Long delays and collapsed cases are eroding faith in the justice system, lawyers warn

Two and a half years after Norman Tate's son was killed in a car accident, he's still struggling to come to terms with how the justice system handled the aftermath.

"If you step forward inside that place, you're flipping a coin — whether you're going to get justice that day or not," he said on April 30, standing outside the Ontario Court of Justice in Brantford, Ont.

Norman Tate Junior was killed in a head-on collision a week before Christmas in 2021. The driver in the other car eventually was charged with impaired driving causing death and bodily harm. But the case crawled through the court system and was stayed after it breached the time limits for trials set in a 2016 Supreme Court decision.

That decision in R. v. Jordan established that criminal cases that go beyond those time limits — 18 months for provincial courts and 30 months for superior courts — can be stayed for unreasonable delay.

Tate said seeing the case involving his son's death tossed out broke his heart.

"Nobody ever ever explained to me or told me that the trial had to be over within 18 months," he said. "They threw the charges out on him and the guy walked away … He never even spent five minutes in jail."

Cases are being stayed for unreasonable delays across the country. Judicial vacancies tend to get blamed for the delays, but they're not the only factor.

"Currently, working conditions are just … things just kind of get worse and worse," said Shara Munn, a Crown prosecutor and the president of the New Brunswick Crown Prosecutors Association.

Staffing shortages, complex cases and the sheer amount of evidence being presented are contributing to unmanageable working conditions, she said.

The union representing prosecutors in New Brunswick said that in some parts of the province, half of the Crown prosecutor positions are vacant. That means junior prosecutors are sometimes left to tackle serious cases without the guidance of a more experienced mentor.

Munn said that could end up undermining public confidence in the system.

"Imagine you go to the hospital, you are supposed to have heart surgery and you get there and they tell you, 'Well, we don't have a heart specialist right now, but we have a doctor who's training and teaching himself the procedures,'" she said.

"Would you let them operate on you? I would hope that your answer is no, but that's kind of what's happening within our prosecution service."

CBC News spoke to seven Crown prosecutors from across the country, most of whom were not in a position to go on the record because of their positions. They all pointed to the increasing complexity of cases as a factor contributing to delays. They said the sheer amount of disclosure required — the material the Crown is responsible for reviewing and sharing with the defence before a trial begins — has increased substantially and requires additional time commitments.