The “shadow criminal trial” affair held in Quebec was largely a misunderstanding, say the nine judges of the highest court in the country, according to whom the controversy arose from a poor choice of words by a judge of the Court of Appeal.
“Let us be clear, no secret trial took place in this case. […] The very notion of a secret trial does not exist in Canada,” we read in the unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court published Friday.
The highest magistrates thus contradict what was understood from a redacted decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal from March 2022, which denounced the fact that someone who provided information to the police was judged in the greatest secrets: without publication, without file numbers or without the identity of judges and lawyers being revealed. “In short, no trace of this trial exists, except in the memory of the individuals involved,” lamented the redacted version of the judgment of the Court of Appeal.
Radio-Canada media, The Press, The Canadian Press and the daily newspapers of the Coops de l’information, in addition to the chief judge of the Court of Quebec and the Quebec government, took the case to the Supreme Court to ask that more information be made public. They were partially successful, since the case was sent back to the Court of Appeal for the publication of a redacted version of the entire file.
The accusation was first public
Above all, the Supreme Court of Canada provides more details on what happened. It is explained that the person at the heart of the affair would first have been publicly accused of a crime, and the procedures would have taken place normally until the moment when she requested a stay of the proceedings based on “the abusive conduct that ‘had the State against him as a police informer.’
From that moment, the trial judge concluded that a closed session was necessary, that is to say, prohibiting access to the hearings by the public and the media. He then decided not to reveal anything about the rest of the procedures, “a discretionary decision which was justified in this case”, considers the Supreme Court. Even if all the actors would have “acted with honesty”, the error of the trial judge was to make the traces disappear.
“However, at the stage of implementing the closed session, the judge wrongly considered that the only way to proceed in the unusual circumstances of this case was to completely conceal the existence of any closed hearing relating to the closed session. police informer status [la personne accusée] and any decision rendered following it. »
In short, the Supreme Court would have liked the request for a stay of proceedings to appear in the docket, the public register of the court, as is normally the case, but in a file separate from the criminal proceeding where the person appeared publicly .
Judges’ errors
The country’s highest court also blames the judge who heard the appeal, who should never have used the term “secret trial”, which is “unduly alarming” to the public and the media. This judge also made an error by sealing the entire file, instead of revealing a version that protected the identity of the accused police source.
The Supreme Court’s decision does not change the fate of this person at the heart of the case, whose identity is not known. This “designated person”, who was a police informant, was found guilty of a crime at first instance, in camera, but his conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal which granted him a stay of proceedings .
The Supreme Court only looked at the question of the publicity of justice, a principle at the heart of the system. “When justice is exercised in secret, without leaving a trace, respect for the rule of law is threatened and public confidence in the administration of justice risks being shaken,” writes the judgment from the pen of the Court.
The case is sent back to the Quebec Court of Appeal to make public a redacted version of the trial judgment.