Lawyers criticize Queen’s Bench summer recess

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This article was published 06/09/2017 (2964 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Impending new rules to speed up civil law cases aren’t expected to call for an end to summer recess in Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench.

The superior court’s summer slowdown isn’t unique in Canada, but several provinces run their courts year-round. Faced with mounting delays for a backlog of cases, civil and criminal defence lawyers have called on Manitoba to do the same.

While certain matters do wind up in court during the summer months — uncontested or urgent civil cases, for example, or hearings for people who are in custody facing criminal charges — Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench takes a break during July and August. This year’s civil law summer recess lasted from July 4 to Sept. 4, resuming a regular schedule after Labour Day.

Provincial court keeps going year-round, but the superior court’s lighter summer schedule means civil disputes and the most serious criminal charges typically don’t go to trial during the summer.

That’s starting to change in courts across Canada, and Manitoba is seeing more criminal cases — including judge-alone criminal trials — on summer dockets.

In July, a five-day attempted-murder trial was scheduled to be heard by Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg.

On the day the trial was set to begin, the Crown stayed the charges against Jeffrey Owen Tait. His defence lawyer, Scott Newman — also a spokesman for the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association of Manitoba — said his client had been in custody for more than a year awaiting trial.

“We know we’re not operating at 100 per cent capacity in the summer, so if that’s a place where we can make efforts to reduce delays, that’s a soft target. That should be a simple change to make and one that we’re seeing has been made, which will hopefully help reduce those backlogs,” Newman said.

The scheduling of more summer trials was one of the recommendations made in June by the standing Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs.

The committee has been told summer trials have been a success in Alberta. In other provinces, including Nova Scotia, Ontario and B.C., superior courts run year-round, but usually have a reduced workload in the summer.

In Saskatchewan, trials “are not typically scheduled” during July and August, courts communications officer Dawn Blaus wrote in an email.

“In Saskatchewan, the Court of Queen’s Bench continues to hear chamber matters, hold criminal pre-trials, and move ahead with specific matters, including sentencings and other brief hearings,” she wrote.

When asked whether the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench would start scheduling more summer trials as a way to combat lengthy court delays, Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal noted the court does schedule some criminal in-custody cases during July and August.

“On the civil side, it’s always been the experience in Manitoba that civil litigators, to the extent possible, want a holiday, too. If they’re going to take their holiday say, for example, in January or February as opposed to in the summer, you’re still going to have delays and a lack of availability. If judges were to take their holiday in February or in March, well, you’re going to have the same scheduling problems for earlier in the year as you would potentially in the summer,” Joyal said.

“So unless you don’t give judges holidays at all, you’re going to have some difficulties with scheduling full-bore all year round. So there’s got to be some allocation. And the reality is, lawyers want some time with their families and repose themselves, so we’re trying to find a balance here.”

Civil litigation lawyer Bill Gange said “the courts should operate like any other business on a 12-month schedule,” and hear civil trials year-round.

“I think it’s something that has to be seriously considered, and that is that I don’t think we can any longer afford to shut down the civil litigation court process for the months of July and August,” he said.

Joyal said the courts need to work on scheduling, and simply adding more federally appointed judges to the bench isn’t the answer.

“We can always use more judges, but I think the real efficiency would be better and wiser scheduling,” he said. “We have to find ways to make sure that when a matter comes into our system, we can adjudicate it efficiently and quickly. If we’re just adding one more judge and we’re still doing things the way we used to do, that one case will be just one more case delayed.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay