“10 years after Jordan ruling, Quebec prosecutors forced to make ‘heartbreaking’ choices”
“On the wider spectrum, [the Jordan framework] is a positive decision. That being said, there’s a downside to it. The problem is that the resources did not follow,” he said.
The ruling set time limits for criminal trials to ensure an accused person’s Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time frame — 18 months for provincial court and 30 for Superior Court.
In trials that go on beyond those time limits, charges can be thrown out.
In recent years, the Jordan ruling has resulted in an increase of charges being tossed for going beyond those limits, as shown by data obtained by CBC News through an access-to-information request.
Okay, so our criminal justice system has evolved and transcended torture, right?
But then I read: “What do these displays (and our fascination with them) say about humankind? Medieval or modern, human cruelty and torture haven’t gone away. Today, although 146 members of the United Nations have ratified an international convention against torture, it is practised around the globe.”
In order for this headline not to be misleading consider what “stayed or withdrawn” means. “To capture these cases, Statistics Canada groups together stays (where criminal proceedings are halted), withdrawals, dismissals, discharges at preliminary inquiry, and referrals to alternative or restorative justice programs. Following Statistics Canada, I refer to these outcomes collectively as “stayed or withdrawn.” Withdrawals and referrals to alternatives are in the complete discretion of the Crown Attorney and are usually invoked when there is no reasonable prospect of conviction or no public interest in proceeding or the charges are so minor they don’t justify further delaying the system with trials. Charges are dismissed when a Judge determines that the Crown has not proven the offence. Charges are discharged at a preliminary inquiry when a judge determines that the evidence is insufficient to go to trial. Stays are usually imposed by a trial Judge for breaches of constitutional rights in many forms, only one of which is unreasonable delay.
To blame delay on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision of Jordan is a superficial analysis. The S.C.C. addressed delay 3 times with different solutions. Following R. v. Askov in 1990, the “Askov crisis” resulted in tens of thousands of criminal charges across Canada being stayed. Two years later in R. v. Morin in 1992 the court attempted to fine tune the system setting 8 – 10 months as the limit in provincial court trials. Finally, 10 years ago in R. v. Jordan in 2016 the court attempted to streamline the complicated stay applications (which in and of themselves were causing delay) and increased the limit of 18 months in provincial court trials.
Throw into the delay mix the myriad of unconstitutional laws our federal government has previously and presently imposed on its citizens. It has previously taken and now will take many hundreds if not thousands of constitutional challenges through the various levels of courts for the next 10 or more years. This is a huge contributor to delay.
After 36 years, the courts have not or have not been able to comply. If you want to blame someone for unreasonable delays in our criminal court system, you need to look elsewhere than the Jordan decision.
Get tough on bail with the new, stricter federal bail laws? Deny bail in repeat and violent offenders? We already do that. Pressure the provinces to provide more funding and resources? Definitely needed. The article says that the legislation responds to “rising levels of violent crime”. Still, it later reports “In the latest available data, (reported violent crime) it ticked down to 967 (per 100,000 people) in 2024. About bail: “In 2023-24, in the latest numbers from Statscan, there was an average count of 19,335 people across Canada jailed on remand” and “Ontario led the increase, with a 26-per-cent spike.” “The latest 2025 bail data from Ontario indicate that about one in three people who were denied bail had all charges against them dropped, meaning they were jailed but then never found guilty of a crime. 1 IN 3 DENIED BAIL WERE INNOCENT! THAT’S 6,445 PEOPLE UNNECCESSARILY INCARCERATED.
Its function is to determine if a crime has been committed and if so, to impose punishment. It is a system of PUNISHMENT, not healing. A contested criminal trial is a battle- a war. No participant emerges without harm. It is not a place for healing.
THE JAIL SUBJECTED HIM TO “HORRIFIC TORTURE” AND “VENGEFUL COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT” OF NEARLY 200 INMATES. THE JUDGE STAYED THE CHARGES OF ROBBERY OF A JEWELRY STORE WITH A LOADED GUN. DO YOU THINK THAT WAS THE CORRECT DECISION?
In the latest consequence of the Maplehurst prisoner abuse scandal, a Brampton judge has thrown out charges against a man who pleaded guilty to armed robbery, describing the jail’s treatment of him as “horrific torture.”
Justice Katherine McLeod found no justification for the pepper spraying, beating and “gratuitous cruelty” the man suffered when jail guards carried out a “vengeful” collective punishment of nearly 200 inmates in December 2023 after an inmate punched a guard.
It is “imperative,” the judge wrote in her 74-page decision, that the justice system denounce the jail’s actions as unacceptable and “so far beyond the bounds of common decency that the system must react with the strongest of condemnation.”
McLeod found the operation was ordered purely for vengeance after an inmate sucker-punched a guard two days earlier.
“Any pretense of it being anything else simply is false,” she wrote.
Inmates were forcefully pulled from their cells in their underwear, had their hands zip tied and arms contorted into painful positions, before they were marched to a hallway where they were forced to sit cross-legged with their heads bowed while guards trained pepper ball guns at the backs of their heads. Their cells were then ransacked by other guards and emptied of all contents, including toilet paper, as well as personal items, such as family photos.
Inmates were then left in their underwear for two days while jail staff turned on fans that blew cold air onto the unit.
As was the case in the court hearings that led to the collapse of the murder charges, McLeod found that most Maplehurst officials who took the stand in Mohamed’s case gave untruthful or evasive testimony and were generally not credible witnesses.
While it is true that many people who are charged with criminal offences are a present danger to society, our government tries to solve our social problems of addiction, poverty, homelessness, abuse, and so on, dumping them all together in the criminal justice system. Any attempts to address the source of such “criminal” conduct need to be supported.
Once again Michael Spratt once again hit’s the nail on the head.
“Criminal cases begin in the legal equivalent of an airport holding lounge. A bureaucratic purgatory where accused people, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges all wait for the justice system to slowly boot.
Remand court is where a case lives before a plea or trial date is set. It is the intake period of the criminal justice system. Disclosure gets provided. Crown and defence discuss possible resolutions. Judicial pre-trials are conducted. Trial dates are negotiated through a bureaucratic maze of forms and appearances that makes the old Consumers Distributing catalogue system look sleek and innovative.
And while all this happens, the accused (or their lawyer) keeps returning to remand court, over and over and over again, for updates about why nothing has happened yet. “
