Province’s southwest corner fears court office closure could be permanent

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This article was published 12/09/2017 (3089 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A court-office closure in the southwest corner of the province has forced residents to travel out of town to pay traffic ticket fines, file documents and get access to a justice of the peace.

Virden’s court office has been closed since late August after its lone full-time employee left the job earlier this year, and the town’s mayor is expressing concern the office may not re-open, limiting access to court services for some in the area.

“We are seriously concerned that they are not going to re-open,” Virden Mayor Jeff McConnell said.

The office used to serve residents west of Brandon to the Saskatchewan border and south to the North Dakota border, including the communities of Virden, Elkhorn and Melita. While a judge still travels to Virden for weekly provincial court sittings on Fridays, the administrative office where people used to complete tasks such as dealing with speeding tickets or filing for divorce remains closed. They now have to go to the nearest court office in Brandon, roughly 80 kilometres away.

“We feel that having a court office in the community is a very important service that needs to be provided. It’s the only court office that is available to the citizens from the southwest corner,” McConnell said.

McConnell said the office was being kept open for a while with casual staff after Virden’s full-time magistrate left earlier this year. Now, a staff shortage has meant it’s shut until further notice.

“We were advised that once they fill the position it will be open again, but we are concerned that that is not going to be done,” he said, saying Virden’s town council has asked local MLA Doyle Piwniuk to look into the issue. Piwniuk could not immediately be reached for comment. The province rents space within the town office building to house the court office.

“We’ve become more like a circuit court style of facility where all the paperwork is done in a different office and is brought in. That was never the intent of the Virden court office. It was always to be a full-service court office,” McConnell added, expressing concern that many of the people who need to be in court can’t afford to travel long distances.

A spokeswoman for Manitoba Justice said the Virden court office is open on Fridays, but McConnell said the office only opens for the weekly circuit court and doesn’t provide any services that would normally be offered by the magistrate, including filing court documents.

“Access to justice is very important and all court locations and circuit venues are routinely reviewed to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the communities that they serve. It is possible that smaller court offices may close on occasion in similar circumstances, if staff are unexpectedly away or need to be reassigned to other locations,” the statement from Manitoba Justice reads.

For local police, the closure has meant daily trips to Brandon to process paperwork and have court documents officially sworn. It’s something that needs to be done each time officers lay criminal charges, for example, but sending in the paperwork by email or fax results in a processing time delay of up to 24 hours. So, they’ve been hitting the road, Virden RCMP Cpl. Bryan Weatherald said.

Each day, someone from the 14-officer detachment will make the trip, he said, when they used to be able to drive a few blocks to the local office and have the documents processed there.

“It’s inconvenient, no doubt, that we don’t have immediate access to get our print paperwork done. So right now, paperwork just gets piled up here and a member will take it in and go through it in a big pile,” Weatherald said.

“We physically have a police officer that spends 2.5 hours in the car, driving back and forth,” daily, he said.

Manitoba Justice’s statement did not address a Free Press inquiry about when the Virden court office might re-open.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay