Howard Levitt: Canada's broken court system is about to get even worse
By Howard Levitt and Kathryn Marshall
The Canadian court system is in crisis and it’s only getting worse.
In Toronto, it takes well over a year to have a motion heard before a judge. The shortage of judges has been well covered, but there are other cracks in the system. On June 13, five courtrooms in Vancouver and three more in Port Coquitlam were closed because of a shortage of sheriffs. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.
One of the long-standing solutions to these problems (besides appointing more judges and hiring more sheriffs, of course) has been to move certain types of legal disputes out of the court system and into tribunals and commissions.
In theory, by having human rights cases heard by commissions (both provincial and federal), the court system is freed up. The commissions are supposed to offer a specialist path for these types of cases, ensuring a quicker route to justice.
It has not quite worked out that way, as it turns out the tribunals and commissions are similarly understaffed and slow. Howard has one case before the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) that has now gone on for close to 10 years. And that is without a hearing. To make matters worse, the Trudeau government’s new Online Harms Act, currently before the House of Commons, will make the CHRC responsible for adjudicating online hate speech as well. There is no word on whether the government will provide additional resources to ensure that the Commission can deal with the increased case load. The inevitable result will be yet more delays and less justice in what is supposed to be a quicker process for human rights cases.
As employment lawyers, we frequently use the human rights’ commissions to bring forward sexual harassment
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