The Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, once again asked the Court of Quebec on Thursday to give up reducing the time that its judges will spend on the bench, in the wake of the resignation of a magistrate from the presidency. of the Conference of Judges of the Court of Quebec (CJCQ).
The duty revealed Thursday morning that Judge Serge Champoux left his position as President of the CJCQ in order to express his disagreement with the methods of the Chief Judge of the Court of Quebec, Lucie Rondeau.
“I would never have proposed to slow down our work performance, for example to put pressure on politics and thus hope to make gains,” he wrote in particular in a resignation email that he shared on May 20 with all the judges and deputy judges of this court.
Judge Champoux thus registered his dissent from the decision of the Court of Quebec to have its judges sit one day out of two – rather than two days out of three – starting in September. To mitigate the legal delays that the change could cause, Judge Rondeau is asking Quebec to appoint 41 judges.
“Quebecers are right to be worried about the major repercussions that the unilateral decision of the Court of Quebec would have on judicial delays,” Minister Jolin-Barrette said Thursday. “This decision would run counter to the efforts being made by all stakeholders in the justice sector to reduce court delays. The Government of Quebec, like other players in the justice system, is asking the Court’s management to reconsider its decision. »
A showdown “that serves no one”
At the National Assembly, Quebec Solidarity MNA Alexandre Leduc added his voice to that of the Minister, suggesting that Judge Rondeau “think about revising his position”.
According to him, Simon Jolin-Barrette and the Chief Justice must find common ground and end their arm wrestling, which “is of no use to anyone”. The government should also be more attentive to the judiciary, which “is facing labor shortages and delays”, he declared to the To have to. Judge Rondeau’s request for the appointment of 41 more magistrates seems justified, argued Mr. Leduc. The latter believes that other solutions also exist to reduce delays in the justice sector, in particular an improvement in legal aid.
Liberal MP André Fortin, for his part, said he wanted to know “why” the Court of Quebec made the decision to reduce the “sitting time” of its judges. So far, Judge Rondeau has justified her decision by arguing in particular that the work of judges has become more complex over the years, and therefore requires more time outside the courtroom, to write decisions for example.
MNA Fortin advanced on another path of explanation. ” [La décision de la Cour] could be taken precisely because we are short of clerks, because we are short of security officers, because we are short of personnel in our courts of justice, in our courthouses in Quebec,” he said. he advanced. In his opinion, the government must “meet the needs of our courthouses” in terms of manpower “to ensure that we can sit as much as possible, hear as many cases as possible, and that ‘we don’t find ourselves in an unfortunate situation like that’.
In interview at Montreal Journal earlier this week, Superior Court Chief Justice Jacques Fournier said he had repeatedly challenged the government over the past two years about the court’s lack of support staff. His counterpart at the Court of Quebec, Judge Rondeau, did the same.
At the Parti Québécois, Joël Arseneau attributed Justice Champoux’s dissension to the “lack of leadership by the government to collaborate with the judicial system” to counter the effects of the labor shortage. “We saw what happened with the Jordan judgment a few years ago and now we are seeing the same scenario unfold. And the government, particularly the Minister of Justice, rather than tackling this problem head-on, in collaboration with the Chief Justice in particular, continues to want to have a cockfight with her on a thousand and one subjects, so it is unproductive”, he denounced.
Minister Jolin-Barrette and Judge Rondeau have differing points of view on the issue of bilingualism for judges and on the issue of establishing a court specializing in domestic and sexual violence.