Premier Clark's support for the federal government's get-tough-on-crime legislation, which will require increased provincial spending, is ironic given her government's failure to adequately fund our current system.
It is generally accepted that the federal government's proposed Safe Streets and Communities Act will increase the number of inmates in our provincial jails by increasing the number of mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment for a host of offences and by eliminating the availability of conditional sentence orders (also known as house arrest) for a variety of offences.
While it is the feds who are responsible for making criminal law, it is the provinces who pay to put most of those accused on trial and, if convicted, to house them in jail.
Quebec has indicated that it won't spend a dime on new jails and several other provinces have expressed their concerns.
Surprisingly, British Columbia is not one of them.
It's surprising because our justice system is crumbling under a lack of funding.
The federal government's plan will undoubtedly increase pressure on our routinely overcrowded jails and may require millions of dollars in increased expenditures to build new ones.
But our prisons are not the only institution that is suffering.
Chief Justice Bauman of the British Columbia Supreme Court recently remarked on the lack of funding in our court system at a speech to the Canadian Bar Association in Las Vegas.
"The stability and integrity of our courts and judicial system are being slowly eroded by a lack of funding. Inadequate funding of courts in British Columbia has been the reality for the last number of years.
"We are not at the tipping point yet - but we are steadily edging towards it."
The Chief Justice noted that there has been a lack of court clerks, registry staff and sheriffs available for proper operation of the courts.
The problem is particularly acute in the British Columbia provincial court, which handles the vast majority of criminal trials.
"The provincial court finds itself in even more dire straits than does the Supreme Court," said Justice Bauman.
The fact that the province is significantly short of an adequate number of provincial court judges and support staff is not new.
A court report entitled "Justice Delayed: A Report of the Provincial Court of British Columbia Concerning Judicial Resources" dated Sept. 14, 2010 indicated that the Provincial Court of British Columbia is the only provincial court in Canada with fewer judges today than in 2005. Seventeen fewer to be precise.
Despite having that report for more than 14 months, the government has failed to rectify the shortfall.
As of Oct. 31, 2011 there is less than one full-time equivalent judge sitting in B.C. than when the report was provided to government in September 2010. So what does this mean for criminal justice in this province?
The answer is a chronic backlog of cases in which it takes much longer than is constitutionally acceptable for accused persons to get to trial. As a result, numerous cases are being judicially stayed (dropped by judges) because accused persons are not having their trials within a reasonable time as required by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Fredoms. In the last year, examples where charges were stayed include serious allegations like cocaine trafficking and numerous impaired driving cases.
The provincial government's support of the Safe Streets and Communities Act is also surprising given that the increase to the number of offences subjected to a mandatory minimum sentence will also increase the number of cases that proceed to a trial as opposed to being dealt with by a guilty plea. Let's say someone you love gets charged with an offence subject to a mandatory sentence of one year in jail. That one year in jail applies whether they plead guilty or takes their case to trial.
In other words, your loved one has no incentive to plead guilty and might as well go to trial and see if the Crown can prove its case. Creating incentives to take cases to trial further increases the already chronic backlog of cases in our underfunded system.
So if the premier supports the "get tough on crime" approach being advanced by the feds, she better put our money where her mouth is.
Anthony Robinson is a criminal lawyer in Vancouver.
