My question is to the Premier. An Ontario family that has been waiting three years for the trial of the reported murder of their beloved brother has just been told that they’ll have to wait another year, and this is because that is the next available date at the Toronto Superior Court.

Last week, yet another child sexual abuse case was thrown out at the Toronto Superior Court, once again due to court delays. This is all happening under the Premier’s watch.

The first step to getting help is admitting that you have a problem. Yes or no—question to the Premier: Will the Premier admit that public safety is in chaos because the Ontario courts have not been his priority?

We have a record-high historic backlog. This is the worst record across the country. But this government works harder at putting out press releases than they do at fixing the courts. They search for old funding announcements so that they can reannounce them again instead of finding qualified workers to actually staff the courts.

Nathaniel Brettell’s murder trial was delayed yet one more year. His sister told CTV, “My life has been on hold for three years.... I’m suffering badly with survivor’s guilt. Now, with another year on top of that, I’m not in a good place.”

For the families watching: Does the Premier believe that it is reasonable to make Ontario families wait four years for a murder trial date?

Under this Conservative government, Ontario’s justice system is in shambles—everywhere, access to justice is denied routinely. Ontario courts rank dead last in case backlogs and wait times nationwide. The Conservatives play politics with justice, appointing unqualified cronies, including a gun lobbyist, to select their next round of judges.

Delays and denials of justice ruin lives. Criminals walk free, and the innocent suffer behind bars.

This isn’t just about funding; it’s about setting priorities.

The government’s budget ignores the crisis in our courts. This government released its budget two days ago. I scoured the budget. I was looking for funding in our courts, and it was not there. Not once did it mention bail, pretrial detention or court backlogs.

It’s easy for Ontario survivors to give up when their own government has given up on them.

Today in the chamber sit two extraordinary women, Cait Alexander and Emily Ager, who have individually endured violent crimes against them, only to have their cases tossed out because of court delays. Devastated, they watched their accused walk free and back into the community.

Cait and Emily are here to demand tangible solutions, starting with the budget; not hollow assurances from the Premier and the Attorney General.

We must thank Cait and Emily for their incredible strength, for coming here today, and for sharing their painful stories once again in hopes that this government will actually come up with solutions and fix our broken courts.

I don’t believe that the member was listening as intently as he says, because I did highlight exactly what were the deficiencies in the bill and what I’d like to see improved. It tinkers around the edges, and it doesn’t go far enough. It certainly doesn’t address the challenges and the crisis we have in the court system.

As I’ve mentioned, the central theme of all my remarks today is that this bill is possibly passable but not praiseworthy, and I stand by that.

What I cannot quantify is the emotional harm that it re-creates for those survivors and victims of crime, and that, to me, is a tragedy, because they never got their day in court. They never will get closure on what happened to them, a very traumatic incident. And not to mention, Speaker, the accused: The accused will have that charge and that report hanging over their head forever, also without their day in court.

The top two issues that I would like to see in this bill—and it’s easy—are twofold: One is to adequately staff the courts, to do everything you can in all your powers to ensure that the minimum requirement of time constraints is met. The standard has got to be met. No more throwing out of criminal cases. That is one thing.

The second thing—I’ll add a third if I have time—is to fund legal aid. You need to be able to do it. People are being impacted by not having access to the judicial system that they so rightly deserve.

The third is to fix the tribunals.

Absolutely, I will stand with the government and every party in this House as we advocate for the unification of Family Court. It is unduly unfair to families who are trying to access and navigate two systems. It’s costly, it’s time-consuming and, of course, the emotional duress—it just doesn’t work. We have a proven record of it working when we unify, and that’s where we should be moving to.

Thank you to the government for their presentation on the new justice bill. I was actually very excited to see a bill that was entitled “accelerating access to justice,” the short title of the bill, be tabled, because we’ve all heard about the extraordinary delays that we’ve seen in the courts, about certain charges being dropped. Whether it’s criminal charges affecting sexual assaults of minors, rapists walking out the door, we’ve heard them all, oftentimes because it took too long.

What I’m very interested in knowing from the government is, why are we not seeing the investments come in through the bill specifically to address the shortage that we are seeing in the courts? We do not have enough law clerks. We do not have enough court reporters. We do not have enough trial coordinators, as well as judicial assistants. So why are the solutions for funding the courts not there?

Despite the political spin, what we do know is that there is a base-funding cut from this ministry. In this incident, Judge Brock Jones said, “There is no reason this case could not have been completed ... had the courts been properly staffed. Instead, two full days of court time were” wasted “and [the case] adjourned.”

In an interview with CTV, Emily of Fergus, Ontario, the survivor, was devastated after her case was tossed, and she shared this comment:

“I crumbled,” she said. “It took so much to even do that first step of giving my statement to the police and [going to] the hospital. Then, a year and a half later, I decided to go back to Toronto to do this trial, face this man, and tell my story.

“Now it’s just over.”

Speaker, what does the Premier have to say to Emily and all the survivors seeking justice after allowing their rapist to walk free?

This government is failing to adequately staff Toronto’s newest Ontario Court of Justice facility. In September, a man charged with sexually assaulting a minor walked free because his case took too long to get to trial. Last week, another sexual assault charge against a rapist was stayed and his case was also thrown out because of the long court delay. What a waste of Toronto police resources.

Speaker, despite this government’s claim that they are fixing the courts, the Ministry of the Attorney General saw a base-funding cut in the fall economic statement. How is the Premier justifying funding cuts to the court system when he is already failing survivors?

Intimate partner violence is an epidemic in Ontario, as it is in Canada. The court delays the survivors across Ontario are enduring are inexcusable.

There was a stabbing and a shooting in Barbara Hall Park, only a few steps away from this House, on Tuesday. The frustrated Toronto police have informed me that one of the assailants apprehended was actually out on bail—he was wanted for a warrant.

A year ago, I asked this government to take action to keep all our communities safe. Since I asked this question, things have only gotten worse under your watch. Violent repeat offenders are being released back into neighbourhoods because Ontario’s justice system is literally collapsing on our heads.

Can the Attorney General explain to Ontarians why he spent his summer setting up and awarding King’s Counsel honorific titles to PC insiders instead of fixing our collapsing courtrooms?

The government recently passed Bill 46, which doubled down on a band-aid solution to our court-staffing problems. Instead of expediting efforts to hire more judges, retired judges can now return to work up to 75% of full-time hours, a plan that is expensive, flawed and unsustainable.

My question to the Premier is simple: Why won’t his government clear the court backlog with a proper plan which includes actually appointing more new, full-time judges?

Last week, the case of a police officer accused of sexual assault was thrown out, not because of the merits of the case, but because it was assigned to a semi-retired judge who took an extended vacation, which then caused an unconstitutional trial delay. These kinds of scheduling issues are entirely predictable, and they will happen more and more as this government increases our reliance on part-time judges.

Our justice system is now being held together by duct tape. Speaker, is this government so out of touch that they don’t recognize the long-term investments needed to ensure that the people of Ontario get access to justice in a timely fashion?

My question is pertaining to schedules 2 and 3. I’m just going to combine them together.

Having the retired judges go back to work seems to me like a form of double-dipping—not only are they accessing a lucrative pension; they’re also now accessing very substantial salary compensation. At the same time, it’s not a sustainable solution with respect to clearing the backlogs in the courts.

The Ontario trial lawyers have put forward a long-time position where they want to be able to remove the choice of a jury trial, especially for most civil matters. This is a long-standing position of the Ontario trial lawyers. It also means that Ontario right now is the last jurisdiction in the country that actually offers that. They’ve noted that it costs more—it’s more time to administer and not necessarily a good use of court resources.

Why does the government not invest in that type of red tape elimination, and why are they proposing something else that’s not sustainable?

I’d like to welcome the students and teaching staff of Sprucecourt Public School, located in historic Cabbagetown in Toronto Centre. It also happens to be my very first public school when I arrived in Canada and the place where I learned to speak English.

Thank you to the member across for his submission—to both members for their submissions.

I guess my question would be specifically to the Juries Act, that particular portion in the bill. In particular, the Ontario trial lawyers, who I met with last year, were calling for an end to the use of civil juries. Civil juries have oftentimes led to exorbitant amounts of time in the delays in the court system. In Canada, there’s no constitutional right to a jury trial in most civil matters. Ontario is one of the last Canadian jurisdictions to grant parties the right to choose jury trials for most civil matters.

So my question to you would be: If most of Canada is actually moving away from civil jury options, why, through this modernization of the Juries Act, are you leaving this behind, when it clearly is a simple way of cutting red tape?