.7 million told the remainder of the children, including Mathew, to ski down on their own to meet their parents. Mathew skied across the hill, through the T-bar track, then crashed head fi rst into rocks and trees. He lost consciousness and re- mained in a coma, hovering between life and death, for 13 days before emerging with profound and per- manent neurological impairment. "This is a horrible tragedy project- ing into a terrible future," Zerbisias wrote in her 26-page ruling. "In preparing for our Saint-Sau- veur case, we did extensive research and found very few reported cases involving injuries to victims during a ski lesson," Kugler recalls. He says the majority of the cases consulted involved injuries suffered by skiers while engaging in recreational ski- ing or who were skiing as part of a school-organized ski day. The previous high was a 1987 award of more than $2.6 million the Quebec Court of Appeal grant- ed 11-year-old Nadine Bouliane, who was left a quadriplegic after a January 1979 accident in which her toboggan crashed into a snow- grooming machine on a ski hill near Quebec City. That case, pleaded by Gordon Kugler, is still considered a signifi cant, leading decision in Que- bec law regarding compensation for bodily injuries. — MIKE KING mking@videotron.ca tors, the PPSC was established in De- cember 2006 as part of the Federal Ac- countability Act. The PPSC takes over from the former Federal Prosecution Service, with the additional responsibil- ity of prosecuting new fraud offences and offences under the Canada Elections Act. While the old service was part of the Department of Justice, the PPSC is in- dependent, though it reports to Parlia- ment through the federal attorney gen- eral. The PPSC prosecutes cases across more than 50 federal statutes, involving drugs, organized crime, terrorism, tax law, money laundering, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and a num- ber of federal regulatory offences. In this year's federal budget, the government allocated $32 million over two years to "enhance the work" of the new service. Saunders, whose nomination goes to Parliament for consideration, has been acting director of public prosecutions since December 2006. He began his career with the federal Department of Justice in 1978 and has since held the positions of assistant deputy attorney general (criminal law), assistant deputy attorney general (citizenship, immigra- tion, and public safety), and senior gen- eral counsel and director general of the Ottawa civil litigation section. Saunders has also been the attorney general's rep- resentative on the Federal Courts Rules Committee and a member of the board of directors of the Advocate's Society since 2003. As part of the seven-year role, the di- rector of public prosecutions will also be the deputy attorney general of Canada but will not be eligible to be reappointed for another term. Responsibilities will 10 APRIL 2008 www. C ANADIAN mag.com