Illustration: Enrico Varrasso

An allegation of fraud within a company used to be handled something like this: a mid-level supervisor would go off like a gunslinger on his own to nail the bad apple that breached the company’s trust.

As mandatory sentences are becoming more common and with Bill C-25 limiting credit for time served in remand, such thresholds are being seen as steadily eroding judicial discretion. The most notable wave washing ashore on judicial benches was seen in the Conservatives’ Tackling Violent Crime Act (Bill C-2 passed in 2008). The government is rationalizing mandatory minimums as the public’s desire to see more uniformity in sentencing practices. But the price of such sentencing “fits,” more solidly entrenched in the U.S., is taking its own toll on the Canadian justice system.

“Indigo is a bugger,” says Derrill Prevett, a Nanaimo, B.C.-based prosecutor, talking about the problems with extracting and analyzing DNA samples from evidence sources such as indigo-dyed fabrics like blue jeans.

 

Fifty-two days, 47 witnesses, 16 roundtable meetings, and 36,000 documents later, lawyers across Canada have all summer to wait before the final recommendations from the Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario will markedly move the system forward.

The problems unearthed with one Ontario pediatric forensic pathologist’s work should be a wake-up call for lawyers and judges.