Lawyers for both the defence and prosecution say the situation needs to change, with neither victims nor the accused getting closure.
The number of criminal cases dismissed by Quebec judges because of unreasonable delays increased dramatically between 2021 and 2023, according to Justice Ministry data that suggests the province is on pace for another increase this year.
In 2023, Quebec judges stopped proceedings in 96 criminal cases because they had taken too long to go to trial. That’s up from 18 the year before and a more than seven-fold increase from 2021, when 13 cases were dismissed, according to Justice Ministry data obtained by The Gazette through an access-to-information request.
The statistics show that in the first half of 2024, 62 cases were thrown out because of unreasonable delays.
Marie-Christine Villeneuve, a spokesperson for Quebec’s network of Crime Victims Assistance Centres, said the rise is concerning.
“Behind each of these stays of proceedings, there are victims who won’t be able to tell their story and who won’t be able to see someone held responsible for the harm caused to them by the crime,” she said in an interview. “With these numbers, we see that more and more victims, or their loved ones, might feel abandoned by the system. It definitely doesn’t send a good message, particularly to those who are victims and are currently thinking of coming forward.”
For victims who have waited at least 18 months, and often longer, seeing a case dismissed for unreasonable delays can have a major effect on their recovery and cause additional distress, Villeneuve said.
“They often put their lives on hold for the duration of the legal proceedings, hoping to see the person, or people, responsible found guilty one day. They’ve waited patiently for the start of the trial, only for the case to be dropped and for justice to not be done,” she said.
In a 2016 decision, known as the Jordan ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada defined the constitutional right to have a trial “within a reasonable time” as 18 months from the time charges are laid for cases heard in provincial courts that don’t require a preliminary inquiry, and 30 months for cases tried in Superior Court as well as provincial court cases with a preliminary inquiry.
“It’s been eight years since the highest court sounded the alarm and called on all of the players in the justice system to review their practices. Eight years since the Supreme Court reminded everyone that each unreasonable delay represents a denial of justice not only for the accused, but for victims, their families and for the public as a whole,” provincial court Judge Karine Dutilly wrote in a June 27 decision as she stopped the prosecution of an Ottawa man who was charged in a Gatineau court with sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl with a weapon, sexual assault causing bodily harm and publication of an intimate image without consent.
For the accused, who was held in detention for 26 months as he awaited a trial that never came, there will always be the stigma of being accused of a sex crime because although he was never convicted, he was never acquitted, the judge wrote, while the alleged victim will never get the closure of a verdict.
“Nevertheless, if society has no interest in letting crimes go unpunished, it has no interest in punishing within a framework that does not respect the rights established by the Constitution,” Dutilly wrote in finding that she had no other choice but to dismiss the case.
Audrey Lepage, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, blamed the increase in the number of cases being stayed on a decision made by the former leadership of the Court of Quebec, which hears many criminal cases, to give judges more days for deliberations and to reduce the number of days they preside over hearings.
‘Living with the consequences’
“We are currently living with the consequences, but we are working hard to remedy the situation,” she wrote in an email.
Lepage said the government has nominated 14 new judges, who started in January, and that the provincial court has agreed to increase the number of days that judges sit in order to meet new efficiency targets by December 2025.
The government is also taking other steps, she said, including an action plan presented in February that calls for justices of the peace to be given additional powers. The plan could see bail hearings conducted remotely, seven days a week, to free provincial court judges to preside over criminal trials.
“The reduction in delays won’t happen overnight,” Lepage said. “That said, we have a specific plan, we’re putting concrete actions in place and our objective is clear: avoid stays of proceedings for unreasonable delays and allow victims to resume their lives. It’s a priority.”
The appointment of the 14 new judges came after the government reached a compromise with the former chief judge of the Court of Quebec, Lucie Rondeau, who had asked for 41 new judges to be appointed after she reduced the number of days judges spend in court from two out of every three to one of every two. Rondeau said they needed more time to deliberate due to the increasing complexity of their cases.
A spokesperson for the current chief judge, Henri Richard, declined an interview request and declined to comment on the statement from the minister’s office, citing the duty of judges to show reserve in public.
However, Lucie Demers, Richard’s executive assistant, said in an email that the court has taken a number of steps to reduce delays as part of the action plan developed with the provincial government and other participants in the justice system.
A shortage of special constables and court clerks is also causing delays, she said, as courtrooms often can’t open at the assigned time. Delays are also being caused by a shortage of staff at detention centres.
People working in the justice system, including defence lawyers and prosecutors, agree that the shortage of courthouse staff is at least part of the problem.
“When we arrive to proceed with a trial, sometimes a judge is missing, sometimes a special constable is missing, sometimes a clerk will be missing,” said Elizabeth Ménard, a lawyer and the president of the Association des avocats de la défense de Montréal–Laval–Longueuil.
The shortage of staff at the detention centres means lawyers struggle to meet with their clients and leads to errors, like detainees not being brought to court for scheduled appearances, she said in an interview.
Case rejections elsewhere in Canada
The number of cases rejected because of delays has also increased in Ontario.
In 2021, 50 cases were stayed as a result of the Jordan ruling and a further 91 applications by people accused of crimes were denied. The number of stayed cases rose to 178 in 2023 in the province, which has about 1.8 times the population of Quebec, while 209 more were rejected.
In British Columbia, which has a population about two-thirds of Quebec’s, the number has been much smaller. Ten criminal cases were stayed in B.C.’s criminal courts in 2021. That rose to 19 in 2023 and, as of Aug. 31, there have been nine cases this year.
In Alberta, two Jordan applications were granted between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, while a further eight were proactively stayed by the Crown because they had taken too long. In that province, which has a little more than half the population of Quebec, a total of 40 Jordan applications were granted between Oct. 25, 2016 and March 31, 2023, while 74 others were stayed by the Crown because of delays.
Cases thrown out due to the Jordan ruling represent only a tiny fraction of criminal prosecution in Quebec, said Sophie Lamarre, the deputy director of Quebec’s prosecution service, the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales.
At the end of March, for example, she said prosecutors in the province were working on 207,553 files.
The reduction in the number of days that provincial court judges sit has also caused delays, though that has improved since the agreement between the court and the justice minister, she said.
Prosecutors have been instructed to prioritize cases involving deaths, serious injuries, sex crimes, the mistreatment of children and the elderly, as well as domestic violence, so that those cases aren’t thrown out, Lamarre said, and the prosecution service is taking steps to reduce delays.
Quebec prosecutors went through a mandatory training session this spring on how to avoid delays, she said, adding that prosecutors are encouraged to make use of alternative-measures programs and psychological treatment programs to direct offenders out of the criminal justice system when appropriate.
“Prosecutors certainly put a lot of heart and energy into their files and when they lay charges, it’s because they want to see the file through to the end, with a hearing before the court that’s decided on the merits by a judge,” Lamarre said. Seeing a case dismissed for delays is “heartbreaking, for sure. It’s not what they want.”
While most cases don’t end with a stay, even those that don’t break the constitutional barrier can go through long delays, with serious consequences for victims, who have to wait, and the accused, who may be detained or have serious limits on their freedom while out on bail, said defence lawyer Ménard.
“When a stay of proceedings is ordered in any case, whether it’s because of the Jordan ruling or another situation, it means the state is not capable of fulfilling its obligations, so it’s not good news,” she said. “It’s a tool that’s necessary in our society and our justice system, but it’s not good news to see the numbers rising like this. It shows that the government and the system aren’t capable of meeting the need and are failing to meet their obligations.”