System Update

Canadian courts lag so far behind in software and infrastructure, criminals are running free

- Paul Gallant

IN JANUARY 2009, Kenneth Gavin Williamson was charged with a series of sexual offences he had committed decades earlier against a twelve-year old boy in Kingston. Three days before the preliminary inquiry was set to begin in November, the Crown learned that the judge presiding over the trial had been double-booked. Government attorneys cancelled their witnesses but didn’t inform the plaintiff, leading to further scheduling delays. The case was then postponed again, because of a mix-up over the availability of the judge and an investigating officer, and then held up once more as lawyers waited to be assigned a courtroom.

Williamson, a schoolteacher who had been on suspension since the charges were laid, was largely out on bail until his trial ended in December 2011, a period of nearly three years. While the jury found him guilty of buggery, indecent assault, and gross indecency, an appeal judge stayed the conviction. The delays, he wrote, had violated Williamson’s Charter right to be tried “within a reasonable time” — a decision the Supreme Court upheld on July 8, 2016.

Legal observers were outraged to see a convicted child molester’s charges set aside, but the Supreme Court justices had decided to take a tough stance on court delays. Earlier that day, they had established strict time limits in order to combat what they called a “culture of complacency”: provincial-court trials without a preliminary inquiry must now be wrapped up within eighteen months, and those with a preliminary inquiry, as well as superior-court trials, can’t exceed thirty months.