A Crown attorney will be working at the Ottawa police station by the end of this month in order to aid police during investigations and preparation of complex cases, Attorney General Chris Bentley announced earlier this month.
“[Police] often require sophisticated legal advice, and why not have that provided on-site, quickly, as the case is being prepared to deal with, for example wire tap issues, search issues, disclosure issues,” Bentley says.
The pilot program’s final details are still in the works. Hilary McCormack, head of the regional Crown attorney’s office, says she expects the new position to be housed at the central police station on Elgin Street.
The provincial government’s move to put Crown offices in police stations in Ottawa, Toronto, Peel Region and Windsor, came from a report by former Chief Justice of the Superior Court Patrick LeSage and Professor Michael Code from the University of Toronto faculty of law, who examined how complex criminal cases could be speeded up.
The report, commissioned last February, was aimed at helping “major mega-trials proceed through the court system faster, more effectively and with greater certainty of reaching a favourable conviction,” according to the attorney general.
The report’s first recommendation suggested police and Crown attorneys collaborate more closely and the Ministry of the Attorney General has decided to move forward with this.
“It doesn’t mean that the Crown attorneys become police investigators, but they should be there to provide assistance so that police know what their powers are and know what they aren’t, so that they aren’t improperly doing things,” explains Norman Boxall, an Ottawa criminal defense lawyer and vice-president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association.
According to the report, over the past several decades there has been an increase in collaboration between police and Crown attorneys before the charges are laid. Since the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, police have relied on Crown advice during their case investigations to ensure that no Charter rights are breached.
Cities in other provinces have similar programs and the federal prosecution also has Crown attorneys involved in specialized policing units like the drug or proceeds of crime units, Boxall says.
Bentley says that “this approach has been identified in a number of jurisdictions throughout North America as one that has the opportunity for better success.”
However, as a defense lawyer, Boxall says he has a concern with the new program.
“Once again we’re making a number of expenditures or changes to the system for the police and the Crown attorneys, and yet it’s been a very long time since the other side of the case has been looked at,” he says, “so legal aid and funding for the defense [are] in dire need.”
He cites adding more police officers and Crowns as an example of a spending increase. “There’s been no corresponding increase for the defense side,” he says.
The reason that Ottawa has been chosen as part of the pilot program for Ontario is “a testament, again, to the close collaboration between the Ottawa Crown’s office and the police office,” the attorney general says.
McCormack says she will be in charge of choosing the Crown for the Ottawa program. Because attorneys have prior commitments and the new position is supposed to be implemented by the end of January, she says duties may initially be split between two lawyers.