Supreme Court considers secret trial

As part of a well-attended hearing, the Supreme Court will hear today the appeal of a coalition of media and the Attorney General of Quebec, who want to lift the veil on certain details of a mysterious secret criminal trial including Its existence was revealed last year. In the wake of a series of reports from The Pressa dozen speakers from across the country, including provincial governments, requested to speak before the court.

Last year, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of a police informant tried in what it called a “secret trial.” The name of the judge, the lawyers, the police force involved, the crime charged, the sentence requested, the way in which the accused could have served his sentence: everything had been hidden from the public. The case would not even have been registered in the register of court files and the witnesses would have been questioned outside the court, according to the Court of Appeal, which had decried a way of doing things “incompatible with the values of a liberal democracy.

The Press was the first media to write on the subject, then to reveal in subsequent reports that this trial had been led by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, the federal Crown, following an investigation by the Royal Mounted Police of Canada (RCMP).

The two federal organizations allegedly proceeded in an extraordinary manner in Quebec without the chief judges, the Quebec Bar, the Quebec Minister of Justice and the Judicial Council being able to ensure minimal compliance with the standards. democratic.

Thanks to documents obtained by the Access to Information Act, we were also able to reveal that the Minister of Justice of Canada at the time, David Lametti, had been in close contact with the boss of the Crown prosecutors on this subject. Mr. Lametti also refused to say whether other Canadians had been tried outside the justice system during his mandate.

Opposing positions

Several journalistic organizations, including The Press, CBC/Radio-Canada, Quebecor, the dailies of the National Independent Information Cooperative and the Canadian Press agency will ask the Supreme Court this morning to set minimum guidelines to protect the public nature of justice, even when the identity of an accused must be kept secret. The media are represented by M^e Christian Leblanc, M^e Patricia Hénault and M^e Isabelle Kalar, from the Fasken firm.

The callers suggest that the media and other groups representing the public interest can make representations to limit attacks on the publicity of debates, when the authorities request exceptional confidentiality measures. They ultimately request that the case be sent back to the trial court so that it can correct the situation in light of the Supreme Court’s new guiding principles.

The Attorney General of Quebec is taking, for his part, another avenue to challenge the secrecy imposed in this case: his lawyers M^e Pierre-Luc Beauchesne and M^e Simon-Pierre Lavoie is directly asking the Quebec Court of Appeal to partially unseal its own copy of the file and to make certain information public that can be made public without compromising the security of the police informant.

“A partial unsealing of the Court of Appeal’s file, even if it was heavily redacted, is necessary in order to give a tangible character and materiality to the present case, in the context where there is no trace of the trial of first instance does not exist,” they write in their brief.

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada and the police informant involved in this case have submitted joint arguments and intend to ask the Supreme Court to reject any request that would circulate new information on the case and would, according to them, cause “a dilution of the protection granted to informers” who risk their personal safety by agreeing to work for the police.

Even if the media does not demand to know the identity of the informant, disclosing the name of the judge, the lawyers involved or the crime charged would risk compromising the safety of the informant due to the “mosaic effect », they plead.

According to them, “bits of information” taken from various sources, “although seemingly innocuous and harmless”, can be linked to create “a portrait allowing the targeting of an indicator or a restricted pool of people who could be an indicator” , they indicate in their memory.

“Given the circumstances herein, it appears impossible to create a trace or refer the matter to lower courts, without disclosing sensitive information. […] Confidentiality orders must therefore remain in their entirety. Informer privilege demands nothing less,” their document states.

Many speakers

Among the dozen external speakers who requested to address the Supreme Court during Tuesday’s hearing, the governments of Alberta and Ontario, through their attorneys general, announced that they will ‘opposed any changes that would reduce the courts’ flexibility to protect the secrets surrounding police informants. British Columbia’s attorney general initially said he would make similar representations, but withdrew in September and will not intervene.

Among the stakeholders who intend to advocate for transparency and publicity of debates, we find the Barreau du Québec, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Society of Litigators and the influential associations of defense lawyers of Quebec and Montreal-Laval-Longueuil.

“The judgment that will be rendered will inevitably have repercussions throughout Canada and will directly affect the role of lawyers acting in these cases in Quebec as well as public confidence in the administration of justice,” mentions the Barreau du Québec in its memory.

“According to the Bar, it is imperative that a criminal case does not proceed outside the justice system,” continues the organization.