Strategy to speed up court appearances has little impact on Thunder Bay: lawyer

The Ontario Attorney General’s strategy to speed up court appearances had little impact on Thunder Bay, says a local lawyer.

Ontario Attorney General, Chris Bentley praised the effectiveness of the Justice on Target strategy in an interview with media last week. The strategy was implemented in 2008 as a way to try and drop the provincial average of the number of days and court appearances for criminal cases by 30 per cent by 2012.

The Canadian Press reported that as of 2010, appearances in Kirkland Lake were down almost 45 per cent, in Kingston 18 per cent, in Brampton nearly 17 per cent and in North York 15 per cent.

London saw a reduction of 10 per cent, while Newmarket was down a more modest four per cent.

Neil McCartney, a criminal lawyer with the Thunder Bay Law Association, said the strategy has more of an impact on cities that are larger than Thunder Bay.

“It seems like Thunder Bay wasn’t singled out for either praise or for blame,” McCartney said on Wednesday. “The comment most often heard here was that this was a strategy aimed at the bigger population centres. It wasn’t something that was a big problem in Thunder Bay. That would be my perception and I think that would be shared with a lot of lawyers and judges here.”

The average time to dispose cases in Thunder Bay didn’t change much in 10 years. The fastest average was in 2000 with an average of 149 days to dispose a case and the slowest in 2008 with an average of 235 days. Since 2008, the numbers have dropped with last year’s average being at 174 days.

“There was almost a 50 per cent reduction in some communities but then it was a lot less noticeable in some other communities,” he said.” On the whole, I think they are declaring victory because it does look like in the places where it did have an impact it had quite a big impact.”