'Justice delayed is justice denied' Attorney General tells Guelph audience

The province is already taking steps to speed up the court system in response to the R. v. Jordan Superior Court decision, which set timelines for how long an accused can be incarcerated from time of arrest to trial in criminal cases.

And while Ontario’s Attorney General has raised the spectre of doing away with pre-trial hearings as a way to shave weeks and months from the process, it’s certainly not the only way or the only step that has to be taken, he said in an interview.

“The Jordan decision has been a game-changer,” Yasir Naqvi said before giving a lecture at the University of Guelph Monday night. “But in the decision the Superior Court was very clear. It asked the judiciary to get out of the culture of complacency and also to reform the system.”

To do that will require fundamental changes and not just adding resources, he said, although earlier in the day Naqvi announced some new funding and resources for Guelph and Waterloo Region at an event in Kitchener. Among the highlights: the province will hire two new assistant Crown attorneys to service Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph to help reduce the wait for trial; and expansion of the Bail Verification and Supervision program so more low-risk individuals can be released on bail.

But there needs to be discussion with the federal government and its response to Jordan as well as judges, lawyers and others connected to the court system, he said.

He said there’s stronger regulation over sharing information between prosecutor and defence counsel and better ways to gauge the strength of a case that make pre-trial hearings redundant in this day and age in all but the most serious cases.

He acknowledged there needs to be more public engagement on justice reform, “but we don’t have the luxury of time. We need to have those difficult conversations right now.”

Naqvi was the featured speaker at the annual Truscott Lecture, an annual lecture at the University of Guelph that looks at justice and the miscarriage of justice from different angles.

The series is sponsored by Stephen Truscott and his family. Truscott was famously accused as a boy and tried and convicted of the murder of Lynne Harper, a school mate. Truscott was first sentenced to death and then spent decades in prison until he was finally exonerated.

Naqvi told the packed house that while the maximum timelines set out in Jordan are ambitious – 18 months for a criminal case in provincial court and 30 months on a criminal case in superior court – reform is necessary and the clarity on what constitutes a “reasonable” timeline is welcome.

The danger is that if a case doesn’t get to trial in time, the case would be stayed and the accused allowed to go free.

Naqvi said Canadians need to feel confident in the criminal justice system and that every accused person receives a fair and timely trial.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” he said.