Law Times

Page 6 January 22, 2018 • Law Times www.lawtimesnews.com COMMENT u EDITORIAL OBITER By Gabrielle Giroday Smart move T here are a few classic rules of governments. Voters hate tax increases. Cutting programs or employees is rarely popular. And reform of governing bodies is a total nuisance, rarely engendering much broad-base public support but often ruff ling feathers internally. Few leaders are feted for trimming. Therefore, one must admire current Law Society of Ontario Trea- surer Paul Schabas for his work to kick-start a discussion about the size and composition of the board of the law society and how it func- tions. The law society's board is currently made up of 40 elected lawyer benchers, five elected paralegal benchers, eight appointed lay bench- ers and ex-officio benchers, which includes former treasurers and at- torneys general. The LSO's Convocation can often have more than 60 benchers in attendance. Critics say this makes the board unwieldy and cumber- some. This is an incredibly fair assessment. Schabas is coming up on the end of his term in 2018, and he can be commended for some prudent steps when it comes to the law society's long-term interests. In September 2017, life benchers criticized their diminished role in the Law Society of Upper Canada's governing committees. Law Times reported that Schabas had decreased the size of the committees and prioritized elected benchers rather than life benchers. This, too, is a smart move. Efforts to control the board's size are laudable, in terms of promoting a board that is able to operate in a more efficient and effective manner. Streamlining the board may not always be pop- ular. However, it is not only a logical step but also one that ref lects the very mandate of the law society and its obligation to regulate the profession in the public interest. LT ©2018 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. 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Karen Lorimer Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer Brown Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gabrielle Giroday Staff Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Alex Robinson Copy Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patricia Cancilla CaseLaw Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leah Craven Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phyllis Barone Production Co-ordinator . . . . . . . . .Catherine Giles Electronic Production Specialist . . . Derek Welford Justice on the agenda BY SUSAN DELACOURT J ustice should not be a matter of public opinion, or so it's been said. But "transforming the crimi- nal justice system" is the subject of some pretty widespread public consulta- tions by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government — consultations that so far have been operating under the radar. That may change this month as the federal Justice Department gets closer to wrapping up the public-opinion sound- ings it has been conducting for the past few months. In fact, on Jan. 24, the review of Cana- da's justice system will land in the highly opinionated world of social media, with a "Twitter Townhall" hosted by Toronto MP Marco Mendicino, a lawyer who is also parliamentary secretary to the Jus- tice minister. It's been a while since we've heard the federal government declaring that it needed to fix the justice system. During the nearly 10 years that the Conservatives were in power, Canadians got used to hearing that the system was broken. These were the years of constant "crackdowns" on alleged leniency in the law, on everything from arrests to sen- tencing. By 2010, after Stephen Harper had won two elec- tions, Canadian public opin- ion had definitely hardened on crime. An Angus Reid poll in January 2010 showed that nearly two-thirds of Canadi- ans were in favour of capital punishment — a sharp rise from 2004, when less than half of respondents held pro- capital punishment views. At the time, Andrew Grenville, chief research officer at Angus Reid, re- marked to The Globe and Mail on how the findings were a little unexpected in a country that used to see itself as progres- sive on justice matters. "There is strong support for severely punishing people. This is not the way Canadians tend to describe themselves," Grenville said. When Trudeau's Liberals came to power, a lot of that "tough on crime" rhetoric disappeared. But, clearly, concerns linger about whether Canadian public opinion is in sync with the justice system. Hence, the consultations, which have been going on since the spring of 2016, through roundtable sessions all across the country and an online "choice book," in which rank-and-file Canadians are urged to fill out a survey on their top concerns with the justice system. It's interesting, though, to see how the problems are now being framed differ- ently than they were in the Harper years — mostly gone are suggestions that the sys- tem is too lax or lenient. Now, the challenges (as they're de- scribed) are more small-l liberal in na- ture. "Whether it's supporting victims of crime more effectively, reducing the number of vulnerable and marginalized people in the system, or completing cas- es faster, it's clear that change is needed," says the discussion paper. The Justice Department has even written up a comprehensive primer for anyone who wants to participate in the consultations. It runs to nearly 10 pages and is filled with interesting data on the state of law and order in Canada. In the section on timeliness of the system, for instance, we learn that youth crimes are the speediest in terms of court case completion (58 days is the median), but drug crimes, trafficking, production and so on take the longest (277 days me- dian.) Given that we haven't heard too much about these consultations, it's not clear what they're intended to accom- plish. Fixing the justice system wasn't a big election issue in 2015 and, since then, the federal Liberal government has been more preoccupied with the three "Ts" — trade, taxation and Trump (Donald Trump, that is, the U.S. presi- dent, who looms large over everything, it seems). But one assumes that all these consul- tations haven't been for nothing — that a transformation of the criminal justice system is indeed on the to-do list of the Trudeau government, even if we haven't heard too much about it. And there's still time for anyone to have a say — right up until the end of this month, actually. LT uSusan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based political author and columnist who has been working on Parliament Hill for nearly 30 years. She is a frequent politi- cal panellist on national television and author of four books. She can be reached at sdelacourt@bell.net. The Hill Susan Delacourt Susan Delacourt

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