BC Supreme Court Chief Justice: BC's courts are "threatened, if not in peril."

CTV News reports:

In a speech delivered to the B.C. branch of the Canadian Bar Association on Saturday, Chief Justice Baumann warned his audience that the province's courts are "threatened, if not in peril."

He said that inadequate funding has been a problem for B.C.'s courts for a number of years, and the stability and integrity of the system is steadily eroding.

 

"Then comes a tipping point when that gradual, insidious process of incremental damage yields its dramatic finish -- the structure is diminished and collapses," Baumann said.

 

"We are not at the tipping point yet, but we are steadily edging towards it."

 

[...]

 

He said that in B.C., the budget for court services will be cut by more than 10 per cent between 2008 and 2013. That means staffing has been slashed, leading to trial delays and holdups in processing court orders.

 

The situation in the provincial court system is even worse, according to Baumann. Since 2005, the provincial courts have lost the equivalent of 16.65 full-time judges.

Bauman's whole speech can be read here. In particular, check out the section of his speech - about a quarter of the way through - laying out the constitutional requirement of the province and the Attorney General's ministry to supervise the "provision, operation and maintenance" of our court system. Shirley Bond and her predecessors have a lot to answer for.

Also, an excerpt from toward the end of Bauman's speech:

The challenge which the courts face in dealing with reductions to Court Services  funding, is compounded by a concurrent decline in support for programs that directly or indirectly support our justice system.

For example, at a time when the number of self represented litigants in our courts 

hovers at 15-20% of civil and family cases, funding for legal aid has declined to almost nil in civil and family cases.

 

In addition, many government programs which support the justice system are simply not funded at the level where they can provide meaningful assistance.

 

Let me give you just one example which was brought to me recently by the court’s 

Family Law Committee. One of the things that the court is frequently required to do in family disputes is make orders for the custody of children. Often, the court needs assistance on this and a social worker, family counsellor or other expert is asked to complete a report under s. 15 of the Family Relations Act. 

 

These reports can be done by an expert who is privately retained, but when the litigants can’t afford that route, the court can request that a government agency, The Provincial Custody and Access Assessment Service, prepare the report (at no cost to the parties). 

 

This sounds like a wonderful service for litigants and the court, and it can be. But here is the problem: there are 7.5 FTEs who do this work, for the whole of the province, and for both the Provincial Court and the Supreme Court. The waiting time is generally nine months- and can extend to 14 months. For children, nine to 14months can effectively be a lifetime